SS05-08-05
“BELIEVE GOD.” GENESIS 17: 15-19; 18: 10-15; 21: 1-5
GENESIS 17: 15-16, 17, 18-19; 18: 10-12, 13-15; 21: 1-2, 3-5.
PLEASE OPEN YOUR BIBLE TO GENESIS 17.
Jesus paid the highest price to save us, but to what extent are we willing to follow Him? Nowhere does the Bible say that following Jesus would be easy. To the contrary, following Him is filled with adventures, obstacles, challenges, and difficulties. Believers have to deal with changes in life, and many come as a result of following Him.
Living by faith is often difficult because it requires Christians to trust God with things that cannot be seen or felt. Another challenge of the Christian life is holiness, the growth process by which we become more Christ like. Living a Godly life is a daily exercise in self-control and reliance on God. Obeying God, especially when it goes against our natural inclination, is often difficult to do. But Christians who face these kinds of challenges can be assured of securing a godly heritage.
The life of Abraham serves as a great model for Christians to emulate. He faced some of the toughest tests one could face in life, but his faith in God saw him through it all. Whether following God into a new land he had never seen before, trusting God to work a miracle in his life, believing God’s promises even when they seemed impossible, or giving God his most precious treasure, Abraham had to learn how to live by faith and trust God with the results. We Christians today need to learn these things too. This study of the “Challenges of following God,” can help us navigate the twists and turns of life so that we will come out victorious in the end.
Today’s lesson “Believing God,” is based on the promise of a son to an old couple who had difficulty believing it to be possible. We too will be faced with impossible tasks that only God can achieve through us.
In last Sunday’s lesson God called Abram to leave his country and family and to go to a land that God would show him. The Lord promised to bless him and to bless all nations through him. Abram obeyed and God led him to Canaan, and Abram built an altar.
During the famine Abram went to Egypt, where he told everyone that Sarai was his sister rather than his wife. In spite of this lapse in faith, the Lord brought him safely back to Canaan.
The Book of Genesis records God’s progressive revelation of Himself to Abraham. The Lord was constantly drawing Abraham into a deeper more intimate relationship with Himself. His life instructs us about the kind of faith that pleases God.
Abraham faced the test of a major change when God appeared to him and told him to leave his home. He had to pass the test of a delayed promise when God gave him the land of Canaan, for he only received it in his descendants.
In the passages for today’s lesson, Abraham faced the test of an impossible problem. When God gave Abraham the sevenfold promise in Genesis 12, an important part of that promise was that he would be the father of a great nation. But thus far in the narrative, Abraham and Sarah had no children. They had to learn to persevere in trusting God---even though the years were passing quickly and the fulfillment of the promise seemed more and more unlikely. People with genuine faith must learn to expect God to work wonders, even when they cannot understand how He will do it.
The God we worship is Creator of the heavens and earth and keeper of great promises, even those that seem humanly impossible to fulfill. He is faithful by nature. He cannot, He will not fail! You can trust Him always to keep His promises.
Because of God’s faithfulness, we can commit to live by faith in His promises. Through Christ, God has provided an eternal relationship with Him in the life beyond. But we can rejoice to know we can trust Him with our present as well, including our most priceless treasures—our families.
Today’s study answers the question many adults are asking in the present social climate: “How can I be sure God will keep His promises, concerning me, and my family?”
PLEASE READ GENESIS 17: 15-16.
When we are introduced to Abram, Genesis 11:30 says, “But Sarai was barren; she had no child.” Yet God promised to make of Abram “a great nation.” The amazing promise seemed impossible because Abram had no children from which a great nation could ever be built.
Abram expressed the dilemma in Gen. 15: 2. “O sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus.” In vs. 4 God told Abram that his servant Eliezer would not be his heir, but his heir would be from his own body.
In vs. 5 God told Abram to look at the heavens and count the stars, for he could no more be able to count his family than he could count the stars. Then we read in Gen. 15: 6 “Abram believed the Lord, and He credited it to him as righteousness.”
