This is going to be a PG-13 kind of sermon. The key thing to remember is this: God is God Most High. I want you to keep it in mind, so I am going to say it again: God is God Most High.
This chapter follows the same pattern as Chapter 16. There is an introduction describing Abram’s age, two scenes, and then a concluding note about Abram and Ishmael. The only thing I am going to say about that concluding note is this: Abraham responded to God’s command that very day. It is a reflection of how powerful and convicting is the LORD; that when God told Abram to do something that was going to hurt – and hurt badly – Abram was convinced that it was essential and non-negotiable. I can only imagine how completely convinced I would have had to be in order to not want to sleep on it and figure out if there might be another way. Nope, not Abram; he went out and self-circumcised and circumcised all the other males in his family that very day.
What’s the strangest thing God has every commanded you to do?
Back to Chapter 17. The introduction sets the scene. God reminded Abram of his identity. Then there were two scenes in which God’s promises were confirmed: first, the covenant he made previously; and, then second, the promise of a child by Sarah. Let me walk through these briefly.
Introduction: God’s name and power.
The introduction begins by giving us Abram’s age at 99. He was 75 when God started him on this adventure in Chapter 12. If you look at the end of Chapter 16, you will see that Abram was 86 when Ishmael was born. Thus, 13 years later and Sarai was still not pregnant. Take a moment to ponder that; how long would you wait before you gave up on God’s promise? How long before you thought God had forgotten you?
Waiting on the LORD is not easy. Sometimes promises are fulfilled in a moment, but we see in Scripture that many times promises are fulfilled only after a long period of waiting.
Long waits are common in Scripture. Long waits are common in real life. Waiting is tough. The fact of the matter is that we do not do “waiting” any longer. We go through drive-throughs for coffee or food – or we microwave it. We Google things or – if we are too busy to even type in the search – we ask Siri or Alexa to look things up for us. We don’t go to theaters (and not just because of the pandemic), we binge watch shows and movies streaming on our televisions.
Ten years ago, I read a fascinating study entitled, The Tyranny of E-mail, and author John Freeman observed this,
…e-mail has reoriented time; communication that once took hours, days, minutes, now takes seconds, and the permitted reply time has shrunk as well. Let an e-mail linger for a day, and you risk a rift in a relationship. A 2006 Cisco research paper concluded that failing to respond to a sender can lead to a swift breakdown in trust. Lose an e-mail forever, and you are sitting on an unexploded land mine.
Now, e-mail is too slow. We text or Zoom or Facetime. If I want someone’s attention, I may try e-mail. I am old-school enough to use full sentences and punctuation, so I start with e-mail. Then, if I have not had a response within a few minutes – no more than an hour – I figure they have not read it. So, I text. If that does not get a response quickly enough, I will call. I treat God this way, too. I almost think of my prayers as spiritual texting. If the answer to my prayers is not immediately evident, I can feel my trust in God wane. I find myself wondering, Is God real? Does he care, does he really deliver on his promises? For Abram at age 99, he had been waiting for 13 years after the last promise; and by now it seemed like a pretty good certainty that Sarai was not going to be able to get pregnant.
This is why God’s opening line was so important: “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless.” Melchizedek had called him “El-Elyon” or “God Most High.” Hagar named him “El-Roi”, “the God who sees;” but here, it is God who himself provides the name, “El-Shaddai.” The name God used here was “El Shaddai. ” It means, literally, God Almighty. It is not a boast when God tells Abram his name; it is a re-introduction. It is the theological equivalent of the Preschool song, “My God is so big; so strong and so mighty; there’s nothing my God cannot do, for you.” Remember? “The mountains are his, the rivers are his, the stars and the universe, too; woohoo! My God is so big; so strong and so mighty; there’s nothing my God cannot do, for you!”
How big is your God? “I am God Most High.” When I read that, it almost seems like an aside. It is something I take for granted. Yes, yes, ok God, that’s fine. However, words do not capture the full presence of God that Abram experienced because when God said his name, Abram fell on his face. Abram was overwhelmed, engulfed, and powerless before God Most High.
Friends, we have to remember that God is altogether other – God is not like us. Whenever God appears in Scripture, humans cower in fear and/or worship. That is not a literary device; it is a description of the awesome power and holiness of the presence of God. Awe and wonder and amazement are the appropriate human responses to the omnipotent character of God. If you are not awed by your contemplation of who God is, let me encourage you to take time today to consider why not – and then to take time to reconsider. God is God Most High and is awesome.
