Shortcuts to God’s will are not worth taking. In chapter 16, we read that Abram and Sarai decided that enough was enough; perhaps God meant that Abram would have a son by another woman, since Sarai was barren, and so she gave her maiden Hagar to Abram. Hagar conceived and bore Ishmael to Abram; Sarai despised Hagar’s ability to bear children when Sarai herself couldn’t; it turned into a big mess full of envy and jealousy and ugliness. It’s a mess that we still read about in the newspapers today, namely the rift between the descendants of Ishmael and the descendants of Isaac. Shortcuts to God’s will are not worth taking.
Thirteen years after the birth of Ishmael, God again comes to Abram. Abram is 99 now. Ishmael is fast becoming a young man, and a rather insolent one at that. Despite this, he is Abram’s flesh-and-blood, loved greatly by Abram, who at this point likely had assumed that Ishmael was God’s promised heir, and Abram no doubt hoped that Ishmael, despite his youthful brashness, would turn into a man after God’s heart. God had given Abram a lot of time to think.
Now, God comes to Abram to reconfirm his covenant with Abram, this time with the stress, not on the land aspect (as Genesis 15 records) but on the descendants that God would provide, not one conceived by natural means, Ishmael, but one conceived by supernatural, from the womb of a barren woman, Sarai.
God acts sovereignly in history; He always calls for a response of obedience from us as well. This chapter helps us to see this clearly; God does things, promises He will do other things. He also calls for certain responses, not only from Abraham personally, but from Abraham’s descendants for perpetual generations. According to Derek Kidner, the two chapters, Genesis 15 and 17, set out the bookends, if you will, of both inward faith (15:6) and outward seal (circumcision) and imputed righteousness and expressed devotion. Thus we have God’s first words to Abram, “walk before Me and be blameless”.
Finally, before we dig into the text, note the fact that God is serious about our relationship with Him. This chapter amplifies that truth; He isn’t interested in being our hobby or our pastime. I shuddered recently when I heard someone say, speaking of attending a service of worship, words to the effect of “let’s go and get our God-time in”. The implication is that we are obligated to tip our hats to God for a few minutes here and there at a specified time, and then we are free to go about the serious/real business of living life, God having been mollified by a few moments of professed devotion. This is a big point, folks, one that we dare not skip merrily by: God is serious about our relationship with Him. He’s not messing around, and He doesn’t expect messing around out of us either.
So note as we begin
1. God’s Declarations
a. “I am” – God’s powerful name
“el-Shaddai” – God Almighty
Perhaps in your translation it is rendered, “God Almighty”. In using this name, God affirms His mighty power, that He will do all of the things that He has promised to Abram. God told Moses that He had appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by the name El Shaddai (Exodus 6:3).
As a multi-faceted God, He does have several names which emphasize different aspects of His deity. This name is particularly used by God when He is encountering His frail, unsteady servants who are hard-pressed, needing assurance and reinforcement. Abram remained confused, perhaps despairing, wondering if his situation would change, if God really would come through. No one in the Bible, perhaps, exemplifies a desperate plight than does Job, and it is in the book of Job, not surprisingly, that God’s name is “el-Shaddai” more than any other. Job questions God, fires back at God, borderline accuses God of being unsympathetic to his plight, and God patiently allows him to question, but then responds, el-Shaddai, with assurances that He is indeed in control. And perhaps that’s you, today; perhaps you find yourself in a situation where you need the re-assurance of God, His affirmation that He is almighty, in control, sovereign over all. He is el-Shaddai for you, just as He was for Abraham.
Every person is a theologian. The way we live will be determined by what we think of God. We all think something of God. God revealed Himself to Abram as “almighty”. What do you think of God?
b. “I will” – God’s covenant promises
• Make you a great nation
We spoke last week of this particular promise, the promise of God that out of Abram’s body would come a great nation, fulfilled by God in the physical sense via the nation of Israel, but in just as real a sense spiritually in that we are depicted in the New Testament as Abraham’s children of faith. God has indeed made good on this promise!
• Change your name to reflect this
According to Nahum Sarna, “In the psychology of the ancient Near Eastern world, a name was not merely a convenient means of identification but was intimately bound up with the very essence of being and inextricably intertwined with personality.”
His given name, “Abram”, meant “father of many”. What a cruel joke this must have seemed like, that his father Terah had in such a well-meaning manner bestowed an honorable name on his boy, but that it had gone so radically unfulfilled. In the culture of the day, a traveler such as Abram would be asked many questions, and certainly the mere stating of his name would have prompted the question, “well, how many sons do you have?” Abram must have long-since learned to steel himself for the question, and when he had to lower his head and admit, “none”, the irony must have produced some awkward, tense moments. Imagine the jokes that couldn’t have been funny, at least not to Abram.