God often changed someone’s name when a significant event was about to occur in his or her life. Abram means “great father,” but God in Gen. 17: 5 called him Abraham, meaning “father of a multitude.” After reiterating His covenant with Abraham and implementing the outward sign of circumcisions for his male offspring God turned His attention to Sarai, Abraham’s wife:
As for your wife, Sarai, do not call her Sarai. God instructed Abraham, for Sarah will be her name. In Hebrew Sarah means “princess.” This word appears five times in the O.T. for something other than the name of Abraham’s wife, and it always refers to royalty such as queens.
By changing her name, God was calling Sarah into a deeper relationship with Himself and preparing her to conceive the child He had promised years earlier. As the matriarch of God’s chosen nation Sarah would have a new name and a place of honor.
Thus far, Abraham had lived a see-saw life---sometimes faith was high; at other times it was low. Offering Ishmael as a substitute for God’s promised child did not solve any problems. Abraham was still old, and Sarah was still childless.
In Gen. 15: 1-6 God provided Abraham a starry sky full of reasons he and Sarah should trust Him. But when God showed stars, Abraham and Sarah saw shadows. Gen. 17 is God’s second call for Abraham’s and Sarah’s obedient faith to His covenant. Initially and outwardly in Gen. 12: 1-6 they obeyed and left for the Promised Land, their new home.
Inwardly and spiritually, however, they still puzzled over Sarah’s childbearing capabilities. Could God really keep His promise for their family? How could Abraham be sure God would keep His promises concerning him and his family? How could Sarah be sure? Could they really trust God?
God knew about Abraham’s lingering questions and faltering faith, so He included Sarah in His covenant by saying, “I will bless her; indeed, I will give you a son by her.” The Lord emphasized that the child of promise would come from Sarah and not someone else. Genesis 16 contains the sad account of Sarai’s and Abram’s pitiful scheme to fulfill God’s plan in the power of the flesh.
Sarai suggested that Abram take Hagar as a concubine and father a child by her. The result was the birth of Ishmael and a great animosity between Sarai and Hagar. Through Ishmael came many nations that have been at war with the descendants of Isaac ever since. Many of the world’s problems today, can be traced back to this single act of unbelief, by Sarai and Abram.
Even though God promised to bless Ishmael with many descendants, Ishmael was not the child whom God had long ago promised Abraham and Sarah they would have. God told Abraham that Sarah would produce nations and that kings of people will come from her. Just as he promised, God blessed Sarah with many descendants who would be among the greatest and godliest kings the world has ever known. These include David, Solomon, Hezekiah, and Josiah. All the kings of Judah and of Israel would descend from Abraham and Sarah, just as God promised.
TEACHER READ GENESIS 17: 17.
Abraham fell to the ground, laughed, and thought in his heart, “Can a child be born to a hundred-year-old man? Can Sarah, a ninety-year-old woman, give birth?” Twenty-five years had passed since they left Haran, and God had not yet given them a son.
One can almost
understand Abraham’s response to God’s promise.
Even though
he had heard this promise from the Lord for decades, and even though
he had generally believed and obeyed everything that God told him,
much time had passed. What once seemed highly improbable had
become terribly unlikely and then eventually absolutely
impossible.
Overcome with laughter, Abraham fell to the ground and thought about how absurd it was to think that child could be born to a hundred-year-old man and a ninety-year-old woman.
While physiologically it is possible for a man who has reached the age of 100 to father a child, apparently Abraham could not. Rom. 4:19 states that Abraham considered his body as “already dead.” Heb. 11:12 implied that he could no longer father children.
As if it were not problem enough, Sarah was a ninety-year-old woman and motherhood seemed out of the question. She could neither conceive nor give birth. Abraham knew that God was clear in His promise, but he just didn’t see how God would keep His word.
God’s renewed promise of a son must have appeared as a heavenly joke, and Abraham fell to the ground laughing. Changing Abraham’s heart was like growing seeds in rocky soil. He thought in his heart things that seemed humanly logical and clearly reasonable. His heart and understanding leaned on proof that Sarah’s childlessness would never end.
Surely a hundred-year-old man and a ninety-year-old woman cannot give birth, can they? Aren’t logic and reason necessary thinking tools for believers? Abraham needed a thinking man’s faith. One grounded in reality. Abraham had forgotten heaven’s divine mathematical equation. God added things like this---God’s promises plus Abraham’s inability equaled God’s provision.
Notice that God did not rebuke Abraham for laughing. God’s failure to rebuke Abraham implies either that God saw the laughter as positive or that He saw it as an honest question for a man of faith.
