Genesis17

Introduction 

How long have you been waiting for something? 

 Maybe you've been waiting for something until you feel you can't wait any longer – like for the holidays to come. Maybe you're still waiting for god to do something – to answer one of your prayers...

This is the fifth time God has spoken to Abram. 

 Key verses are v 1-2. 

He has already promised that Abram would be the father of a nation. After thirteen years, they still have no “proper” child of their own, (they cheated by Abram taking Sarai's slave as second wife!). The story is that by now Ishmael is just about a teenager! Abram is 99 years old. Sarai is 90. And God comes again and says, “I am God All-Powerful. Obey me and do what is right.  I will make an agreement between us and I’ll give you a huge family.” How long have you been waiting for something?

What’s God like? 

God says to Abram “I am God Almighty”. 

In Hebrew, it is “El Shaddai” …. Let's speak that Name out a few times, quietly, as part of our worship. So what is god like? He is “Almighty”. He is strong, and big... When we say God is big, we are not just talking about his size. We are talking about the way he exists . He exists more fully than we do , in a bigger way than we do . He is more real than we are , not less so. He exists as father, son, and Holy Spirit , at the same time. He really is father son and Holy Spirit , at the same time . Today is “Trinity Sunday” when Christians remember that God is that big – he is Father, Son and holy Spirit.

As father, 

He creates us, loves us , and looks after us , working things out in our lives

As son, 

he shows what God is like, he set up God's kingdom, and he died for our sins.

 As Holy Spirit 

he comes like breath to live inside us , to give us power, to help us understand, and to make us like Jesus .

 What does God want to do? 

First of all, a Covenant relationship. 

Through his encounters with Abram, God has been drawing him into an “Agreement” – a “Covenant”. We've already learned a bit about that, but to remind you, there are two things we have learned...

Firstly, this agreement is not a deal between equal partners. 

It is a “Vassal Covenant.” It is not an agreement to share things out equally. It is an agreement between a Master and a Servant. God didn't come to Abram and say, “Abram, If I answer your prayers, will you make me your God?” He doesn't even say “If you make me your God and keep my law, I'll give you what you ask for.” Now, what God says is “I want to bless you and do something very special in your life. You make me your God and do what I say!” God comes as the Boss, and chooses to enter into an agreement with us. He makes the rules. We don’t' negotiate with him. If we don't like it, we take the consequences. And God has the right to do that – because he is God.

Now, this Covenant was life-changing

 – so much so that even Abram's and Sarai's names were changed. Abram (“exalted father”) became Abraham (“father of many”, and Sarai was to become Sarah (both words mean “princess but the first probably relates to the dialect of her old home in Ur of the Chaldees and Sarah to the dialect of her new home, new life, new hope, in Canaan). Occasionally someone like me – who doesn't like their name – will change it just to get rid of it and gain a new image: “Max Power”. Usually it's no big deal, but it was a big deal in Abraham's time. Your name was your identity, it revealed something about you and your destiny; it pas part of your personality. In our covenant with Jesus, we have been given a new name – we have been called “Christians”, people of the Way is the New testament word for it. We have been given the name of Jesus, not to use as if it were our name, but the right to act on his authority.

Lambs. Photo by G Lilly

And when God begun to make that covenant with Abram, he did it with a sacrifice. 

 In the last chapter we read that Abram sacrificed an animal, and chopped the sacrifice in half.. Today, God makes a new agreement with us. A New Covenant. He does it through a sacrifice – the sacrifice of Jesus for us on the Cross.

Secondly, specific promise 

 But then there are specific promises he makes: for Abram, there there were going to be descendants – whole nations that would say “We come from Abram”. Specifically, Sarai, who was ninety, was going to have a baby. Now, that is very old. It was going to be a miracle, because poor Sarai had never been able to have any children even when she was young. But God was going to do that miracle for Abram and Sarai. And then there was a land God was going to give him, and his sons, grandsons, and descendants. Those are some pretty amazing promises.

God has made some pretty amazing promises to us, too. He has promised that when we believe in Jesus, we have life that lasts for ever. He has promised to give us his Holy Spirit, to live
inside us. He has promised to hear and answer prayers. He has promised to give us peace. He has promised we will never, ever be alone.

What does Abraham do? 

 I can find four things that Abraham did in this chapter:

 1. He fell on his face

Photo: D Shankbone. Creative Commons license

 – in awe and wonder and worship.

