PLANNED GROWTH (GEN 17:1-19)
Twice Michelle Kwan failed to land the big prize at Winter Olympics Figure Skating Championship. In 1998 she was placed second, and in 2002 she dropped to third. Each time she bravely congratulated the winner, evaluated her condition, and announced her participation in the next Olympics. Since then, it has not been plain sailing and not what UCLA student had bargained for, apart from the commercial endorsements. Critics and reporters said she was too old, too cautious, and too mechanical. They harped that her jumps were the same, her routine had no edge, and her rivals were gaining.
The twenty-year old Michelle who had since won the U.S. Figure Skating Championship nine times and the International Championship five times, but a year before the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah confessed, “It doesn’t get easier. It gets harder and harder. You have to stay on top of your game.” (San Gabriel Valley Tribune 1/22/01)
In Genesis 17, Abram had settled comfortably in Canaan, Sarai and Hagar had suspended their rivalry, and even Ishmael, who Abram fathered when he was eighty-six, had grown (Gen 16:16, 17:1). Abram did not have much before, but now had plentiful of silver and gold (Gen 13:2), on top of livestock and servants (Gen 12:16). In chapter 15, God promised the land and an offspring to Abraham, but now the subject had shifted to the identity and the mother of Abraham’s offspring.
Is your faith going forward, moving ahead, or making progress? Genesis 17 is about a continual desire to grow in faith, to live a stirring Christian life, and to make a difference to the world around us. How do we make an impact after weeks and months and years of the same thing? What is missing? What are the first steps to rekindle the flame?
IMPROVE YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD
17:1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, "I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless. 2 I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers." 3 Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, 4 "As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. (Gen 17:1-2)
In 1997, I made a bold decision. After serving seven years in one church after seminary graduation, I was ready to face new challenges, obtain further training, and learn new skills. Little did I know, God was preparing me for a teaching, writing and Internet ministry on top of the pastoral ministry. My wife laughed loudest, constantly reminding me that I did not have an email until I left Los Angeles in 1997.
In 1998, after I had returned from Chicago, a friend asked me if I was still interested to meet with a few pastors on a regular basis to talk about what we were doing, share our needs, and spend time in prayer. I never felt the need for it early in my ministry; before I considered it a waste of time, an invasion of privacy, and a restriction on freedom, but now it was God-sent.
Michael Eisner once said that a man must renew himself once every seven years. And God gave Abraham a big surprise, a big present, and a big lesson when his second seven-year cycle is due at the birth of Isaac the following year.
To renew oneself is to make new, fresh, and alive one’s relationship to God. It is to reverse, turn around an extended period of stagnated growth, declining significance, or inactive faith. It is the answer to the SOS crisis - same old stuff. To remain focused after years of decline is a need, a challenge, and a task.
God had previously appeared to Abraham in Genesis chapters 12, 13 and 15, and again this time, it had a powerful effect on Abram. Back in Genesis 12, when God told Abram to leave his country, people and his father’s household, Abram left (Gen 12:1-4). When God reappeared to Abram after the separation form Lot, Abram built an altar to the LORD (Gen 13:18) The third and previous occasion of the Lord’s appearance to Abram was the promise of an heir to Abram. Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness. (Gen 15:1-6)
At this point God appeared to Abraham, and the adventure starts all over again. Now Abram fell on his face twice in awe, worship, fear and reverence (17:3, 17). He fell on his face before God for the first time for a valid reason. The Lord God declared, also for the first time, that He was El-Shaddai, Almighty, Omnipotent.
We need to renew our relationship with God, to cherish our walk with Him, and to kindle a warm glow in our lives, a deep longing and a heightened sensitivity for Him. There should be a fear, a reverence of God in our lives. Not fear in the negative emotional sense, but in the positive and godly sense, sometimes known as holy fear. It’s the difference between scaring us to death or waking us to life in Him! We need the latter.
Are you green and growing, or ripe and rotten? Have you made necessary changes to improve your prayer life, devotional life, and Christian living?