PLEASE READ GENESIS 17; 18-19.
When Abraham’s laughter and thoughts combined, a question cried forth from Abraham’s lips: “If only Ishmael could live in Your presence,” or “Why not let Ishmael inherit what you have promised me?
Twenty-five years before God had promised to make a great nation of Abram’s descendants. The problem was that Sarai was barren and she was past the childbearing years. Sarai had given her maid Hagar to Abram so she could become a surrogate mother. But God said that their son Ishmael was not the child of promise. God told Abraham (to whom He gave a new name) that his wife Sarah (to whom He also gave a new name) would have a son. Abraham laughed at the idea that he at the age of 100 would have a child with his wife at age 90. Abraham expressed to God his desire that his son Ishmael would become the child of promise, but God insisted that Abraham and Sarah’s son Isaac would be the one.
For a moment Abraham had reverted to his old pattern. Just as he had attempted to help God through a scheme that resulted in the birth of Ishmael, he pleaded with God to let Ishmael be the one through whom the promise would be fulfilled: “If only Ishmael could live in your presence.”
Abraham’s arguments probably would have been that Ishmael met all the qualifications: He was the son of Abraham: by the customs of that time, he could even be considered Sarah’s son: and most important, Ishmael already was born. But God would not hear of it. We humans like to think that we are in control. We find it hard to let go of our plans and methods and to allow God to do what He wants to do and to do it the way He wants to do it.
All believers struggle with trusting God, and here Abraham could not comprehend that God was able to do exactly what He said. Whether Abraham’s words were driven by his doubts or by his love for Ishmael no one can say, but he did not trust God. The man who trusted God enough to leave his homeland 25 years earlier found it hard to believe that God could give him a son.
God did not abandon Abraham because of his momentary lack of faith. God bluntly stated His intention again: No, Your wife Sarah will bear you a son. God is glorified by doing the impossible. He wanted Abraham to know that He did not need to rely on schemes to obtain the promise. God was going to give Abraham a son---and through Sarah.
Furthermore, God chose the name for their promised son: You will name him Isaac. Since Abraham had just laughed at God’s promise, God told him to name his son Isaac, which means “laughter.” Every time that little toddler would yank a camel’s tail or chase a sheet, Abraham would call his name and remember that he had laughed at God’s promise. But God kept His word despite Abraham’s laughter.
Isaac would be far more than just a child given to an elderly and formerly childless couple. He would be the one with whom God would confirm His covenant…as an everlasting covenant and also with his offspring in future generations. The Lord is a covenant-keeping God. Even when His covenant people are faithless, He remains faithful. All believers may struggle with believing God, but God always proves Himself faithful.
Vs. 19 sums up four facts about God’s plan. The central reality was that Sarah would bear Abraham a son. This was impossible by human standards, but not by God’s. They were to call him Isaac. As He had done with Abraham, God would establish with Isaac His everlasting covenant. The covenant would include his descendants.
The N. T. honors Abraham as a man of faith. One key aspect of his faith was his belief that God would give Sarah and him a child of promise. Paul wrote in Rom. 14: 18-21, “Against hope, with hope he believed… He considered his own body to be already dead (since he was about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah’s womb, without weakening in the faith. He did not waver in unbelief at God’s promise, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God because he was fully convinced that what God had promised He was also able to perform.”
PLEASE TURN TO GENESIS 18. The setting here was the plains of Mamre.
PLEASE READ GENESIS 18: 10-12.
Abraham was not the only one who laughed at the idea of having a child at such an advanced age. The first part of Ch. 18 sets the stage for this exchange between God and Sarah.
On this occasion God visited Abraham and Sarah through three angels. Abraham, the gracious host, did not even ask for identification cards. They were on their way to Sodom.
He and Sarah built a fire, cooked bread, and offered milk---the ingred.1ients of hospitality. Abraham’s visitors enjoyed this open-tent-flap policy, the ingredients of a good reputation. Abraham and Sarah proved gracious hosts. They served angels, unaware that heavenly visitors ate their lunch that day.
