Lessons on Spiritual Formation from the Lives of the Patriarchs
11/03/14 
David Larson
The lives of the patriarchs provide fascinating material for the study of spiritual formation. In the Old Testament, God is frequently identified as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (e.g. Exodus 3:6). The process of spiritual formation in the lives of each of these patriarchs can also be put into the context of Gods purpose for their lives-a purpose largely held in common by all three, namely, to be the fathers through whom Gods chosen people and especially the promised Messiah would descend and through whom ultimately all peoples on earth would be blessed (see Genesis 12:1-3; 17:19; 28:13-15).
God worked in their lives to transform them into the instruments he could use to accomplish his plan. None of them were worthy of the grand place God had for them in the outworking of his redemptive plan-this is especially evident in the case of Jacob, but God patiently worked in their lives to change them into the kind of men he was pleased to use, much as he works in our lives to change us into the kind of people he can use to accomplish his plan.
This emphasis has parallels in Henry Blackabys Experiencing God. Blackaby stresses that we come to know God by experience as we obey him by joining him in the work he is doing and as he accomplishes his work through us.1 In his emphasis, experiencing God takes place in the context of allowing God to accomplish his work through us. Similarly it is maintained in this article that spiritual formation takes place in the context of God changing us into the kind of people he can use to accomplish his plan.
The scriptural record of Abrahams spiritual formation focuses on the development of his faith. Abraham would not have fulfilled his destiny of becoming the father of Gods chosen people without faith. Hebrews 11:11-12 says: By faith Abraham, even though he was past age-and Sarah herself was barren-was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise. And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore (italics added). God tested Abrahams faith at three major points in his life-when he asked him to leave his country, his people, and his fathers household and go to the land he would show him (Genesis 12:1), when he promised to give Abraham a son in his old age through whom he would become a great nation (Genesis 15:2-6), and when he asked Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice (Genesis 22). Each test not only revealed Abrahams faith, but stretched and grew it. It would seem that in the second case-when God promised to give Abraham a son in his old age, God deliberately delayed the fulfillment of the promise in order to stretch Abrahams faith. Abraham (still known as Abram at the time) was 75 years old when God first promised to make him into a great nation (Genesis 12), but God did not provide the promised son Isaac until he was 100 years old (Genesis 21:1-7). In the meantime, at age 86, Abraham succumbed to the temptation to help God out by taking as a second wife Hagar, through whom he had Ishmael (Genesis 16). Thus, even though Abraham is held up in scripture as an example of faith (Romans 4:25; Hebrews 11), his process of spiritual formation was not without setbacks.
Isaacs spiritual formation seems to center around the quality of being a peace-maker. From the time he was born, Isaac was faced, through no choice of his own, with sibling rivalry with his older brother Ishmael (Genesis 21:8-10). Isaacs mother Sarah asked Abraham to send Ishmael and Hagar away, which he did. There are some indications that Isaac and Ishmael were ultimately able to live at peace with one another to some degree, first, because at Abrahams death, both Isaac and Ishmael buried their father together (Genesis 25:7-10), and second, because when Isaacs son Esau wished to gain his fathers favor after he realized his Caananite wives was displeasing to him, he found a wife from among the Ishmaelites (Genesis 28:6-9). Genesis 16:11-12 says of Ishmael: He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyones hand will be against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers. Therefore, it can be surmised that to the degree Isaac and Ishmael were able to peacefully co-exist it was due to the peacemaking abilities, not of Ishmael, but of Isaac.
As the Biblical record of Isaacs life continues to unfold, we find again, through no choice of his own, that he was faced with provocations from the Philistines and the men of Gerar. God was blessing Isaac and his flocks and herds were increasing. Out of envy, the Philistines stopped up all the wells that Abrahams servants had previously dug and Abimelech, king of the Philistines, said to Isaac: Move away from us; you have become too powerful for us (Genesis 26:16). Isaac could have resisted or complained about this unjust treatment, but the scripture simply records, So Isaac moved away from there and encamped in the Valley of Gerar (verse 17). In Gerar, Isaacs servants dug two wells, but the men of Gerar quarreled with them, saying the wells were theirs. So again Isaac moved away until he found a place which he named Rehoboth, saying, Now the Lord has given us room and we will flourish in the land (verse 22). His goal was to live in peace under Gods blessing, not to seek revenge. Immediately after this incident, we find that God reaffirmed Isaacs destiny (vv. 23-25) and that God caused even Isaacs enemies to live at peace with him (vv. 26-33). From this we can infer that God was pleased with Isaacs peaceful way of handling the hostilities of those around him and that there was some relationship between Isaacs peace-making qualities and the fulfillment of Isaacs destiny to be the father of a great nation. Indeed, if Isaac had not been able to live at peace with those hostile to him, he and his family could have been killed either by Ishmael or by the Philistines, in which case Isaac would never have any descendants and would not become the father of a great nation.