2. He laughed 

– not in unbelief, but in joy and surprise and astonishment. Abram is not questioning God, he is enjoying the moment as he reflects with joy on what God has promised.

3. He prayed. 

 He asked God to bless Ishmael, the son he already had through Hagar. Poor Ishmael wasn't the son God wanted to give to Abraham. But Abraham doesn't want him to be left out, to miss the blessing, so he prays with tenderness and compassion for Ishmael. It's really important that in the midst of times of blessing and joy, we pray tenderly for broken, lost people.

 4. He obeyed. 

 He, and every male in his family, was circumcised: a minor surgical procedure, a little cut to the body of each male. It was Abraham's signature to the agreement, a sign of commitment to God and to God's people. We don't do that today: Paul argued fiercely, that since the coming of Jesus, this “rule” no longer applies: “Circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit” (Rom 2. 29) “When you came to Christ, you were 'circumcised,' but not by a physical procedure. Christ performed a spiritual circumcision—the cutting away of your sinful nature” (Col 2. 11) Now, today, the covenant God imposes involves this kind of circumcision, the painful “cutting away of our sinful nature”. God's spirit comes to us like fire, to burn up the rubbish in our lives; he comes like water, not only to refresh but to cleanse. He comes like a dove – and in the Bible, a dove is a clean bird. Doves and pigeons were used as sacrifices. When the Holy Spirit comes he wants to inhabit clean, surrendered lives.

© Gilmour Lilly June  2015

What not to do with a Promise! (Genesis 15-16)

Fresh from a victory over local tribes, and his meeting with this strange figure called Melchizedek, Abram was  feeling a bit stressed by life's responsibilities. And he has yet another God encounter...  God comes – as he keeps on doing – and makes a promise to Abram.  “I am your great reward”. 

This is now the fourth time God has spoken his promises to Abram (12. 1-3; 12. 7; 13. 14).  Is Abram getting just a wee bit tired of it?  In a mixture of faith and exasperation he says “Lord, You keep telling me you're giving me and my descendants the land – but where are my descendants?   Right now the nearest thing I have to an heir is my servant Eleazar of Damascus!”  (If that's what the Hebrew means: verse 2 is difficult to translate but verse 3 is quite plain!)   It's a bit much, Lord; promises, promises.  When am I going to see some action?    We don't want to hear “I am your great reward!”.  We want the descendants!  So Abram, reminds God about that bit of the promise as well.  And that's OK as a prayer of faith.  Jesus told two stories about that sort of prayer.  “Once a poor widow kept pestering and badgering the judge, to give her justice.  And eventually the judge decided 'If I don't give her her due, one of these days she's going to slap me in the face – so I had better do what she asks.'”  (Lk 18. 1-8) And “Once, a man woke his friend up at midnight, looking for food to give to a visitor who had just arrived.  Even although it was inconvenient he got out of bed and gave his friend what he asked for – because he was cheeky enough to ask!”  (Lk 11. 5-8) Sometimes our prayers are just too polite!  And on this Pentecost Sunday, the  Holy Spirit is both our rightful inheritance – because Jesus died to make us God's children – and the resource we need to feed a hungry world. So it's right to say to God “Lord, give us your Spirit! You promised!”

Abram believed God – and that was enough.  The NIV says “it was credited to him as  righteousness”:  Tsaddiq – the right, correct, just thing to do.  That is a key verse that Paul (Romans 4:3, Galatians 3:6) and James (James 2:23) both quote.  . That's what we need to do with the promises God gives us.  Believe them.  God looks at that, and credits it to our account as “righteousness".    It's something we need to take on board.  That's basic and fundamental.

Maybe you are at the beginning bit of your journey as a Christian.  You are thinking through what it means to walk with God.  “What do I need to do?”  Be nice to everyone?  Work harder?  Clean up your life?  Take communion regularly?  Put money in the offering? Help out with the Foodbank?  Give money to famine relief?  All of these are good things to do.  I'm not saying “Don't do these things!”  But God makes is so simple.  Believe what he says.  He will count that as doing something right.  (And in fact, if it's for real, it will begin to change your life: you'll begin to do some of these other things I've been talking about as well!)

To confirm the promise – publicly signing the contract – God has Abram prepare a sacrifice.  And as he waits, the darkness comes; he feels “the terror of the Lord.”  That's part of how God works.  His agreement with Moses, was spoken out of a cloud.  Even the New Covenant, the agreement God made thorough Jesus, began in darkness and earthquake (Matthew 27. 45, 51)   God is Holy.  He is perfect; he is pure, he is clean.  He speaks to Abram so intimately; but he is the Holy One.