At some point Abraham realized that one of these visitors was none other than the Lord. In the course of serving them their meal, he truth that this was a theophany, an appearance of God, dawned on the host. Abraham may have suspected it earlier, but when one of the men spike and mentioned the promise of a son that God had long ago given, Abraham knew that this was the Lord Himself sharing his meal.
The Lord told Abraham, I will certainly come back to you in about a year’s time, and you and your wife Sarah will have a son! Speaking with authority, the angel told Abraham and Sarah of God’s limitless power. No one but the Lord could say such a thing to an old couple like Abraham and Sarah.
Sarah could hear everything that was said on the other side of the thin walls. She was listening at the entrance of the tent behind Abraham and she nearly lost her composure when she overheard the promise. After all, the two were old and getting on in years—as the text kindly puts it. Sarah had passed the age of childbearing years earlier. Now a woman of 90, she had likely given up hope for a child of her own.
Sarah believed God for many things and followed Him because she believed Him to be the one true God, but she had grown weary of hoping and not having any results. Hope had given way to despair, despair had perhaps been replaced by acceptance, and now she thought the idea was humorous. So she laughed to herself, thinking that God would surely fulfill His promise in some other way. Her humor was pointed at herself, for the text records that she called herself shriveled up and chuckled that the delight of sexual relations would produce a child. She then pointed her sharp wit at Abraham, noting with admirable restraint and respect that my lord is old.
In the final analysis Sarah’s laughter was really directed at God. She just couldn’t believe that He could really intervene and make her conceive a child. She could not accept that the object of her prayers and dreams would actually come to pass. She had waited so long for the fulfillment of the promise that she didn’t know how to accept the fact that it really would happen so she laughed.
One might think it strange that two people who had walked with God so long and trusted Him so completely would struggle and agonize over whether to believe Him in this situation. They had believed Him enough to leave their homeland. They had entered into a covenant relationship with Him, circumcising all the males of their considerable household. They had been the recipients of God’s material blessings and enjoyed wealth and privilege. Why couldn’t they trust Him to keep His word in the matter of a son?
The problem is that we as believers tend to have a short memory. We often begin each day with God as though He had never done anything for us before. We forget what He has already done for us and fail to see His faithfulness in such a way that we have no doubts about the future. In this way we are just like Abraham and Sarah. Believers today often see God work in marvelous ways and then fail to have faith that He will continue to be faithful.
PLEASE READ GENESIS 18: 13-15.
Rather than rebuke Sarah immediately, the Lord asked Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh? Abraham’s response is not recorded, perhaps because God didn’t give him time to answer. The Lord followed with another question that Abraham had failed to ask himself: “Is anything impossible with the Lord?
This is the key issue that lies at the heart of all unbelief. God, in His wisdom and providence, may sometimes choose to say no to some prayers. He will not always grant a person’s wishes, even good things requested with the right motives. The only question is God’s will, not His ability. He can heal incurable diseases, but He doesn’t always do it. He can solve financial crises, but He sometimes lets His children struggle. He is able to answer any prayer, grant any desire, move any obstacle, but He doesn’t always do so.
God’s lack of response is never because He cannot, but rather that He knows what is best so He will not. He did not remove Paul’s thorn in the flesh. He did not strike down the Babylonians for Habakkuk. He did allow Stephen to be stoned, James to be executed, Peter to be crucified, and Paul to be beheaded. These things happened, not because God found it impossible to do anything about them, but because He had a greater plan.
The difference is that God never promised to cure every disease, or to erase poverty, or to protect His people from all persecution. But He did promise to go through these things with His people.
In Sarah’s case she had something far greater than just her wish: She had God’s promise. The Lord had told Abraham and Sarah several times that He was going to give them a son. They had a direct assurance that few children of God ever get about such earthly matters.
God put His power and His credibility on the line for them. He would give them a son because He said He would and because doing so would fulfill His plan.
So why had He not done so? Why had so many years passed with no pregnancy that resulted in no hope? The answer lies in the second part of vs. 14: at the appointed time I will come back to you. God had promised them a son, but He had not committed to their timetable. If Sarah had given birth when she was 65, people would have marveled, but they would have found some naturalistic reasoning for how it could happen. If, on the other hand, she gave birth at 90, no one could explain that away. There could only be one explanation. God did it! In about a year she will have a son was he assurance that God gave them.
