Exploring the Historical Impact of Islam and the Arab Nations

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The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.

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Now, I am only 63 years old. But if I had to face the idea of having a new baby in my house, I don’t mean a grandbaby. I mean my firstborn child. I don’t know how I’d feel about that. I confess I’m set in my ways, and I’m not sure how I would handle having a brand new baby in the house. It’d be a great joy, of course, but it would be a terrifying responsibility. Well, Abraham was 100 years old when his son was born, and the boy’s mother was 90 years. They called the boy Isaac, and Isaac in Hebrew means laughter. They called him laughter because they both did a lot of laughing about having a child at age 100 and age 90. I guess it’s just as well that they had a sense of humor. If you remember the story, Isaac was not Abraham’s first son. He had another, Ishmael, by a surrogate mother, Hagar, Sarah’s handmaid. And it was an explosive situation, to say the least, once this new child was coming up in years. The story is in Genesis 21, and it begins in verse 5. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. And Sarah said, God has made me laugh, so that all who hear will laugh with me. And she said, Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah should have given him a child? For I have borne him a son in his old age. And the child grew, and it was weaned, and Abraham made a great feast the same day that Isaac was weaned. And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, Ishmael, that she had borne to Isaac, making sport. And I would say, presumably, he was making fun of her or making fun of Isaac or all of the above. And she said to Abraham, Cast out this bondwoman and her son, for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac. Jealousy is a bitter thing. And it was probably just as well that they came to this conclusion, because if Isaac and Ishmael had had to grow up together with those two women in the household, there’s very little doubt that it would be nothing but conflict the rest of their lives. Well, the thing was very grievous to Abraham because he really loved Ishmael. He was his son. And God spoke to him and said, Abraham, don’t let it be grievous in your sight because of the lad and because of the bondwoman. In all that Sarah has said to you, listen to her because in Isaac shall your seed be called. The son of the bondwoman? Well, of him I will make a great nation for the sole reason that he is your son. So Abraham rose up early in the morning and took bread and a bottle of water, gave it to Hagar and put it on her shoulder and the child and sent her away. And she departed and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba. And when the water was spent in the bottle, she laid the child under one of the shrubs and she went and sat down over against him a good way off as if it were a bow shot. And she said, I just don’t want to see the death of the boy. He’s going to die for thirst and I don’t want to have to see it. So she sat opposite him and lifted up her voice and cried. And God heard the voice of the lad, and the angel of God called Hagar out of heaven and said, What ails you, Hagar? Don’t be afraid. God has heard the voice of the lad where he is. Now get up, lift him up, for I will make of him a great nation. And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. And she went and filled the bottle with water and gave the lad to drink. And so they went on their way. And the Scripture tells us God was with the lad, and he grew and dwelt in the wilderness and became an archer. He dwelt in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother took him a wife out of the land of Egypt. So it is that the Arab people, who Ishmael is their father, have the son of Abraham as their father and an Egyptian as their mother. And they’re an ancient and a great people. They were great long before they turned up sitting on most of the world’s oil. The Arab peoples conquered most of the known world, all the way to India, all the way across North Africa, all the way into Spain and southern Europe. They were a powerful force during the heyday of Islam. Most people are simply not aware, not only of the conquests of Islam, but really of the scientific, literary advances in poetry, literature, and knowledge that these people brought into the world during their time. While Europe was in the Dark Ages and people were living in thatched huts and in the mud, Islam was a powerful, growing intellectual influence throughout the Middle East. Well, while Ishmael was headed south into the desert toward the land that would become his and his children, God was ready to put Abraham to a test in an area that was going to shock Abraham beyond anything he could have imagined. I’ll talk about that when we come back.

