About this sermon
The Lord promised childless Abram a son and offspring as numerous as the stars, and Abram believed the Lord, who counted it to him as righteousness. God kept his covenant word, and in his time Sarah, past the age, conceived and bore Isaac. By faith Sarah considered him faithful who had promised, and the God who does what is impossible with man has saved his people in Christ.
Sermon transcript
We turn now to the reading of God’s inspired word, and you’ll notice that we have a number of passages this morning from the book of Genesis in particular, and then we’ll turn over to the book of Hebrews once again in chapter 11. We begin our reading of God’s word in Genesis chapter 15, and there we’ll read verses one through six. Hear the word of God.
After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, Do not fear, Abram. I am a shield to you. Your reward shall be very great. Abram said, O Lord God, what will you give me, since I am childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus? And Abram said, Since you have given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir. Then, behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, This man will not be your heir, but one who will come forth from your own body. He shall be your heir. And he took him outside and said, Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them. And he said to him, So shall your descendants be. Then he believed in the Lord, and he reckoned it to him as righteousness. Thus far, the reading of God’s word in Genesis 15, 1 to 6. We turn over now to Genesis 17, where we’ll read verses 15 through 19. We continue the reading of God’s inspired word, Genesis 17, beginning with verse 15 through verse 19.
Then God said to Abraham, as for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her and indeed I will give you a son by her. Then I will bless her and she shall be a mother of nations. Kings of peoples will come from her. Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said in his heart, will a child be born to a man 100 years old? And will Sarah, who is 90 years old, bear a child? And Abraham said to God, oh, that Ishmael might live before you. Thus far, the reading of God’s word in Genesis chapter 17. Let’s turn over now to Genesis 18, where we’ll read verses one through 15. Again, hear the word of God.
Now the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre while he was sitting at the tent door in the heat of the day. When he lifted up his eyes and looked, behold, three men were standing opposite him. And when he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself down to the earth and said, my Lord, if now I have found favor in your sight, please do not pass your servant by.
Please let a little water be brought and wash your feet and rest yourselves under the tree. And I will bring a piece of bread that you may refresh yourselves. After that, you may go on, since you have visited your servant.’ And they said, so do as you have said.
So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah and said, quickly prepare three measures of fine flour, knead it, and make bread cakes. Abraham also ran to the herd and took a tender and choice calf and gave it to the servant, and he hurried to prepare it. He took curds and milk and the calf which he had prepared and placed it before them, and he was standing by them under the tree as they ate.
Then they said to him, Where is Sarah your wife? And he said, There in the tent. He said, I will surely return to you at this time next year. And behold, Sarah, your wife will have a son. And Sarah was listening at the tent door, which was behind him.
Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age. Sarah was past childbearing. Sarah laughed to herself, saying, after I have become old, shall I have Pleasure, my Lord, being old also. And the Lord said to Abraham, why did Sarah laugh, saying, shall I indeed bear a child when I am so old? Is anything too difficult for the Lord? At the appointed time, I will return to you at this time next year, and Sarah will have a son. Sarah denied it, however, saying, I did not laugh, for she was afraid. And he said, no, but you did laugh.
Then the men rose up from there and looked down towards Sodom and Abraham was walking with them to send them off. Thus far, the reading of God’s word from the book of Genesis. Finally, from Genesis, we turn one more time to chapter 21 and here reading verses one through eight. hear the word of the Lord. Then the Lord took note of Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised.
So Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age at the appointed time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him whom Sarah bore to him, Isaac. Then Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old as God had commanded him. Now Abraham was 100 years old when his son Isaac was born to him.
Sarah said, God has made laughter for me. Everyone who hears will laugh with me. And she said, who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have born him a son in his old age. The child grew and was weaned, and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned.
The word of the Lord. Turn with me now over into the New Testament book of Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews 11, we begin reading at verse one. We continue to read the inspired word of the true and living God. Verse one, now faith is the assurant of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen, for by it the men of old gained approval.