Now, just an observation here: God's promises are there for the dark as well as the light.  He is able to make his promises come true for Abram's nation – even though they will, as a nation, spend 400 years in Egypt, in slavery, to all appearances finished as a clan with any hope of real nationhood.  We should not confuse God's promises with our own wishful thinking.  We should not extend God's promises outwards to include all we desire.  That's a road to heartache and disillusionment.  

So then, Abram has a promise.  But still no heir.  Then someone has a good idea.  Sarai suggests that Abram get her servant Hagar pregnant: a king of bronze-age surrogate mother.  I don't think my wife would have come up with such an idea – but it was OK in Abram's world.   And – whether because Hagar was quite good looking (!) – or more likely because ten years had passed since the first promise and he was desperate to have the promise fulfilled – he accepted.  It seemed like God was not answering.  It was legal (at that time!) It was a good idea – on the surface at least.  But it caused immediate tensions between Hagar, Sarai, and Abram.  It brought out the worst in each of them. (Derek Kidner neatly sums it up: “False pride, false blame, false neutrality.”) It resulted in the powerless ones – Hagar and her unborn child – being treated as objects that could be disposed of.  And in the end, when God has told Abram that Sarai will have a child, Abram is trying to reason with God just to bless Ishmael instead.  “Lord, can't you just use our plan B instead?”  (See Gen 17.18)

So what are we NOT to do with a promise?  Make it come true ourselves.   If you promised your child something – a new toy maybe – you would be angry with them if they got fed up waiting and took the money for it from your purse, and even more annoyed if they simply went and stole it from the local shop. But we do that to God all the time.

In Galatians 4. 22f, Paul says this: “Abraham had two sons, one by a slave and one by a free woman.  But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, the son of the free woman through promise.” Hagar and Ishmael represent the old covenant, the law, the flesh, and slavery.  Sarah and Isaac represent the New Covenant, the promise, the Spirit, and freedom. The whole story, and that choice between old and new, law and promise, flesh and spirit, slavery and freedom, applies to the whole of the Christian life, the whole business of journeying with God.

God has made a promise: he who believes on the Son has life. And we have replaced that with good ideas: give to the poor; be a nice person; go to Church; or ignore God and buy the life you want; or contact the supernatural through spiritualism or astrology.   We ignore God's voice and listen to other voices instead.  

God has made a promise:  “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.”  (Acts 1. 8)   And we have replaced that with good ideas:  we put on events to attract people; we have websites and public transport advertising campaigns; we pressure people to share their faith.  We put our faith in evangelists; in campaigns; in processes like Evangelism Explosion or even Alpha.  We run organisations – BB or Urban saints of a Coffee Morning.  We try to make our churches look lively by having  the most vibrant praise; the greatest kids' work.  So we have great schemes and we pressurise people to be part of them. We jump in and do the witness, instead of waiting for the promise, believing that the Spirit will make us witnesses. 

The Christian world is littered with the casualties of good ideas.  Churches and individual Christians burned out on activism, disillusioned by hype and human attempts to look “successful”, worn out by clever ideas that are greedy for cash and time, pressured to perform to fulfil someone else's vision.  You know what really happened to Mary’s little lamb? Mary had a little lamb; it never was a sheep – because it joined a Baptist Church and died of lack of sleep.  And in the midst of all that, truth is a casualty; and ordinary little people are casualties. 

So, on the Day of Pentecost, I believe God is speaking to us.  He is challenging us – to have the courage to wait for the promise of the Father (Acts 1. 4).  To stop saying to God “Please may our schemes and ideas live under your blessing.”  and instead, to wait upon God to fulfil, in our day, the promise he has made.  “We need another Pentecost. Send the Fire today.”  And maybe, like Abraham, and like the woman with the judge or the man bashing his friend’s door at midnight, to remind God of his promises and call upon Him to fulfil these promises in our day.  “We need another Pentecost. Send the fire today.”   Send the Spirit.  Lord, you promised; Jesus died to give us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.  Send the Spirit.  Our friends are hungry for the Kingdom and we haven’t anything to set before them.  Send your Spirit, Lord.  “How much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”  (Lk 11. 18)

© Gilmour Lilly May  2015