Well friends, we’re glad to be back on a Monday as we jump right back in here to
the book of Genesis and we jump back into Abraham now and Sarah’s story.
Chapter 17, we kind of pick up where we left off as we start the week with
this
change of focus as God again visits Abraham now.
Remember last week, the last thing that we saw,
God had declared that Abraham had a new name.
Now we have a similar story as we start here in verse
15 of chapter 17.
God said to Abraham,
“As for Sarai your wife,
she will not be called Sarai,
but you shall call her Sarah.
I will bless her and moreover I will give you a son by her.
I will bless her and she shall give rise to nations.
Kings of peoples shall come from her.”
So,
the word Sarah is some kind of reference to princess,
probably this idea that she is going to
give birth to kings.
And again,
this is fairly common.
We’re going to see this kind of thing
a few more times throughout this story as God declares that someone has a new name.
It often comes with a new identity or a new chapter in their story and such is the case
for Sarah as God proclaims over her that she is going to have a son and that she will be blessed
and that she will give rise to nations.
We’ve heard this language before but it’s been really
explicitly spoken to Abraham with the implication that Sarah was or wasn’t included.
We had Hagar,
we have Ishmael,
but now God has said, you know,
without doubt,
without any ambiguity,
that line, this promise,
is coming through Sarah.
Yeah, we see that the promise that God has made
for Abraham involves a promise for Sarah that this is overarching even though these two have
already been complicit in questioning that promise.
God is intending on being faithful
to Sarah and in making this promise to her,
renaming her, including her in this larger blessing,
of course, it’s from them together that this is going to be made.
And I think it’s interesting, Clint, that
from barrenness, this theme that we’ve already talked about that exists, this idea that
God, even in the midst of barrenness,
is miraculously able to give life and to pass
on that promise to the next generation.
From that theme, we see that there’s always a relationship
in the midst of the covenant,
that it’s always in relation from one to another.
We sometimes,
especially in Western cultures,
we think of God’s promise to one,
right?
My calling, my promise, we pray to God for our needs.
God’s promise is always situated in community and in fellowship,
and here is so the same.
Between this man and woman,
God’s going to be faithful,
and from them will come larger communities,
larger even nations.
And
that is the extent of a God who’s able to do
beyond what we could ask or imagine,
a God whose promises always spill out of our lives into other
people’s lives.
There’s a kind of generosity.
Here’s the point I’m trying to make.
When God makes this covenantal promise,
yes,
it is specific to Abraham and Sarah.
It is specific to people,
but what we see in these scriptures is it always has more in mind than that.
It’s always spilling out and over them.
And, you know, I think it is fitting though.
Abram was the one called to leave
his homeland and to move.
We see that that covenant encompasses more than just Abram, and that is
uncharacteristic,
I think, of literature of this time.
I think it’s worth noting when the scriptures
do that.
It shows us a God who’s generous and bountiful in the covenantal promise.
Yeah, in this version of the story,
we don’t hear directly from Sarah,
though we hear a similar thing from Abram that we will hear from Sarah in a later story.
And
this is a part of the story as we move on.
We’ve said for weeks now that one of the characteristics
of the Abram story is that his
response is genuinely and generally faithful,
that God gives a command or God gives an opportunity and Abram takes it.
Abraham follows through.
Here we get a little wrinkle in that reality as we move to verse 17.
“Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed
and said to himself,
‘Can a child be born to a man
who is 100 years old?
Can Sarah,
who is 90 years old, bear a child?’
And Abraham said to God,
‘Oh, that Ishmael might live in your sight.’”
So here we have seen this language before.
Verse 3 of chapter 17,
when God showed up and made a pronouncement,
it said that Abraham fell on his face.
But in that instance,
that’s worship.
That is being awestruck.
That is a kind of humility
that comes before God,
that Abraham bows himself low in the presence of God.
Here, what we have,
Abram takes this as hilarious,
this idea, this very concept is almost ludicrous to him.
And he falls on his face laughing.
I mean, that is about his
oppositional reaction to what God has announced as plans that I can think of in the Scripture.
Nothing else comes to mind that is quite so blatant.