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In Genesis 22, we have the story of Abraham’s trial, his test. God tempted him, and he said, Abraham, and Abraham said, I’m here. And he said, I want you to take your son, your only son, Isaac. Now, at this point, he’s no longer even recognizing Ishmael, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and get into the land of Moriah and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains, which I will tell you of. Now, it would be hard to overstate the crisis that this presented to Abraham. He had waited so long for this boy. He had been willing to have Ishmael for his heir, but God said no. He wanted Abraham to have a son by Sarah. He wanted him to have a legitimate son. And finally, he had that son. And then he had sent Ishmael, the only alternative, away. Ishmael is gone. Ishmael is out of the picture. And indeed, God wanted him out of the picture. Now, God tells him to take Isaac and go offer him as a burnt offering. How’s Abraham supposed to take this? Well, the story tells us that Abraham rose up early in the morning, saddled his ass, took two of his young men with him and Isaac, his son. He split the wood for the burnt offering and rose up and went to the place that God had told him. The account is so sparse. We know nothing of how Abraham felt. I heard one preacher years ago who got carried away in a sermon about how we ought to trust God without wavering. We ought to have absolute faith. If God tells us it’s going to be all right, it’s going to be all right, and we should not even doubt it for a moment. He’d cite this as an example of great faith. Abraham, he said, didn’t question God. He didn’t waver. He just went and did as he was told. But you know, I really think that misses the whole point of this story. Is there any way we can miss the parallel in this with the sacrifice of the only Son of God? There’s a passage in John, the third chapter. Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, has come to Jesus by night. And he says, Master, we know you’re a teacher come from God. He hoped that Jesus was no more than a teacher come from God because he said, no man can do these things that you do unless God is with him. Well, Jesus came right back and embraced him. And finally, in verse 14, he says this, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the son of man be lifted up that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever would believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. Jesus was the only begotten Son of the Father, and who was sacrificed, as Abraham was called upon to sacrifice his only begotten son. Everyone knows, by the way, that this sacrifice was not easy for Jesus. I mean, when you think about what he had to face, was this something that Jesus was just able to toss off? He said, well, I’ve got to go die tomorrow. I’ve got an appointment with Pilate in the middle of the night here. It’s going to be uncomfortable for a while, but got to do it. Let’s get on our road and get it done. No. He got together with his disciples for a last supper. He told them about his blood and about his body, and he gave them symbols that they were to take on a regular basis as a reminder of the sacrifice that he was going to be making and as a form of solidarity with him, an acceptance of his sacrifice, a renewal of a covenant with him. And then after the supper, they went across to the Garden of Gethsemane, and Jesus went apart from the fellows and fell down and began to pray. And he prayed hard. First, he prayed that he wouldn’t have to do it. He said, Father, if there’s any way that this cup can pass from me, please give me a break. Let’s don’t do this. And then after a while longer, he was praying, well, if there’s no way of getting around this, I wish that we could get around it. And if it’s possible, let’s get around it. But nevertheless, your will be done. And he prayed more fervently. And one of the scriptural accounts tells us he prayed and his sweat was like drops of blood on his brow. And from that we get the expression that somebody is sweating blood. And finally, in Jesus’ prayer, he accepted the inevitable. He said, well, if this can’t pass from me, your will be done. He knew fear. He knew dread. He suffered betrayal and abandonment. It was hard for him. It was hard for him to face willingly the sacrifice of himself. Okay. So it was hard for Jesus. Was it easy for the Father? Was he able just simply to toss it off? Was it just something, well, I know we got it to do, and here we are, and you’re going to die, and I’ll see you when you wake up in resurrection three and a half days or three days from now. Well, I think this is what the story of Abraham is all about. Was it easy for Abraham? You know, God, in the process of putting Abraham in the position of sacrificing his only son, made the point that it was not easy for him to sacrifice his only son because God had taken a lot of time, you know, to set this up. He let Abraham wait year after year after year after year before that child was born. And, of course, all those years of waiting, the disappointments, the hopes, the fears, the frustration, and finally the infrustration, trying to solve the problem their own way and having a surrogate mother bear a childish male, and the mistake that that turned out to be. Then having finally at long, long last being given a son, when you’re 100 years old and have waited so long and hoped and prayed and