Exodus 3:15

The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac.

The God of the generations

Men are always influenced more or less by the power of great names. This appears in every sphere of life, social, scientific, political, literary, religious. The name of a wise, heroic, or philanthropic, or notably godly man, is a perpetual fountain of inspiration--a well-spring of living water from which we gather stimulus, courage, power to be and to do. The sound of it stirs the pulses of our better life. But no names in any country, or among any people, have wielded a mightier power than these three mentioned in the text exerted over the minds and history of the Jews. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob stood forth in every succeeding age in increasing lustre, unshadowed even by the memories of other noble names, such as Moses, Daniel, Solomon, Elijah, Isaiah. Appeal to them was always effective when all other means of rousing the national heart failed.

I. It announces God’s relation to individual life. “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Here there is a sublime fact upon which our minds can lay hold. The statement is not vague or unsubstantial, but tells us that the great God has to do with men, and holds a distinct personal relation towards each of them. Perhaps we have been too apt to attempt to satisfy ourselves with impalpable generalities, and to talk of God as the God of Creation, from whose fulness of life and omnipotence of energy the universe has derived its existence. In like manner we employ what may be termed His official titles to represent Him to our thought. He is the King of kings, the Ruler, the Governor of the nations. But the hearts of men crave a more intimate knowledge of God than these ideas can possibly convey. We cannot satisfy ourselves with abstractions. Official titles never command our affection. What we want is not a revelation that only declares God’s universal dealings with humanity, but His personal interest in individual men. And we see that thus early in the history of the race this revelation is clearly made. Nay, from the first and earliest declaration of God’s relation to the world, this is unhesitatingly announced. All the beautiful stories of Divine intercourse with men contained in the Book of Genesis are recorded to teach us that God has not been satisfied with a merely general and official relationship to men, but that He has ever had regard to the personal wants, the personal struggles, the personal sins, the personal joys and sorrows, the personal lives and deaths of each man, woman, and child born into this world. “I am the Lord thy God”; and our response is, “This God is our God. He will be our guide even unto death.” “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” More clearly still is this revelation made in the New Testament--that carries the truth further, and by Jesus Christ we are shown that God has the most intimate relation with human souls. Indeed, the very use of the word “Father” implies this personal relationship. It is impossible for a true father to regard and treat the members of his family in a general indiscriminate manner--looking upon them in the mass, and not as individuals--that were to destroy the very meaning and beauty of family life. But the father knows that he has a distinct love for each member. Thus our Lord teaches us the particular and special and personal nature of the relationship of God to us. We are not lost in the mass, as one in a crowd for whom no one cares, and whom no one would miss. “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Connected with this is another thought worthy of notice. It is that God here expresses His relation to persons of distinct and differing characters. Perhaps no three men were more unlike than this father, son, and grandson. Look at Abraham, the bold, brave, generous, trusting chief, a dweller in tents, at home in the desert. Compare him with the quiet, meditative, ease-loving, simple-minded Isaac, somewhat fond of savoury living, who succeeded him. There is as much unlikeness as could possibly exist between father and son. Take, again, Jacob, the cunning, adroit, ingenious, selfish, money-loving, physically timid--a man who probably had more brains than either of his predecessors, but who was made to be a politician, a statesman, to whose active, contriving spirit, sitting at home, or roving in the desert, would be alike uncongenial. There we have three men totally distinct in character, yet the declaration is made--“I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Surely there is meaning in this, and it is that God cares equally for, and is as truly related to, one kind of disposition and character as another. Ah! there is exquisite beauty and comfort in the tenderly-expressed words of John concerning Christ--“Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.” Three varieties of character, but all beloved. If all this be true, what need of our nature is left unsatisfied? If this be true, who is there will not feel that his life, so specially the subject of God’s thought, is therefore a grander, nobler, and, withal, a more responsible thing? Who will depreciate his.own proud worth? Who will bemoan his lot, thinking with envy of others better circumstanced?

II. It announces God’s relation to successive generations. These three men represented an unbroken succession of three generations, running into one another, yet in a measure distinct. May we not learn from these facts that God is not a God of seasons and partialities, but that He belongs to all the successive generations as they move across the world to the silence of the grave? There is no break in His thoughtful care or in the manifestations of His love. He does not appear at one age and disappear at another, at one time show Himself peculiarly concerned with human welfare, at another time altogether indifferent about the joys and sorrows, the sins and the cravings of men. In such a Being as that we could neither trust nor believe. There is no intermission. God’s intercourse with men is never broken off. This intercourse may assume different forms. What is suited to one age may be altogether unsuited to the next. At one time His revelations may be such as the senses can testify to; He may instruct men in His mind and will through the medium of miracles, flashing symbols of omnipotence before their eyes; at other times He may reveal Himself in a person, in a human life, as we believe He did in Christ Jesus our Lord. At others, all visions may disappear; no miracle shall startle the world into wondering awe. God is not tied to methods. He may and does employ all at one time or another in order to convince men of His nearness to them and interest in their life. “The God of the Hebrews is not our God.” That is the sum of much of the unbelief of the day. The cry is for palpable evidence. Palpable evidence! Why, we have abundance of it on all sides. Miracles! There is no need of them. Why, the very researches of our scientific men are doing away with the necessity for miracles, for they are demonstrating by their discoveries that the world is full of order, of beauty, of marvellous contrivances that must be the work of mind. Here are the proofs of Divine existence, Divine working, Divine wisdom and bounty and power. To believe He is not as much the God of this generation as of any in all the long past, is to cut to the very root of all true faith and trust in Him, is to regard Him as partial, as doing more for one people than for another equally in need of His revelation of power and love; it is to throw us back for our faith in God upon dead history, which can never create or nourish into a living hope the trust of human souls. We may say that the age of supernatural displays of mere power is passed, but we are called upon to rise from the merely materialistic and tangible, and to realise God in the hallowed and invisible communion of the Spirit. The God of the father is to be the God of the son and the grandson by legitimate, unhindered succession, and those who come after can speak of “the God of our fathers.” That there is no reason against it in the will and purposes of the Divine Being Himself we have seen. He is willing to bless and enrich each and all, without choice or favouritism. But in how few cases in the family life is He recognized from one generation to another. Here I bring the matter direct home to your hearts. I know I must be speaking to some who are thinking of pious parents. You have a godly father or mother, or perhaps both. What of yourself? Are you continuing the succession? The name you bear has been associated with godliness in one or two generations past. Is it to be separated in your time? What will your children say of you? Will they be able to pray to the God of their parents? (W. Braden.)