And there are those who have tried to say, “Well, Abram,
he’s overwhelmed with the good news.
He’s so happy to hear this, except
it’s a little hard to let him off the hook because then he says,
‘But God, what about Ishmael?
Can’t we just get on with something that is possible,
something?
Let’s get real here.
What about Ishmael?’” But clearly,
Abraham finds this idea—literally,
he finds it laughable.
We might like to resolve some of that tension,
Clint, don’t you think?
I mean, we would like to
think that we could turn here and that we could
sort of save Abraham from this moment.
But the reality is—I think you’re exactly right—the thing that he says later implicates him in the action here.
And I think in some ways,
though these stories are very sparse in terms of inner dialogue,
unlike modern writing where you’re going to get a lot of,
“Well, the character thought this and they said this.” We don’t get that in the Old Testament.
We certainly don’t have that in Genesis.
And what’s striking here in this response to God is really this revelation
that at this point,
Abraham’s trying to kind of call God to the carpet.
Like, “It’s time to stop the ruse.” Right?
Like, “God,
let’s stop pretending here that this is going to pan out differently.
And why don’t we just, like you said,
let’s get back to reality and let’s deal with the situation as it is.
Let’s make Ishmael the answer.”
What’s interesting about that,
if we’re going to be honest,
is that’s the answer that Abraham and Sarah have come up with.
That is a result,
a direct result, of their own problem solving,
not the result of their own faith.
And this story is uncharacteristic
of what we’ve seen Abram make,
choices he’s made in the past,
how he’s responded to God.
But I think what it does in a very interesting way is it humanizes Abraham.
We begin to see that
for all of his right action,
there’s substantial questions and doubt that lives.
And we don’t get
that all the time in the Old Testament.
So here we have really the fountainhead of God’s covenantal
promise, this many nations that God promises.
We see in spades,
really at the climax of that promise making,
that Abraham is having doubts.
And in fact, he’s laughing about the idea that
there’s an answer beyond the one that he sees in front of him.
So that’s good news for everyone
else who has doubts.
And in fact,
I would argue that our instinct to sort of cover for Abraham,
to say, oh no, he’s not laughing at God,
he’s laughing in humility,
or he’s laughing at the possibility.
You know, I think that that maybe exposes actually our own discomfort with the
questions, our own discomfort with the times when we too doubt God.
There are seasons in which
laughter comes first.
And that’s not to say it’s a good response,
but it’s to say it’s a human one.
And clearly God is still able to work and to keep the promises even in the midst
of our inability to pull our faith and trust in Him.
Yeah, I love this story for two reasons that are really two sides of the same coin.
One is Abraham,
he doesn’t chuckle,
he doesn’t snicker,
he doesn’t giggle,
he falls on his face laughing.
And I think the lesson in that,
or maybe one of the signposts in that,
is sometimes we forget
that what God does,
what God seeks to do,
is beyond sense.
Those moments when God’s call
claims our life in such a way that seems foolish to us,
that seems impossible.
Oh,
I’ll never forgive that person.
Are you crazy?
I’m not doing that.
Give to that organization or put off this thing to do that thing,
whatever it may be.
Apologize to them.
And God has this moment where really,
in some ways, a major thread of human history is just beginning to unfold.
And Abraham finds it
hilarious.
He can’t contain himself.
It seems so improbable,
so impossible, that all he can do is fall to the ground because it makes so little sense and seems
so that there’s so little chance of it happening.
And I love the story for that.
God then responds,
verse 19, God said, “No, your wife Sarah will bear a son,
and you’ll name him Isaac.
I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for
his offspring after him.
As for Ishmael,
I have heard you.
I will bless him.
I will make him
fruitful and exceedingly numerous,
and he shall be the father of twelve princes,
and I will make
him a great nation.
But my covenant I will establish with Isaac,
whom Sarah shall bear to you
at this season next year.” And when he had finished talking with him,
God went up from Abraham.
So again, we’ve seen this before.
There is a provision for Ishmael.
There is a future.
But the lineage, the promise, the covenant,
rests on the offspring,
the very unlikely
offspring, the very unlikely promise of Sarah and Abraham.