After providing his name to Abram, God said, “walk before me, and be blameless.” Do not rush over this. God is not just a power out there, somewhere, doing godly things in a godly way that do not impact who you are. No, God is personal. He is God Almighty, but he also is God of you and God of me. I want to be careful saying that because in today’s language we have mixed things up. We talk about “your God,” and “my God” as if we get to choose our god or that somehow we possess God; as if somehow our opinion of who God is places God under our control. God is God of you and God of me. He has the authority to tell Abram, “Walk before me.” In other words, let me see some active obedience. “Be blameless.” Be holy as God is holy.
Scene 1: Covenant and Circumcision
Then we get to the first scene in verses 4-14. God repeated and expounded upon previous promises. He changed Abram to Abraham so that the name meant “father of many.” He also repeated the promise of the land. God said that the land would be a perpetual holding of his people, and he would be their God.
God also introduced the command to Abram to circumcise himself and every male among his clan and all his male descendants. “It shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.” The significance of God’s command was made explicit in verse 14, “Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”
What is the deal with this?
Philo of Alexandria, a Jew who also was a Greek philosopher, lived during Jesus’ life. His historical accounts and interpretations are helpful because they reveal how things were understood in Jesus’ day.
Philo lists four reasons given by others for circumcision: (1) for health, to prevent infection; (2) for purification; (3) for teaching the similarity between procreation and thought; and (4) for improving fertility. Then he added two other reasons of his own that he regarded as most important: first, to teach in a symbolic way that a man must remove lust from himself and control his thoughts; second, to teach that no one can achieve perfection if he does not remove every evil from his heart.[1]
Circumcision was known in the ancient world. Archaeology has unearthed a number of ancient cultures in which this rite was described and practiced. The meaning of circumcision outside of the meaning provided here in Genesis 17 is still obscure; most places where it was described it simply cited the tradition as being passed down from generations past.
The reason why I mention that circumcision was practiced in other cultures is because I want to point out something else about El Shaddai, God Almighty. God takes up things that already exist in our experience and re-purposes them for his own use. He vests his holy meaning in the common actions. He took this ceremony and action and gave a new meaning for it, “It shall be a sign of the covenant between you and me.”
This is only one of the first we see. Later, in Exodus, we will see Moses institute the Passover meal using bread and wine to remember the events that led the people from slavery to a covenant relationship with the living God. Even later, we will see Jesus take ordinary bread and an ordinary cup and re-purpose their common meaning for his holy purpose, signaling the new covenant. Here, God takes this ordinary rite and re-purposes it for his holy purpose. The purpose of this rite is to be a sign of the covenant – the reality of God, his relationship to the people, and the truth of his promises.
The other thing I want to mention about circumcision is how it is a demonstration of obedience – even when obedience costs or hurts. To refuse to obey God is to literally be cut off from the covenant. It does not void the covenant; it is to bring down the sanctions for disobedience – those who curse are themselves accursed.
We generally do not think about pain as something involved in a relationship with God. It is odd that we do not, because Scripture is filled with examples of people whose encounters with God are personally painful. Abram had to undergo circumcision. Jacob would wrestle with God all night and have his hip put out of joint; he walked with a limp for the rest of his life. Isaiah found himself in the throne room of God, and when he cried out because of his sinfulness and he had a hot coal put to his lips in order to burn away all of his unrighteousness.
Pain is not an indication of the absence of God. Pain does not mean we are out of God’s favor, God is far away, or God does not care. Pain can be a blessing.
"Dr. Paul W. Brand, the noted leprosy expert who was chief of the rehabilitation branch of the Leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana, had a frightening experience one night when he thought he had contracted leprosy. Dr. Brand arrived in London one night after an exhausting transatlantic ocean trip and long train ride from the English coast. He was getting ready for bed, had taken off his shoes, and as he pulled off a sock, discovered there was no feeling in his heel. To most anyone else this discovery would have meant very little, a momentary numbness. But Dr. Brand was world-famous for his restorative surgery on lepers in India. He had convinced himself and his staff at the leprosarium that there was no danger of infection from leprosy after it reached a certain stage. The numbness in his heel terrified him.
"In her biography of Dr. Brand, Ten Fingers for God, Dorothy Clarke Wilson says, "He rose mechanically, found a pin, sat down again, and pricked the small area below his ankle. He felt no pain. He thrust the pin deeper, until a speck of blood showed; still he felt nothing... He supposed, like other workers with leprosy, he had always half expected it... In the beginning probably not a day had gone by without the automatic searching of his body for the telltale patch, the numbed area of skin." All that night the great orthopedic surgeon tried to imagine his new life as a leper, an outcast, his medical staff's confidence in their immunity shattered by his disaster. And the forced separation from his family. As night receded, he yielded to hope and in the morning, with clinical objectivity, "with steady fingers he bared the skin below his ankle, jabbed in the point--and yelled.""