By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. By faith, Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, to which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous. God testifying about his gifts and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks. By faith, Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death, and he was not found because God took him up, for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up, he was pleasing to God. And without faith it is impossible to please him, for he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him.
By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness, which is according to faith. By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance, and he went out not knowing where he was going.
By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise. For he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. By faith, even Sarah herself received ability to conceive, even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore there was born even of one man, and him as good as dead, at that, as many descendants as the stars of heaven in number, and innumerable as the sand which is by the sea shore.
All these died in faith without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own. And indeed, if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country that is a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
The word of the Lord. Amen. Let’s pray together, shall we? Almighty God, we do thank you for the scriptures of the Old and the New Testament, and we are thankful for that grace and gift of faith which was made manifest in days of old, which continues to be made manifest through the redemption which you are still accomplishing among your people to the ends of the earth. we pray today the reading of your word the preaching thereof and the hearing of these would cause us each to grow in grace and faith in love and in service and honor to our king the lord jesus christ our father we would also take time now to pray for Haley’s sister Paige and her husband who have just in this past week lost a young child and we pray God that you would comfort them in the midst of their affliction that by the grace of faith they would look to you and be content trusting you for things yet to come. May you provide all things needful. Our father fill our hearts with compassion and love and kindness and prepare us as a people to be ready to receive in full the word of God. We pray these things together now in Jesus name. Amen.
In Genesis 15, we read, the word of the Lord came to Abram, quote, in a vision, unquote. Indeed, all of Genesis 15, if you were to read the whole of that chapter, deals with what Abram experienced in that vision. It is true that Abram’s trance-like state changed into a very deep sleep that the Lord sent over him. We see that in Genesis 15 and verse 12. A sleep comes upon Abram, not unlike the sleep that came upon Adam in Genesis chapter two, verse 21, during the creation of Eve.
But this changed from to a deep sleep that we read, gives us no reason to assume that the vision came to an end at verse five, after God said, this man Eliezer of Damascus, born in Abram’s house, and whom Abram assumed was to be his heir, God said, this man will not be your heir, but one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir. Further, in this same vision, the Lord took Abram outside and said, Now look toward the heavens. Count the stars, if you are able to count them. And he said to him, So shall your descendants be.
S.G. de Graaf, well-known commentator, says, it is likely that Abram’s trance-like state, with all that happened in it, did not last from one night, verse five, to another night, verse 12. In other words, it does not seem, what is contained here in chapter 15, does not seem to have taken any longer than one 12-hour period. In a vision, as in a dream, we can live through several days in a short period of time.
The point is that the Lord’s dealing with Abram in Genesis 15 happened in accordance with the covenant, the covenant which God had already established by virtue of the calling of Abram and the promise recorded and given to him in Genesis chapter 12. In Genesis 15, the Lord shows Abram who he is, that is, who the Lord is in the covenant.
What it boils down to is that the Lord is everything to Abram. The Lord says to Abram, I am a shield to you, your reward shall be very great. The Lord does not propose to reward Abram here in material terms, for he himself, that is, God himself, is Abram’s treasure, the reward he would receive through faith. In the vision, the Lord, in essence, said to him, don’t be afraid, Abram.
Don’t worry about being a stranger, an alien in this land. For I am a shield for you. I am your security in this land. I am your very great reward. I am your treasure and your very great possession. For I give you my love completely. Paraphrasing the word of the Lord. Abram must have been overjoyed and would have felt very privileged to receive this great revelation. What bliss. But for Abram, this awareness was not everything. He was not concerned exclusively with his own personal happiness.
He still wondered what to make of those promises that the Lord had given him in Genesis chapter 12. The Lord had told him that he would have many descendants, that he would become the father of a great nation, and that he would carry the banner of the knowledge of the Lord into the whole world. He had been promised that those descendants would serve the Lord and possess the land of Canaan. However, those descendants were far off in the future. There stood old man Abram, still completely alone without a single child. What was he now to say to the Lord? Would he complain that the promise could not possibly be fulfilled?