Now, God one-ups Abram’s father Terah, by piling on the qualifier that not only will Abram be “father of many”, but he will be “Abraham”, the father of multitudes! Donald Grey Barnhouse, eminent Presbyterian preacher of the 20th century, envisions what it must have been like for Abram to announce to all of his entourage that he was undergoing a name change (at 99 years of age), that from this point forward, his name would no longer be Abram. What would he change his name to, from “father of many” to “father of at least one!” But surely the old guy had gone off his rocker, lost his mind, when he announces that his name will now be “father of a multitude”. Cart him off to the loony bin!
Everyone who used that name knew that that is what it meant, as did Abraham, of course. Every time someone passed him on the street, it was, “hey, how’s it going, Father of a Multitude?” “Father of a Multitude, could you pass the salt?” 50 times a day, he’d be reminded that he was going to be the father of a multitude. And he believed it, too! Not only this, but God said He would
• Cause kings to follow in your line
Abraham is going to be the patriarch of a line of kings. A nomad traveling the desert at the command of God, but he is going to be the father of royalty. But beyond the fact that national Israel would one day be ruled by kings such as Saul, David, and Solomon, one day, as the Old Testament prophets foretold, there would come from Abraham a King Who would be King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of the promise of YHWH to Abraham. In the genealogy in Matthew 1, Jesus is called the “son of Abraham”.
• Keep my covenant forever
God’s promise is that this covenant that He is unilaterally making with Abraham is one He intends to keep for all time. It is not dependent upon Abraham’s obedience, or that of his offspring, but one that God not only has the power, but the integrity, to maintain.
• Be your God
God makes promises to Abraham regarding his descendants, but the key one is “I will be their God”. This transcends what God will do for them; it refers to Who He is; this is the covenant, more than anything else or everything else put together in which God promises blessings/benefits. We seek God for Who He is, not primarily for what He will do for us.
• Change Sarai’s name
We can imagine that there was speculation in the camp as to why Abraham had gone so long childless. This speculation ended when Hagar, the slave girl, bore a son to Abraham; it had been Sarai all along who was responsible for the couple’s childlessness, then! How shameful this must have been to Sarah, who in such a setting would have heard some of the gossip, overheard the snickering, and now with young Ishmael, the child of her husband and her servant-girl, running around playing, it was too much for her to bear. Her shame and disgrace at failing as a wife was overwhelming—but there is a word of grace from God for her!
This is, as well as with Abraham, the demonstration of God’s sovereign power; name-giving is an authoritative act in any context. Parents give their children names; this is their prerogative as having authority over children. Adam demonstrated his God-given authority by naming the animals, which must have been interesting, but I wonder if at the end of the day, he got tired and a little sloppy; I mean, was he just tossing out syllables and seeing where they’d land by the end? How else to explain “hippopotamus” or “platypus”? Then again, he hadn’t sinned yet, so he wouldn’t have gotten tired, I don’t think. Hmmm…anyway, in the Bible, it’s interesting that we see naming linked with transformation of character and destiny. We see Jesus doing something similar, renaming Simon “Peter”, or “Rocky”, might be a rough contemporary equivalent. It is a tough name, a name that signifies substance and durability.
Both Sarai and Sarah mean “princess”; God didn’t appreciably alter the meaning of Sarah’s name, but this served as a landmark in her life, a time of new meaning and of her own involvement in the covenant. From a princess comes kings! God is not sexist, and this event is significant in that she is given status as a co-receiver of God’s covenant blessings.
In renaming Abram and Sarai to Abraham and Sarah, God not only is demonstrating His authority over them, He is reiterating His covenant promises to them, and He is designating them as His chosen servants.
What is the name by which you are called?
We are “Christians”, and though that name has been misused and misrepresented, it identifies us as belonging to Jesus, as being followers of the Christ. Our first allegiance is to Jesus, trumping all other allegiances, whether they be to family or to country or to anything else. We are the “church”, which signifies the called-out people of God. This identifies us as being part of God’s family, where He is our Father, but where also, we are related to one another.
• Give her a son, Isaac
We’ll consider Isaac in greater detail in weeks to come, but suffice it to say that this is the incredible, miracle event that causes Abraham to laugh with incredulous glee. Ishmael won’t be the son of the promise, but God will
• Bless your son, Ishmael
Once again, we see the grace of God despite Abraham’s shortcut to His will; Ishmael will himself be blessed, and a great nation will come from him as well.
All of these are God’s gracious, unilateral promises made to a man who certainly had feet of clay, but whom the Bible describes as “never wavering”in believing and acting upon God’s promises.
c. “I expect” – God’s demands
There is a moral component to God’s expectation, introduced for the first time into the relationship between God and Abram. Thus far in their relationship, God has made promises, revealed His character, instructed Abram as to some of His plan for future blessing of Abram. About all He’s said to Abram prior to this, by way of command, was to get his feet moving. It doesn’t take a whole lot of moral backbone, per se, to do this; after all, KC and the Sunshine Band, among others, indicated their willingness to move their feet, evidenced in the classic, “I want to put on, my, my, my, my boogie shoes, and boogie with you.” More recently, Vanessa Carlton has professed that she’d walk a thousand miles if she could just see you. See, the point is that moving pretty much a morally-neutral thing, and that’s all that God has told Abram to do up to this point. But here, God says, “be blameless”; He reveals Himself as a God Who is concerned about the moral behavior of His people!