Jacobs spiritual formation seems directed at bringing him to a place of submission to God. Jacob, for much of his life, was a self-seeking and self-dependent individual who had little regard for God or his plans for his life. From birth, he was a heel-grabber (Genesis 25:24-26) and a deceiving and crafty individual who tricked Esau out of the birthright (Genesis 25:29-34) and gained his father Isaacs blessing through deception (Genesis 27:1-40). The process God used to transform Jacob, the heel-grabber, into Israel, the patriarch of Gods chosen people, involved several steps. First, God allowed Jacob to experience the consequences of his own actions. Because of his deceptive behavior towards his brother, Esau wanted to kill him and Jacob had to run for his life. It was at this point that God gave him a dream at Bethel in which he reaffirmed the promises he had made to Abraham and Isaac and promised to be with him until Jacob came back safely to the land he was now fleeing from (Genesis 28:10-15). Jacob responded by making a conditional vow that if God would watch over him and do what he said, then the Lord would be his God (verses 20-22). His response was only a first step in his commitment towards God, but it was an important first step.
Once Jacob arrived at Padan Aram and met his uncle Laban, God continued working in Jacobs life by allowing him to meet his match. Jacob had always gotten what he wanted through his own clever schemes, but now he met someone even more clever and deceitful in Laban. Jacob worked seven years to get his lovely daughter Rachel as a wife, but Laban tricked him by giving him her older sister Leah, requiring Jacob to work another seven years for Rachel (Genesis 29). Laban also changed Jacobs wages ten times in an effort to more greatly benefit himself (Genesis 31:41). When Jacob was ready to leave Laban and return him, he said: If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been with me, you would surely have sent me away empty-handed. But God has seen my hardship and the toil of my hands (Gen. 31:42). Earlier in his life, Jacob got ahead through depending on his own clever schemes, but now he acknowledges that if God had not been with him and blessed him, Laban would have gotten the best of him. This represents an important aspect of Jacobs spiritual development-he was no longer depending only on himself, but was depending on and acknowledging God.
A third important step God used in transforming Jacob into the man he could use was bringing him to a crisis point. Jacob was preparing to return home with his wives and many sons, and he still feared that his brother Esau would kill him and perhaps his family as well. On the night before he would meet Esau, God appeared to Jacob in the form of a man (one example of an Old Testament Theophanies) and wrestled with Jacob all night (Genesis 32:22-30). This is an intriguing portion of scripture-why would God wrestle with a man and and furthermore, why would God allow him to continue the struggle all night long without bringing him to defeat? The answer, I believe, is that God was bringing Jacob to a point of submission, but he needed to let Jacob exhaust all his own resources of strength first. Then God put Jacobs hip out of joint, which brought Jacob to the point of submission. From that time on, Jacob had a limp as a constant reminder of his submission to God. But even after the hip was put out of joint, Jacob continued to hold on for the blessing, not now as a self-promoting deceiver looking to get his own way, but as a submitted follower of God looking for the blessing of Gods purpose being accomplished through him. At this point, Jacobs name was changed to Israel, because he had struggled with God and overcome through submissive persistence. This name change is symbolic of a spiritual transformation and of his suitability now for Gods plan to be accomplished through him-to become the father of the nation of Israel.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, although great patriarchs of Gods chosen people, were ordinary and imperfect people, just as we are. From their lives we can learn lessons about the kind of people God wants us to be and about the process of spiritual formation that God brings us through to become the person He is pleased to use. From Abraham, we learn about becoming a person of faith, from Isaac, a person of peace, and from Jacob, a man finally submitted fully to God yet retaining the quality of bold, prevailing prayer.