Sarah was startled by the Lord’s indirect rebuke. Although He had not addressed her and had only spoken to Abraham, she felt the need to defend herself. Her only defense was to lie: I did not laugh. Sarah said this because she was afraid. Sarah’s fear was the reason she lied to God, but her fear should have had the opposite affect. Fear of the Lord should make His followers more determined to trust Him and obey Him, not less.
At the very least, believers should know that they cannot get away with sin because God sees and knows all things. His terse answer to Sarah, No, you did laugh, should serve as a reminder that there is no point in arguing with God. He knows His children better than they know themselves.
Reading this part of the narrative of Abraham’s life and Sarah’s life, one might find it easy to criticize them for their lack of faith in Gods ability to give them a child. But the N.T. record of this event mentions nothing about their stumbling and lack of faith. Rom. 4: 19-21 almost seems to engage in a bit of revisionist history, completely whitewashing the fact that Abraham and Sarah had their doubts about God fulfilling His promise.
Why would Paul say in Rom. 4: 20 that Abraham” did not waver” when the text of Genesis says several times that he did? Sarah laughed and was rebuked by God for doing so. Heb. 11:11 refers to Sarah as a woman of faith since “she considered that the One who had promised was faithful.” How can we explain these N.T. passages in light of the Genesis account?
When there seems to be a contradiction in Scripture, one should examine the passage more closely because it will usually yield some rich food for thought and meditation. God’s Word does not have contradictions, but it does have lessons. The lesson here is a great one. In the Book of Genesis Abraham and Sarah are shown with many flaws and failures.
Readers can see their faltering faith and stumbling walk with God. But the N.T. view of believers is very different. In the N.T. God sees all believers through the blood of Christ that has washed away their sins. Abraham and Sarah’s faith, though faltering, was enough to secure the blessings of Christ.
Also, after Abraham and Sarah had finished laughing, they did eventually but fully trust in God’s promise so as to have the sexual relations necessary to produce their son. They may have questioned God and even laughed at His promise, but they acted on that promise anyway and Isaac was born. And the blood of Christ removed their failures so God sees only their faith.
Because of Jesus’ death, God sees us, and our faith as perfect in Christ.
PLEASE TURN TO GENESIS 21.
6.PLEASE READ GENESIS 21: 1-5.
The verses 1-2 ring with the triumph of faith over despair, of trust over disbelief, and of the spirit over the flesh. After years of turmoil, doubt, and scheming to accomplish God’s promise themselves, the Lord came to Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what He had promised.”
This is what the Lord had told them all along. Finally, about 25 years after the promise was originally given to them, Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age; at the appointed time God had told him. A quarter of a century is a long time to wait, but God is never late or in a hurry---and He is always on time. He works out His plan and His purpose in accordance with His character and His will.
Everything in vs. 1-5 speaks of God’s gift to Abraham. Vs. 1-2 speak of the son God gave Abraham. Vs. 3 is about the fact that Abraham named his son as God had commanded. Vs. 4 is about the sign God gave Abraham to have his male offspring circumcised. Isaac means “laughter” and surely served as a reminder that Abraham and Sarah had laughed at God, but now God provided them with a wonderful reason to laugh in delight at seeing His promise fulfilled. Circumcision was the sign of the covenant God gave Abraham.
Abraham circumcised Isaac when he was eight days old, just as God had commanded him. When Abraham obeyed God in performing this rite on his infant son, he demonstrated his faithfulness to God and showed that Isaac would be reared as a son of the covenant.
Abraham made obedience to God paramount, even when 100 years old. The birth of Isaac represented the fulfillment of all of God’s promises to bless him and to make him the father of a great nation.
The emphasis in Genesis is not on the faith of this couple but on the grace and power of God. After all, Abraham and Sarah’s faith was not perfect. Abraham twice lied about his wife being his sister. Sarah laughed when she heard God tell her husband about her bearing a child. She also dealt harshly with Hagar and Ishmael. God is the One who caused the good that emerged. He took a couple who faced a hopeless situation that they were helpless to change, and He gave them a future and a hope. He still does that to people today.
NEXT WEEK FROM GENESIS 19 WE SEE NEPHEW LOT DELIVERED FROM A CITY OF SIN. “CAN WE AVOID SIN’S CONSEQUENCES.” <altav@swbell.net>