• Faithful service
• Blameless life
We find these two connected together in God’s opening remarks to Abraham, just after He has revealed Himself as God Almighty, el-Shaddai. They are general, but they are relevant; we please God when we serve Him faithfully, and when we live in such a way that no one can say anything negative about our witness and testimony for Christ.
• The mark of circumcision
Circumcision was a widely-used Near Eastern rite of puberty or of marriage; God here adapts this well-known sociological practice to His own particular usage for His own peculiar people.
There is only one way—God’s way. Iain Duguid, new GCC professor, suggests that some people approach God as though they are interviewing him for the job of “personal deity in my life”, and if God measures up to my specs, then I’ll allow Him access, and if not… Circumcision was not a rite that Hebrew families could ignore because of expedience, or for fear of the pain that it would inflict, or for any other reason; God gave the sign of circumcision as the sign of the covenant He made with Abraham, just as He had given a sign related to the covenant He made with Noah (the rainbow) and the covenant He would make at Sinai with His people following the exodus (the Sabbath). Hebrew people who would be faithful to God would follow this practice; this obligation would remind them of their obligation to God every time a new baby boy underwent the procedure.
Circumcision implies that commitment to God evidences itself in tangible ways; that it is meant to be a permanent, life-altering commitment; that it marks us as individuals and changes us. It implied commitment to God and to God’s people (inseparable, so why do many modern-day Christ-followers not understand this link?), a separation from the heathen and their practices.
Circumcision marked Abraham and his descendants as God’s people. Belonging to God, being in right relationship to God, bearing the name and mark of God: this is the important thing. John Walton had this to say:
“When will we realize how less important heaven is than God? How can we possibly feel good about gaining heaven if in the process we do not give ourselves to God? For some, eternity is nothing more than a selfish pursuit born of a fear of death or hell, and living for God is too much trouble. Let us hope that God does not grant their wish by leaving them alone. If He did, they would find to their dismay that if heaven were filled only with themselves, it would be little better than hell. They would languish in the vacuum.”
And the New Testament picks up on the theme of circumcision, applying it to us as Christ-followers:
Colossians 2:11-14 - 11 When you came to Christ, you were "circumcised," but not by a physical procedure. It was a spiritual procedure-the cutting away of your sinful nature. 12 For you were buried with Christ when you were baptized. And with him you were raised to a new life because you trusted the mighty power of God, who raised Christ from the dead.
13 You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ. He forgave all our sins. 14 He canceled the record that contained the charges against us. He took it and destroyed it by nailing it to Christ’s cross.
By grace, we were forgiven and made alive in Christ; our sinful nature was cut away, Paul says. But we were also marked by Christ, and thus today we have symbols as Christ-followers by which we express our devotion and commitment to God. One of the clearest is baptism, commanded by Christ for all of His followers, not as essential to salvation, but as the clear and unmistakable outward sign of the inward commitment of faith.
Another is the Lord’s Table, which we’ll celebrate in a couple of weeks. We are to be marked by love (I John 3:18-24). We are to be marked by obedience (John 15:5-15). We could go on, but I ask, are you marked by the things that the Bible says ought to mark a servant of God?
2. Abram’s Responses
a. Worship
Abram immediately falls to the ground upon hearing the voice of God, the revelation of el-Shaddai.
b. Laughter
Abraham responds with laughter. Again, the printed page fails us a bit as to the exact nature of Abraham’s laughter, but we again will give him the benefit of the doubt; his laughter is not rebuked, as Sarah’s would be eventually, and he is clearly reverent and worshipful toward God. In the context of worship and obedience, let’s read the laughter, perhaps as evidence of a still-growing faith incredulous that God would or could pull it off this way, but not as derisive or “you gotta be kidding”.
c. Obedience
In obeying God (vv. 23-27) by having all of his household circumcised, Abraham brought others into the covenant, including those who must have only known of it indirectly previously. This experience bound them all to the covenant God had made, and bound them to each other as well. Abraham’s age is given at the beginning and at the end of the chapter; he is ninety-nine when God speaks to him here, and he is ninety-nine when he obeys God. He is a man who is taking seriously the walk to which God called him, a walk of blameless obedience.
In Your Life
1. God has declared Himself to be the all-powerful God. Do you think that Abram felt sometimes discouraged because of the length of time it took God to fulfill His promises, and if so, what would this name speak to him? What does it say to you when you are discouraged?
2. When is the significance of the names “Christian” and “church”, which apply to you?
3. Certain characteristics ought to mark the life of the committed Christ-follower, things like faith, love, hope, obedience, etc. What marks of a Christian are lacking in your walk with God?