yearned, and your wife is 90, and it’s an absolute miracle this child is even here. God did not make this easy for Abraham. In fact, I would say he made it as hard as he possibly could make it. so that all of us would know what God went through when he sacrificed his son. No, no, no, we really won’t know what God went through. There’s no way for us to really appreciate that. I think the point of Abraham’s story is that we would know that this is not easy for God, that we would know it was hard for God to turn his back on his son when his son was dying on the stake. and walk away to the extent that Jesus was able to cry, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Abraham has the honor of playing God in this little drama, and it was not easy. When this really dawned on me, I think, was when I saw the movie The Bible, and George C. Scott played the part of Abraham who had been ordered to go and sacrifice his son. I think George C. Scott played it just about right. Abraham agonized over the decision. He denied the decision. He was frustrated. He was dismayed. He was hurt. He was confused. But finally, in the end, but only in the end, he was able to reconcile himself to the fact that he had to do it. And so, here all these generations later, we learn in Abraham, that it was not easy for God to sacrifice his son. It was a true loss to him. Well, Abraham, having made his preparations, took off toward the land that God sent him. And it says on the third day, Abraham lifted his eyes, and he saw the place a long way off. And he said to his young men, You wait here with the ass, and I and the lad will go yonder and worship and will come to you. So Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and put it on the back of Isaac, his son, who was a pretty big boy by this time. And he took the fire in his hand and a knife, and they both went off, both of them, together, with Isaac carrying the wood for his own burnt offering. Now, by this time, Isaac is beginning to wonder what’s going on. And he speaks to Abraham, his father, and said, My father? And he said, Yes. He said, Well, I see the fire, and I see the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And as though all this was not hard enough for Abraham, now we have to stick the knife in and turn it And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering. And they went on, both of them together. And they came to the place which God had told him of, and Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order, and finally took some rope and tied up Isaac his son and laid him on the altar upon the wood. At this point, Isaac has got to know that he is the burnt offering. And how he felt? One can only imagine. He was big enough to resist his father, but he didn’t do it. He submitted. And Abraham stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But an angel of the Lord called to him and said, Abraham, Abraham. And he said, I’m here. And he said, Don’t lay your hand upon the lad. Don’t do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me. His hand was stopped. There’s something fascinating about this. We always like to think that God knows everything. God knows what we’ll do. God knows all the decisions we’re going to make. God can foretell the future. Sorry. Until Abraham made it all the way to the mountain, until he took the knife in his hand, at any point in time, he had within himself the capacity to stop. And God did not know for sure that he would carry it through until he was in the act of carrying it through. And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and there was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram. He offered the ram for a burnt offering instead of his son. Some people think that Abraham knew this would be the outcome from the beginning, and that was what made it possible for him to face it with equanimity. In other words, Abraham knew all along the kid wouldn’t die, and therefore he just went trucking on down the road, just humming a song and not worrying at all about the outcome. That’s why he had so much faith. No, there’s not a thing in the world in this story that would lead you to that belief. In fact, in the New Testament, the book of Hebrews, Paul writing says, By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac. He that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, In Isaac shall your seed be called. And the reason why Abraham went and did it is found right here in Hebrews 11, verse 19. Accounting that God was able to raise him up from the dead, which, in a manner of speaking, he did. Abraham believed he had to do it, but he also believed that God could raise Isaac from the dead. Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah Sees, as it is said to this day, in the mount of the Lord it shall be seen. The angel called Abraham out of heaven the second time and said, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son. that in blessing I will bless you, in multiplying I will multiply your seed like the stars of the heaven, like the sand on the seashore, and your seed shall possess the gate of his enemies. And in your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. Why? Because you have obeyed my voice. all the way down to the Messiah, for New Testament writers see this seed that Abraham’s talking about here, Paul in particular, as Jesus Christ. That in him would all nations of the earth be blessed because of the obedience of Abraham. I’ll be back after these words.

