Abraham set free to be blessed and a blessing! Genesis 17:1-22
Last week I had said that I was going to start a series called ‘Great Men warts and all’; it looks like I may have to change the name of the series to ‘Great People warts and all’ as there are some fairly warty women in the Bible also. I was going to talk of how God was able to take the weaknesses of people in some cases weak people and in the big picture show that these were indeed things that God could use in a powerful way and things that were used by him in a mighty way to bring people into his kingdom.
Last week we looked at Moses a man of faltering lips and this week we will have a look at a married couple. This couple started out in a place called Ur which was an important city-state in ancient Sumer located in what is now modern Iraq. This couple stated life as Abram and Sarai.
A few things about this couple:
• Terah, Abrams father had originally left Ur and settled in Haran (MAP)
• Abram was called by God to leave Haran and to travel to the land that he God that is would give him
• Abram (meaning exalted) had his name changed by God to Abraham (meaning ‘father of many’), we will find out more about this soon
• Abraham ancestors were worshippers of other God’s prior to this, “Joshua said to the people, “this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says; ‘Long ago your forefathers, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the River and worshiped other gods.” (Joshua 24:2) They were idol worshippers.
• Abraham lied to preserve his life
• God made a covenant with Abraham that would lead to the birth of the nation of Israel. Interestingly all that he would possess of that nation were a field and a burial cave
• The same covenant is part of the reason that we are all here today worshipping God
• He had a son called Ishmael with his wife’s maidservant Hagar (we could spend days debating the morals of this but remember, different times, different way of living, laws etc)
• He had a son Isaac with his first wife Sarai who was afterwards known as Sarah (meaning princess)
• Sarai gave permission for Ishmaels conception
• Sarai treated Hagar badly after Ishmael was born
I’m keen to look at a small part of this couples journey and discuss response and blessing. For while Abraham and Sarah were a couple with a fair number of faults it was their response to God that changed their lives and from that place changed the earths future and millions of lives forever to the glory of God.
We join Abram as he was then aged of ninety-nine…remembering that people lived longer back in the day. Let’s read Genesis 17:1-7 and 17:15-22.
Let’s have a wee look at what the verses 15 on meant to Abraham and Sarah.
1) In verse 15 we see that Sarai has a name changed to Sarah which means princess. This name points to her being a mother of kings. Abraham’s name remember means ’father of many’.
When we take a look at Abraham’s family we see that most of the Arab people and the Jewish people are both his descendants today, in the main Ishmaels family are the Arab people, though not all and Isaacs’s family are Jews though there are some who are Palestinian Arabs.
God has blessed both family lines of Abraham’s descendants. Abraham married again after the death of Sarah, to a lady called Keturah, their descendants have pretty much combined with the descendants of Ishmael.
So how does this affect us as New Zealanders who are Christian?
2) Well what was it that God said to Abraham; there’s the whole Sarah will be giving you a son, to which Abraham fell face down laughing, with joy and responded, “ Will a son be born to a man aged a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” Was it joy or disbelief, I think it was joy, as he was to be having a son with the wife he had married all those years before. Isaac means ‘he laughs’.
Then Abraham asked that God might bless Ishmael to which the reply was “Yes, but…your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.”
So on from there God was to bless Ishmael and his descendants.
But the covenant that God had established with Abraham was to continue down the line of Isaac, the Israelite people or the people we know today as the Jewish people. We see that Abraham a man who was not perfect and Sarah a women who was not able to have children until her ninetieth year responded to God’s call and were blessed and not only where they blessed but the whole world through them we also were blessed because of their response to God!
Once again where as Christians living in New Zealand where does that leave us?
3) Let’s have a look at the covenant that God made with Abraham, the covenant was in two parts, the first was to give the land we call Israel to Abrahams descendants, the next was the covenant of circumcision, which was to be an everlasting covenant with Abrahams descendants, though this has been replaced by the death and resurrection of Jesus, as his sacrifice on behalf of all of us opened the way for us to have a relationship with God through faith, and the forgiveness of sins, not the cutting of flesh.
In Colossians 2:11 we read, “In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ”.
If we look into the New Testament and consider these verses from
Galatians 3:6-9; let’s have a look:
6 So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”[a]
7 Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. 8 Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.”[b] 9 So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
As Paul points out that because of Abraham’s relationship we are able to come into this everlasting covenant. The response that Abraham made to God has given a continued blessing to all of the possibility of faith relationships with God.
How was this brought about, what does this mean to us?
4) As someone said to me during the week about some business study we were doing ‘that all sounds Greek’, so let’s have a look at what Paul says further on.
