{"id":3015,"date":"2019-09-01T23:34:10","date_gmt":"2019-09-01T23:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biblestudies4you.com\/?p=3015"},"modified":"2019-09-01T23:39:24","modified_gmt":"2019-09-01T23:39:24","slug":"great-meanings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblestudies4you.com\/?p=3015","title":{"rendered":"Great Meanings"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\u00a0 \u00a0“<\/a>Sarah, tell me what the sermon was about this morning,\u201d\u00a0 Uncle Jeff asked as the family finished their lunch around the table one Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, the minister had three points,\u201c\u00a0 Sarah said as she folded her table napkin, \u201cHe was talking about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, \u201d she said as an afterthought.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat about them?\u201d Uncle Jeff asked, \u201cWhat can you remember about them Bobby?\u201d he asked as he turned to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said that Abraham was always building an altar everywhere he stayed\u201d, Bobby said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, that\u2019s right\u201d,\u00a0 Uncle Jeff said, \u201cBut why would he want to do that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe did it for God,\u201d Betty piped up .<\/p>\n

\u201cDid not,\u201d said Bobby, \u201cHe did it because God told him to!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what I said, \u201c\u00a0 Betty said in an aggrieved voice.<\/p>\n

\u201cCome on you two,\u201d Mum said, \u201cThat\u2019s enough!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, what about Isaac then?\u201d Uncle Jeff asked. \u201cWhat was so special about Isaac?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIsaac was a promised baby,\u201d Sarah said, \u201cHis mother and father didn\u2019t have any children for years and years and God kept telling them they would, and at last they did. They called him Isaac which means happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s right,\u201d said Uncle Jeff, \u201cAnd he was a happy little boy too. What did he do when he grew up?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe dug wells wherever he went,\u201d Bobby said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you think the wells meant? What were they for?\u201d Uncle Jeff asked.<\/p>\n

\u201c Well, wells give water,\u201d said Sarah thoughtfully, \u201cSo they must stop people being thirsty. We need water too, to get washed with.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAlright,\u201d said Uncle Jeff , \u201cLet\u2019s think about these two things for a minute. Abraham made altars, and Jacob dug wells. What do you think they signify?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDunno!\u201d said Bobby as he ran an imaginary truck along the edge of the table.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess Abraham\u00a0 wanted to worship God and that Isaac believed that God would give him the water he needed for his soul. After all, we all need water to wash with and to drink.\u201d Sarah said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s quite right,\u201d Uncle Jeff said. \u201cWhat else did the preacher say this morning? What was the third thing?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething about Jacob!\u201d Betty said, \u201cIt was something about Jacob!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember!\u201d Bobby said, \u201cHe said that Jacob was wrestling with a man\u2026.brrm,brrm.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, but the point was that Jacob thought he knew it all until he had to meet his brother who he had cheated, and he was scared. All his cleverness didn\u2019t do him any good then! \u201c Sarah said, \u201cIt was really an angel who was wrestling with him and he didn\u2019t know it was. Jacob was nearly beating him too, and then the angel touched the top of his leg and he began to limp, and he limped for ever after. What did that mean Uncle Jeff ? \u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt showed Jacob that he wasn\u2019t as smart as he had thought he was, and that he had to depend on God after all,\u201d Uncle Jeff said, \u201cIt also showed everyone else that Jacob was different now, and he wasn\u2019t\u00a0 the cheat\u00a0 that he had once been. You know, when we really come to know God, we will be different too\u2026.we won\u2019t limp like Jacob did, but people will see that we don\u2019t tell lies or dirty jokes any more or do mean things to other people.<\/p>\n

And something more too about Jacob,\u201d Uncle Jeff went on, \u201cIt wasn\u2019t until Jacob got right with God, that he was able to go back to where the altar was that his grandfather had built so he could worship God once more in the right way. That\u2019s just like us too, we can\u2019t really worship God properly until we have washed ourselves in the water of repentance, and learned to depend on God. It was after this, that God gave Jacob a new name\u2026.Jacob\u2019s name\u00a0 had meant \u201cCheat\u201d, now he was to be called Israel which means \u201cPrince with God\u201d, and that name has stuck right down to today!\u201d<\/p>\n

Mum had been listening to all this while they were talking, and now she said, \u201cIsn\u2019t it wonderful the way the Bible tells us stories that have such deep meanings for us if we will only think about them and take notice!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt sure is,\u201d said Uncle Jeff, \u201cAnd now I\u2019d better go as I\u2019ve got things to do. See you all next week!\u201d\u00a0 as he went off.<\/p>\n

You can read this story for yourselves in the Bible in\u00a0 Genesis chapters 13:1-4;\u00a0\u00a0 26: 32-33;\u00a0\u00a0 32: 24-30;\u00a0\u00a0 35:9-13.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0“Sarah, tell me what the sermon was about this morning,\u201d\u00a0 Uncle Jeff asked as the family finished their lunch around the table one Sunday. \u201cWell, the minister had three points,\u201c\u00a0 Sarah said as she folded her table napkin, \u201cHe was talking about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, \u201d she said as an afterthought. \u201cWhat about … Continue reading Great Meanings<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,247],"tags":[546,531,545],"class_list":["post-3015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grandmas-stories","category-stories-for-teens","tag-cleaned","tag-meanings","tag-wells"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p69z0J-MD","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblestudies4you.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblestudies4you.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblestudies4you.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblestudies4you.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblestudies4you.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3015"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblestudies4you.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3018,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblestudies4you.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3015\/revisions\/3018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblestudies4you.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblestudies4you.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblestudies4you.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}