Blessed was the sensation of pain! He realized that during the long train ride, sitting immobile, he had numbed a nerve. From then on, whenever Dr. Brand cut his finger, turned an ankle, even when he suffered from "agonizing nausea as his whole body reacted in violent self-protection from mushroom poisoning, he was to respond with fervent gratitude, 'Thank God for pain!'"[2]
God is not shy about telling us to do something that is extremely painful for his holy purpose. Pain often drives us back to God. It reminds us how thoroughly dependent we are on God for our well-being. Here, Abram has to circumcise himself and all those in his household. The pain of circumcision was temporary (thank God) but the scarring or change caused by the painful action was a permanent reminder of the covenant God had sworn with Abraham and his descendants.
Do you ever look back on a painful situation in your own life and see how God has born fruit from it? Have you prayed and prayed for God to say yes, only to hear “no,” go through all of the emotion of grieving the loss of your dream, and later realized what a blessing it is that God said no – even though it hurt so much at the time? We look on our scars and remember how we got them and where we have come since.
Circumcision was a sign of the irrevocable promise of God to Abraham. It was an outward manifestation of an inward or invisible reality.
Scene 2: Name Changes and Sarah’s Baby.
At this point, Abraham must have thought God was about done. God had identified himself, reminded Abraham of the promise, changed Abraham’s name to confirm the promise (Abraham means father of many), ordered Abraham to do something, and declared the consequence of failing to comply.
But wait, God was not done.
“As for Sarai, your wife,” said God. Uh-oh. Any sentence that begins that way – “as for Sarai, your wife” – is suspect. Right? Any time there is an abrupt change in the subject to get to your spouse, you know it is going to be trouble: either you are going to have to defend your spouse, or you are going to have to tell your spouse something that is going to be difficult. Abraham may have wondered if he was going to have to answer for Sarai’s treatment of Hagar.
You can imagine Abraham’s relief when God told him to change Sarai’s name to Sarah. OK, that was not so bad; it is a slightly different pronunciation, but not a big deal because it means practically the same thing. But wait, there is more.
God said, “I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her.” That was the bombshell. That was the one that threw Abraham. For the second time in this chapter, he fell down before the LORD in amazement. He laughed. It was ridiculous. He asked himself, “Really? Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” How does that match up with the questions you would ask if you were in his shoes; how does that match up with your questions as we read this chapter today?
Then, Abraham’s verbal response to the LORD was along the same lines. In essence, Abraham said, “Be reasonable. Who is going to believe that? Let Ishmael (who is alive and tangible and well) be the one. That makes sense. I can understand that.”
But what is impossible in human eyes is not impossible in God’s eyes. Remember, Abraham was talking to “God Almighty.” One measure of God’s “almighty-ness” is his ability to do things that are not humanly or naturally possible. Sure enough, God answered Abraham’s response with absolute certainty, “No, but your wife Sarah shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac (meaning “he laughs.”).” Ishmael will be blessed, said the Lord, but it is Isaac through whom the covenant would be established. Further, God put a time frame on it; within a year, Sarah would be pregnant and give birth to a son.
Centuries later, we look at this story and wonder, “what really happened?” There is no humanly reasonable way to explain or discount what happened. The question you have to ask yourself is this, “Do I believe that God is Almighty?” Do I believe that God is capable of doing things that do not make sense? Can God give life to what is – for all intents and purposes – dead? As we sit here today, how many ninety-year-old bodies would be able to bear a child? It does not happen. And yet, Scripture tells us it did here. God does what He says he will do.
What else does Scripture tell us? Just as God made Isaac happen for Abraham and Sarah, so God will make happen the promises we have seen in Jesus. That’s where our New Testament lesson comes into play.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” We have the promise of eternal life in Jesus Christ. God promised it and will do it. He is doing it. He is God Most High.
We are promised “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” God promised it and will do it. He is doing it. He is God Most High.
Friends, God does what He promises to do. He fulfills His promises in His own time, which often is not our time. “In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
Even in the midst of the toughest times, hold onto that hope, live into that hope, and go out to share with others the hope that is found within you. Hope because God’s promise is an everlasting promise.
You can trust God’s promises. Why? God does what He promises to do. He is God Most High.
Amen.
Prayer
Closing Hymn #43 Great Is Thy Faithfulness
Questions:
What is the strangest thing God has every commanded you to do? What happened?
- How long are you willing to wait before your trust in God begins to wane?
- How big is your God?
[1] Gordon J. Wenham, Word Biblical Commentary, Genesis, Vol. 2., p. 23
[2]Dorothy Clarke Wilson, Ten Fingers for God, pp. 142-145.