I love, Clint,
that Isaac has that meaning of he laughed or laughter.
And we miss this,
okay?
The scriptures do contain some very biting symbols,
and we sometimes miss it because of
our comfort with them or our long-standing awareness of them.
Every day that Abraham
calls for his son,
he’s naming
the very thing that he himself experienced upon the announcement of his son.
It’s not just that Isaac’s name gives some sense for his life and personality.
That’s what we think of,
I think, in our own context.
But there’s a sense in which
Isaac will always stand before his father as a visible sign,
a reminder of the promise that God made,
which
is, of course, something that we learn about Abraham’s experience.
But more than that,
it’s a pointer to the God who stands to make and keep this
covenantal promise.
In other words, it’s to say that even in the midst of human doubt and laughter,
God keeps God’s promises.
When you call for your son,
Abraham, you’re going to be speaking to the kept promise of God.
That is,
once again, we said over and over again,
but it needs repeated that the core center of this story
of Genesis is not the characters we find pointing us to something other than themselves.
In other words, it isn’t about Noah.
It’s not about Abraham.
They’re important characters,
but their life
experience and their encounters are supposed to point us to the living God.
And that’s exactly what we have in this situation.
Every time Abraham looks at the son who’s named laughter,
he is reminded of the one who kept that promise,
even though it seems laughable.
And that’s how this story is sort of a purpose built to force us to look up instead of looking out.
Right.
And then we do get,
we’re not going to read this,
but just to finish out the chapter here,
probably not material that is very profound in terms of a devotional sense,
but you will remember that God has commanded Abram to have himself and all of his family,
all of his servants and household circumcised all the males.
And so verse 23 through the end of
the chapter is him doing that.
We’re told that Ishmael is 13.
We’ve seen this.
We’re in a section
where the two stories,
the two narratives of Genesis sort of take turns telling the story.
So we’ve seen that happen.
We see it happen again.
Tomorrow, we will get a kind of retelling of the
story that we just read,
but really fascinatingly, one of few places in the scripture that does this,
we have a sort of his and her version.
We have Abram’s experience of it.
And tomorrow, this other family story focuses a little more closely,
a little more clearly on Sarah’s
reaction and her interaction with this covenant promise.
So we’ll be in chapter 18 tomorrow for
things that will seem familiar,
but we’ll try to pick out of them the differences and the things
that are helpful.
Yeah, we’re in the middle of a section that is essential to the beginning of
God’s purpose and chosen way of dealing and interacting with humanity,
the setting of this covenant.
And because of that,
maybe this isn’t the most flashy or illustrious.
It’s certainly not like the beginning chapters of Exodus where God is doing these miraculous things.
This is far more human,
earthy,
maybe even I can’t say mundane.
Certainly God bringing Isaac into the
world wasn’t mundane, but there’s a kind of human flesh that’s wrapped around this story that I
think is really maybe even instructive that the way that God deals in history is in the small
and in the things that we sometimes think of very human experiences.
This is where some of the
mysterious and the supernatural actually lives.
And so it’s just a note to say,
though this may be filled with glitz and glamour,
it’s important and there’s a lot to learn from it.
I would also say, Michael, that 17 and 18 have a very interesting place in regard to Abram and Sarai’s
relationship with God, this idea that there’s give and take, there’s exchange,
there’s pronouncement, there’s laughter,
there’s promise,
there’s doubt,
there’s a kind of, in fact,
literally in chapter 18, we see some negotiating,
some bargaining that happens between Abraham and God.
There is a real
sense of God and people kind of working out the relationship between them.
And I think that does
make for interesting material.
We can talk more about it tomorrow.
But when God says,
“I’m going to do something,” and that person falls down on their face laughing,
you expect punishment, you expect anger,
and what you don’t expect but what you get that is more
profound is God patiently saying,
“Yeah, well, name your kid laughter and we’ll see who laughs last,” essentially.
I mean, that’s sort of what’s happening here.
Yeah, that’s really well said.
All right.
Well, friends, thanks for being with us today.
I’ll see you tomorrow as we
plug along and jump right into chapter 18.
Thanks, everybody.