Genesis 18

Growing faith.

This is the sixth time God has come and made promises to Abraham. We have followed the progress of these promise over the last few weeks.

It began in Genesis 12: God called Abram to move from Ur of the Chaldees to Canaan; twice he promised a land and a people; and Abram obeyed in a faith that took God at his word.

Then in Genesis 13, God came again and repeated the promise – this time promising descendants as numerous as the desert sand. And Abram continued to move in obedience to god's will.

The fourth time – in Genesis 15 – Abram had a moan about the fact that the promise still hadn’t been fulfilled; But God sealed his covenant with Abram using that sacrifice cut in half. But eventually Abram did what you shouldn't do with a promise, and made it come true by his own scheming.

The fifth time, God got a bit more specific – telling Abraham that he and Sarah would have a son called Isaac. And Abram had to be circumcised as a sign of that covenant.

So, for Abraham, there has been a building up of the details and demands of the promise; as it becomes more specific it demands more faith, and demands full commitment. And as the promise unfolds, Abraham wavers between amazing simple faith, and just a bit of cynicism, fear, and self-reliance.

Now God comes, appears to Abraham. There is a slight difference. This time the Lord (18. 1) is in human-like form accompanied by two others, angelic beings (19. 1). The whole scene is typical of desert hospitality: visitors appear, waiting to be invited into the camp was the desert equivalent of knocking the door; being sat down, made welcome; the host declaring that the visit is a God-given opportunity to show hospitality;; fresh bread made, a calf killed... for some time while Abraham, Sarah, and his servant, prepare a meal – slaughtering the fatted calf... And God promises that within a year, Sarah will give birth to a son. Fulfilment, of a specific promise, within a specific time-frame. All God's dealings with Abraham, have come full circle. And it is so amazing, so unbelievably precious, after so many years of waiting, And Abraham’s faith, has come full circle. Abraham's faith – and I mean the whole way he does his walk with God – has been developing, maturing.

We go through stages in our development, and there are stages in faith development too: that can get a bit complicated as it's partly related to our age... but we start with very simple faith – and then you struggle to hold it all together in various times of trial, unanswered prayers. That's a questioning stage. There's another stage, when you can hold the simple faith and the questions together. Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “The only simplicity for which I would give a straw is that which is on the other side of the complex — not that which never has divined it.” That is grown-up faith. It is childlike but not childish. Simplicity, not pretending the questions aren't there but surviving on the other side of all the complications and questionings. And that is where I believe Abraham had come to. He had even been circumcised as an expression of that mature tested faith.

And Sarah, overhearing in the tent, has a wee giggle to herself. (Literally “Laughing within her midst”) You get the impression of her talking to herself and laughing at her own rude joke about her and Abraham's sex-life!  ("ShallI have pleasure?") Now we discovered that Abraham's laughter was OK: it was an expression of joy and celebration. Sarah's had a bitter, cynical edge. God challenged her about it and she denied she had laughed: it wasn't something she was proud of. So it looks as if Sarah was at a different place in her faith journey. She was still in the place of scepticism and questioning. 

 

It is possible to get “stuck” at any stage of the faith journey, from a “Baby” faith of Bible stories without knowing what they mean, to a stage where we “believing what we are told” , to a questioning doubting stage. Or we can keep moving forward. I think Sarah was stuck, and Abraham had moved beyond the questioning stage. Maybe their human instincts, and drives made them respond differently to things: Sarah had not become a mother, but Abraham had become a father: that simple fact may have helped to make them grow on from the questioning stage at different speeds. Maybe Sarah was angrier about the situation. But remember Abraham had a more grown faith – but he certainly wasn't perfect. In fact he repeated the same sins and mistakes over and over. Grown up faith isn't the same as perfection.

God is in the business of dealing with us. He is in the business of growing our faith. He is in the business of taking us from simple faith – through various times of struggle, disappointment, failure – back to simple faith. Maybe a less arrogant faith; maybe a faith that is less self-centred, self-obsessed. To a faith that is prepared in a fresh way to take on the heart-circumcision of belonging totally to God and to his people...

In response to Sarah's laughter,  God says something really simple yet really profound. “Is there anything too heard for the Lord?” (v 14) "Too difficult" originally means " too wonderful." The theme of what is too hard for God comes up again (Jeremiah 32. 17 , 27 , and Zechariah 8. 6.)

How will we answer that question?So how do we respond when God comes and says “OK, now is the time: I am going to fulfil these promises now?” Are we like Abraham: we have come through the doubts and returned to that place of simple faith? Or are we like Sarah: “Yeah, right!”

Then, as the visitors are leaving and Abraham escorts them down the road, they reveal what God plans to do in the cities of the plain. God acknowledges Abraham to be his friend close and intimate .Being “Chosen by God” and being God's friend, means not only that he s going to become a father; it means he is involved in the plans of God for the nations; so it is perfectly appropriate that God reveal to Abraham what he plans to do in Sodom.

God is judging Sodom for the evil that was happening there. Sodom had become a thoroughly violent, arrogant and sexually promiscuous, amoral place, where the attitudes of immorality had rubbed off on Lot and his family... Chapter 19 describes what one scholar calls "a loveless squalor" not only in the behaviour of the people of the city but on the part of Lot's daughters later on.

So Abraham prays: his praying shows how mature his faith is: a deep understanding of who God is (you might say right doctrine) working through the questions and worked out in godly character.

As he prays he comes out with another of these key phrases: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (v. 25) Abraham knows his Good to be not tribal but universal, and not tyrannical but just.

When he begins he is saying “Lord, would yo destroy the city if here were fifty good guys in there? Then he takes the number down to 45, 30, 20, 10. It's quite a prayer, rooted as it is in concern for God's character and in a compassion for the lost!!

"Interceding love is ingenious". We need a passion for God, and a passion for God's creatures. How would we have prayed?

So, where are you on that faith journey? Do you still live with the faith of the nursery: folk-religion, or folk-atheism that you believe because everyone else does? Do you have living faith that is yours and makes you part of the living Church? Do you have questions that maybe feel overwhelming? OR have you come through the questions to a faith that is simple enough, strong enough and flexible enough to thrive in a challenging world and show God's compassion there? 

© Gilmour Lilly June  2015