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finally died when she was 127 years old. Sarah died in Hebron in the land of Canaan, and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. You know, Abraham, he was a tough old man, but this woman had been his companion for longer than most people live, and he loved her dearly. And so the time of mourning and of weeping for Sarah would have been very deep for Abraham. And the care with which he arranged the burial of Sarah and the courtliness of Abraham as he negotiates for her burial place is really touching. Abraham stood up before his dead and spoke to the sons of Heth, saying, I’m a stranger here. I’m just sort of a passing-through person. Would you give me a possession of burying place with you that I can bury my dead? And the children of Heth—by the way, the children of Heth are the Hittites— answered Abraham, saying to him, Hear us, my lord, you are a mighty prince among us. In the choice of our sepulchers bury your dead. None of us will withhold from you his own sepulcher, but that you may bury your dead. The way this dialogue goes back and forth between Abraham and these men, it’s kind of an age-long forgotten. In an age I kind of wish in some ways we still had. It’s a kind gesture, in fact, that these men were making toward Abraham. He was held in enormous respect by the Hittites. And they were willing to give him a place in their own land. But Abraham wasn’t quite willing for it to be that way. Sarah was far, far too important for him. And Abraham stood up and he bowed himself to the people of the land, even to the children of Heth. It’s a custom. And he communed with them and said, If it be your mind that I should bury my dead here, hear me and entreat for me to Ephron the son of Zohar, that he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which he has, which is in the end of his field, for as much money as it’s worth he shall give it to me for a possession of a burying place among you. Now Ephron dwelt among the children of Heth, And he answered Abraham and the audience of all the children of Heth, everyone who was there that day, saying, No, my Lord, hear me. The field I give you, and the cave that is therein I give it to you. In the presence of the sons of my people I give it to you. Bury your dead. He wasn’t even offering to charge Abraham. Now, I suspect that this was all understood, and it was a matter of the courtliness, the method of negotiation and all that, that he fully expected what Abraham then went ahead to do. But it sure sounds good and feels good to know that people would have this kind of kindness toward a man who has lost his beloved wife of so many years. But Abraham would not have it that the cave in which he was going to bury Sarah would be just given to him. And once again, he bowed himself before them. And he spoke to Ephron in the audience of all the people saying, by the way, all this in the audience of all the people has to do with the witnesses that are required for the transfer of property. And he said, but if you will give it, I pray to me, I pray, hear me. I will give you money for the field. Take the money from me and I will bury my dead there. And Ephraim said, My lord, listen to me. The land is worth four hundred shekels of silver. What is that between me and you? Bury your dead. And Abraham weighed to him the silver which he had named in the audience of the witnesses, four hundred shekels of silver, current money of the merchant. And the field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, the field and the cave and everything around it, all the trees in the field, all the borders, were made sure to Abraham for a possession in the presence of all the witnesses of the children of Heth, the Hittites, and everyone that was in the gate of his city. After this, Abraham buried Sarah, his wife, in that cave, and the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan. The field and the cave all were made secure to Abraham for a possession of a burying place by the sons of Heth. You know that cave is there? There’s a mosque in Hebron that’s built over the cave. I have actually stood above the grating and looked down into that cave where not only Sarah, but Abraham and Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah, and perhaps even Joseph are buried. The cave is known to be a tomb. It’s known that there are bodies there. But it’s never been excavated, and it really shouldn’t be, in honor of the people who everybody now believes, I think, are buried there. Of all the places I visited in the Middle East, this one seemed to me the most authentic. By the way, I’m often asked about burial and cremation as alternatives for the final disposition of the dead. And I suspect that some people who ask this question about cremation wonder, well, if I’m all burned up and turned to ashes, will God be able to resurrect me? And the answer is, of course, yes. The Bible says nothing against cremation. But it does show burial in a positive light as an expression of love and of respect. Unfortunately, burning bodies in ancient times was a sign of disgrace. But that’s not true in our world today. It dawned on me one day as I was walking through a cemetery how curious it is that cemeteries are a place of dread for some people. You’ve heard all the jokes people like to make about guys going through cemeteries in the middle of the night and all the stuff about skeletons and ghosts and goblins. But one day, as I said, as I was walking through a cemetery, I noticed all the expressions of love. flowers everywhere, sentiments expressed on tombstones. A cemetery is not a place of death. It’s a place of love. I know of no place in our community where there are more sincere and enduring expressions of love than there are in a cemetery. In fact, there’s far too much love there for it to be a place of demons and of goblins. If you can afford it, bury your loved ones with honor. There will always be a place on the earth that belongs to them and belongs to their memory. Until next time, this is Ronald Dart.

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