13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.”[a] 14 He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit. (Galatians 3:13-14)
What is it he’s saying? We also now then have access to the eternal covenant that God made with Abraham, because of Jesus sacrifice, by the covenant in his blood.
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a) In your spare time read the first chapter of Matthew and you will also be able to see the family line from Abraham to Jesus, “there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ” (Matthew 1:17) to Jesus.
b) God can take the seemingly impossible and turn it into blessing, God can take the seemingly worthless and make their lives a blessing, he can take Sarah a woman who could not have children and make her a princess, the mother of nations and the father of one to be a father of many.
What is required for this to happen? What was required of Abraham? Remember this man had been a rat bag, he had allowed the King of Egypt to marry his wife Sarah to save his own neck at one stage before she was returned to him.
Even though he was a rat bag he continued to listen to God, “he believed the Lord and it was credited to him as righteousness.” (Genesis 15:6), or looking at the meaning from Hebrew words ‘he was faithful in believing and because he was this put him in the right relationship with God.’
If we look further at Genesis God calls Abraham and says, “I am the God Almighty walk before me and be blameless, I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.” (Genesis 17:1b-2)
Now this is it, we see this man Abraham… the occasionally obedient to God, the fear filled man who gives his wife away when it suits, called by God to be blameless. He responds and out of that comes great blessing for all of mankind. Out of that comes blessing through faith for us.
This is a to the point question, “how are you responding to God?”
There seems to be a lot of concerns just now about the world ending in fact were meant to be in the middle of an earth shattering earthquake right now, according to some bloke in New York. Remember this, I typed this earlier in the week, how did I know that it wasn’t going to happen? By faith, the events prior to the end of the world as described in scripture have to occur first.
Many are yet to happen. This is not an end time’s talk, this is anything but. It will one day happen but only the Father knows when. There are many who need to know his forgiveness and his love and to be in a right relationship with him. Let’s not get distracted by foolishness, let’s continue to live for him and serve others. Let’s continue to tell others the good news of Jesus Christ. Let’s respond to God.
How are you responding to God? Are you putting your faith in Him, are you able to see the way through your relationship through Jesus, to a life of blessing, and I didn’t say prosperity I said blessing?
To a life where your sins are not the burden they were, where you are constantly worried, anxious and concerned that the thing you own, or the thing you do is more important than the relationships that you have firstly with God and then with others.
Are you living a life with no blessing; or are you living a life which brings freedom in Christ to you and blessing to the next generation and perhaps many after, as God established his covenant with Abraham ‘for the generations to come.”
Have you entered into the promises of God, are you living in those promises or are you still outside his blessing?
5) There are days when I see people suffering, suffering from actions that that should not be suffering from. But the sad thing is that often the actions are their own. They are people who know the way to freedom, the way out of their suffering and sinfulness, but they make a choice to remain in it. They listen to their own doubts, the doubts of those whose company they keep, to the evil god of the world and they remain trapped in a place where they can’t be blessed by The Almighty God, because that place is outside his will for their lives, it is a place that is less than what he wants for them.
Atheletes, housewives, addicts, businessmen, people who were brought up in desperate dysfunctional homes, people who were brought up on the hill, people from both sides of the track, farmers and philanders, even the sons and daughters of plumbers (my Dad’s a Plumber) all can respond and be blessed! The Spirit of God waits to enter in, where he is invited.
These are the words of a bloke who grew up in the Salvation Army, “The year 1950 found us, my wife and I and three small children, living in our new bungalow in the seaside city of Timaru. Success had come in business and academic life, musical compositions were being published and the corps band under my leadership was growing in numbers, morale and musicianship. But my heart was cold. Sins unconfessed remained unforgiven. With every year, stubborn disobedience pride became more strongly entrenched. Then broke the morning when I blurted out to my wife: ‘You know what’s really wrong with me – I desperately need to get right with God.’ That evening, the 5th of June at five o’clock, as a man of over thirty years of age, and for the first time in my life, I knew the wonder and glory of the forgiveness of sins.” (This was there call; pg6)
This man whose name was Dean went on to become a Salvation Army Commissioner, and Sir Dean Goffin, another who responded, whose life was a blessing to many.
I know that there are people here who are wondering will God ever bless me. He will, but will you respond to his call? Will you lay aside the old person and be made new? You will not know the blessing until you respond to his call on your life, till you live in his will.
The blessings of God are eternal, how will you respond?
Benediction.
May you be blessed as you respond to God,
As you live in His presence,
Knowing his grace through your faith in him.
You are blessed so that others,
May know his forgiveness and love,
That they too may walk in the light of,
His everlasting, glorious presence.
Amen.
