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(Preached seven times from Fentiman Road 9/22/29 to Bishop St. 10/29/50)

Exodus 3.6 “I am the God of thy Father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.”

We have the very highest authority for lifting this text out of its setting and letting its truth stand alone. Our Lord Himself, when speaking of the resurrection, quoted this great saying (see Matt 22.32). So, we are abundantly justified in stating the text and saying at once that the idea to be emphasized is that our God is—

THE GOD OF DIFFERENT PERSONALITIES

There is room in His thought and His love for different types of human nature. The Three men mentioned are amongst the best known of Bible characters and are as different as three men well could be. Yet God was the God of each. Look at the three men. Abraham was a spiritual adventurer, a pioneer of faith. He went out from home and friends not knowing whither he went, but only knowing that an imperative voice called him to seek a better country.

Isaac was Abraham’s son, but a greater contrast than that between father and son can hardly be imagined. Abraham was an adventurer, the man who went out. Isaac was a man of quiet, meditative ways. He was content to let others go out while he stayed at home. It is no injustice to him to say that he was commonplace, lacking initiative. For part of his life he was his mother’s son and for the rest his wife’s husband.

Jacob was a different man altogether. A strange mixture this man, the man with a double name—Jacob/Israel—and a double nature. The man who chose the blessing and yet stooped to deceit to win it, the man who could be worldly and devout, crafty and pious, the supplanter and the spiritual. For some things, we love him and for others we loathe him.

The point is that God was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God of the princely pioneer, the commonplace stay-at-home, and of the sinning and repenting double dealer. And He is the same today. Neither the years nor His nature change. That ought to be of immense comfort to us for it means that there is room in His mind and heart for us all. For how we differ! You might say we are all included in these three types. There are still those who are driven by a divine discontent, urged by inner impulses, called by a holy voice, to be pilgrims in the region of faith, adventurers for the kingdom, ever seeking a fuller, finer, purer religion than that of their fathers and friends. So, too, there are those whose lives are as commonplace and uneventful as Isaac’s, people who are content to let others lead while they follow and to be just ordinary folk. Perhaps most of us see ourselves in Jacob for we are strange mixtures, sometimes roaring on wings of faith and love, but sometimes trailing our wings in the mud. We are princes with God who sometimes forget and act like children of the devil.

Or, you may make the distinction broader and say that we differ in other ways. Some of us are mystics and some are practical men and women, some put the emphasis on prayer and worship, others are philanthropic and social services, some love to be up and doing and others love to stand and wait, some of us are of a choleric temperament, some phlegmatic, some sanguine, some of us are bright and gay and others somber and sad. And God is the God of all because He is the God of each. There is a place for each in His love and care. The love of God is broader than the measures of our mind and the heart of the Eternal large enough to take us all in. The text is reinforced by a very gracious word concerning our Master—“Jesus loved Martha and her sister Mary, and Lazarus.” The busy, bustling housewife, the contemplative listener, and the commonplace brother. Do not try to monopolize God for yourself and your own type, do not excommunicate those who differ from you. Just remember that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Pass on to another thought—

GOD IS EVER THE SAME BUT MEN OF DIFFERENT TEMPERAMENT AND CHARACTER CALL HIM DIFFERENT NAMES

They apprehend and emphasize different aspects of His character. To Abraham, amidst the perils and disappointments of his spiritual pilgrimage, God was “a shield and exceeding great reward.” Isaac’s name for God was “The fear of Isaac.” God was to Jacob the “Rock”—the rock against which he dashed himself in vain and which came ultimately to be the foundation of his life and hope.

God never changes, but still men see Him through the eyes of their own temperament, experience, and bias. He seems to change to meet our need. He is always Love, but love coming to us according to our need. In childhood, He comes as the Good Shepherd, in youth, as the Captain of our salvation, in middle life He is the Giver of rest and strength, in old age, the One who bears and carries. Different conceptions will be stated in different terms and different needs will apprehend different aspect. Sorrow will name Him the Comforter, sin will rejoice in Him as a pardoning God, weakness will lay hold in His strength. Some will speak of His justice, some by His love, and some of His holiness. Some will think of Him as the Judge and some as the Father. So long as men are sincere, earnest, devoted in their worship let us allow them latitude and room. For the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the God of different personalities. It follows inevitably that—

GOD HAS DIFFERENT WAYS OF EDUCATING DIFFERENT PERSONALITIES

You cannot read the stories of these three men without realizing that God trained them in different schools and disciplined them in different experiences. Abraham was educated and perfected through many a disappointment and the postponed fulfillment of many a hope. Isaac’s school was his family life, his quiet nature was cultured among quiet scenes. Jacob’s sins came home to roost and through them he learned life’s great lessons.

The God of different personalities still sends different men to different schools. One bears through the failure of earthly things to seek a Heavenly City. Another sees in quiet, peaceful, homely scenes the goodness and the love of God. Another learns in the hard school of experiences the folly and futility of sin. Adversity is the university of one and success the school of another. If you ask me why, I can only answer because you are you and he is he. God does not deal with us in batches and in crowds. He knows us as individuals and sends us to the school He sees fit. Do not let us murmur and fret, covet or envy, rather let us trust and praise the heart that places, the hand that guides, and the love that has room for us all. There is another thought and I have only time to mention it, but I dare not omit it. It is this—

GOD IS THE GOD OF SUCCEEDING GENERATIONS

The God of Abraham, of Abraham’s son Isaac, and of Isaac’s son Jacob, and of their succeeding race. Honesty demands the admission that that is the main and first thought of the text. God was calling Moses to undertake a particularly difficult task, and telling him to undertake it in the name and strength of his fathers’ God. There is something inexpressibly beautiful in that truth. You and I have to do, not with an unknown and unrevealed God, but with the God of our fathers known of old and who revealed Himself to men and women of other days. And this God is our God and will be our guide and our educator. We can both lengthen and strengthen the list. The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the God of Paul, Augustine, Luther, Wesley. “We came unto our Fathers’ God, their Rock is our salvation.” And He will be the God over our children after us. We shall see Him in clearer light and see new revelations of His power, and our children may, and please God, will, advance upon our knowledge. He leads us on. But He will always be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, our fathers’ God, and with adoring, wondering, and deepening gratitude we shall come to know Him better and love and trust Him more and as we see Him in Christ Jesus we shall each for himself or herself look up into His face and say, “My Lord, and my God.”