IDENTIFY YOUR MISSION IN LIFE
5 No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. 6 I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. 7 I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. 8 The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God." 9 Then God said to Abraham, "As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. (Gen 17:5-9)
Several centuries before Christ, Alexander the Great came out of Macedonia and Greece to conquer the Mediterranean world. On one of his campaigns, Alexander received a message that one of his soldiers had been continually, and serious misbehaving and thereby shedding a bad light on the character of all the Greek troops. And what made it even worse was that the soldiers’ name was also Alexander. When the commander learned this, he sent word that he wanted to talk to the errant soldier in person. When the young man arrived at the tent of Alexander the Great, the commander asked him, "What is your name?"
The reply came back, "Alexander, sir." The commander looked him straight in the eye and said forcefully, "Soldier, either change your behavior or change your name."
Next, Abraham and Sarai were given new names, signifying a new role, responsibility, and response to the needs of others. They were given inspiring, illuminating and illustrious names, to make them extend outside their little world, preoccupation, and self-interest. Abraham discovered he had a personal call, a divine mission, and a global outreach to others. Abraham was still the living message for people to read, the open book for all to see, and the personal testimony to tell.
Abram or the Exalted father had now become Abraham, the Father of a multitude. And Sarai (17:15) or "my princess" became simply Sarah or “princess.” The narrow world of Sarai opened up to a whole new world of possibilities. She was no longer Abram’s little princess but the mother had to drop the narrow personal pronoun to national and universal implications.
God has not saved us to be window display, fake jewelry, or museum pieces. We are servants, subjects and soldiers of the Almighty for a purpose: to be as citizens of the world, lights to the world, and witnesses in the world.
Have you discovered God’s mission for you on earth? What part has God prepared for you? How have you contributed to God’s work of ministry?
INSTRUCT YOUR FAITH TO WORK
15 God also said to Abraham, "As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. 16 I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her." 17 Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, "Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?" 18 And Abraham said to God, "If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!" 19 Then God said, "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. (Gen 17:15-19)
A wife invited some people to dinner. At the table she turned to their six-year-old daughter and said, “Would you like to say the blessing?” “I wouldn’t know what to say,” the girl replied. “Just to say what you hear Mommy say,” the wife answered. The daughter bowed her head and said, “Lord, why on earth did I invite all these people to dinner?”
Abraham’s faith was in need of maintenance, repair, or overhaul. Without knowing it, he was out of gas, water and engine oil. In his journey of faith, his battery needed recharging, his tires needed replacing, and his filter was blocked. The patriarch had traveled miles and miles, places to places, years and years in his life.
Abraham expected nothing extraordinary from God, apart from the usual heir pronouncement. God’s discourse, Abraham’s response, and His conversation with Abraham were fine until God dropped a bombshell on Abraham who could not stop laughing, thinking of Sarah, and believing a mistake was made. The ninety-nine year-old Abraham (17:1) had stopped dreaming, suspended belief in miracles, and ceased hoping for Sarah to conceive. Abraham was kind of over the hill and, like they say, picking up speed. He was a year from reaching the century mark, the last time God spoke to him was thirteen years ago (16:16,17:1), and his son Ishmael was a teenager now.
Abraham grinned, laughed out, and joked to himself. The problem was that Abraham had reached a standstill, lost his way, and hit a mid-life crisis in his life without knowing it. God could say anything general to Abraham, but not anything specific.
A spiritual check-up was necessary on the Father of faith. Unlike the land promise in the not too distant future, Abraham was shaken this time because the announcement of an heir is more immediate - a son he will see in his lifetime, really specific - a boy by the name of Isaac, and too familiar - his wife Sarah whom he knew too well.
This was too much for Abraham. His instinctive reaction was to laugh, keep the joke to himself. Isaac’s birth was the biggest joke around. His father (17:17), mother (18:12-15), and neighbors laughed (21:6), in different degrees. The difference between Abraham’s laughter here and Sarah’s in the next chapter is that Abraham laughed and talked to God about it. Sarah laughed alone - annoyingly, quietly, and directly. She had no reply, question or trust. Abraham laughed and talked to God, Sarah laughed to herself, and the neighbors laughed with her.
Conclusion: Do people smell the fragrance of God in you? Do they see the fruit of the Spirit? Do they praise God for His work in you? The Bible says, “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good” (1 Peter 2:2-3).
Victor Yap
Other sermons in the series and other sermon series:
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