No, Abram believed in the Lord. What the Lord says is the truth. The Lord can be relied on. Therefore, Abram placed himself in the Lord’s hands in faith and rested in him. He believed the Lord and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness. Abram rested in the Lord’s promise and in the Lord himself. Then in Genesis 17, 1 and 2 we read, Now when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, I am God Almighty.
Walk before me and be blameless. I will establish my covenant between me and you, and I will multiply you exceedingly. When the Lord revealed himself to Abram in Genesis 17 as God the Almighty, he was pointing specifically to his own omnipotence, not as the creator, but as the one who turns the covenant promises into reality. What he was really telling Abram in verse 2 of chapter 17 is this, I will give my covenant. In other words, God would fulfill the covenant promise and make it real. This promise would be fulfilled through a miracle. Here, for the first time, Genesis 17, God revealed that Sarai, Abram’s wife, will be the mother of that promised seed promised to Abram. Even though Abram and Sarai had both grown very old. In a revelation of His omnipotent grace, the Almighty God, would make the promise come true in a miraculous way.
He said to Abram, No longer shall your name be called Abram. Your name shall be Abraham, for I will make you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings will come forth from you. Moreover, God said to Abraham, as for Sarai, your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name.
Genesis 17 and verse 15. I will bless her, says the Lord. And indeed, I will give you a son by her. Then I will bless her and she shall be a mother of nations. Kings of peoples will come from her. And how did Abraham respond? Did Abraham believe God and rejoice? Look closely again at Genesis 17 verse 17. I’ll wait for you to find that text if you would. Genesis 17 verse 17. How did Abraham respond to this great promise?
For a lifetime, mind you, Abram had known his wife by name as Sarai. But the word of God, which reveals things hidden and makes them known, tells us what Abraham says in his heart, where only God can see what is in his heart. As this man, Abram, who had now been given a new name, Abraham, laughed, he asks, Will a child be born to a man 100 years old? And will, listen carefully, and will Sarah, this is what he’s saying in his heart, and will Sarah, who is 90 years old, bear a child? In his heart, where only God can see, this man of faith, Abraham, recognizes that his wife, Sarah, has been given a new name too, just as he had.
As he considered the Lord’s promise, which contrasted so sharply with the normal course of events, he had to laugh. Abraham and Sarah were so old that they were practically dead. It seemed impossible that they should have a child. Indeed, the way the Lord fulfilled his promise did run counter to all human expectations. A child would be born to two old people.
This birth would come forth out of death, and it would be, to be sure, an utter miracle. Just as in God’s redemption of the world, it is a miracle. The virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word becoming flesh, His bitter suffering, His shameful death on the cross, His glorious resurrection from the dead, and God in turn turning to the world in saving grace for the sake of Christ.
Believe it, it is one great miracle from beginning to end. That work of redemption runs counter to all human expectations. But the Lord uses that very miracle to show us that He is indeed God the Almighty, as He declares to Abram. Do we believe in that miracle God chose to perform in order to redeem the world? If so, God can and surely will perform the miracle of turning our own death into life.
As Abraham worshipped and laughed before the Lord, note the text, he was also thinking of his son Ishmael. Now, he must have realized all the more clearly the impatience that he and Sarah had manifested earlier. Because of that unbelieving impatience, unwillingness to wait on the Lord, Abram had previously taken his wife’s Egyptian handmaid, Hagar, as his wife, that he might bear a son, Ishmael, through her. And Abram said to God, Genesis 17 verse 18, Oh, that Ishmael might live before you. But God said, No, but Sarah, your wife will bear you a son and you shall call his name Isaac. And I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant and for his descendants after him. Genesis 17 verse 19. Thus the Lord repeated his promise that Sarah would still have a child and commanded Abraham to name the child Isaac. A name which means, by the way, laughter. What else could it be? That name would show how Abraham had laughed about the miracle that God was about to perform. Just as we too can laugh in delight as we think of God’s miracles.
In Genesis 18, it is recorded that the Lord appeared to Abraham, coming in the form of three angels, appearing to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, while he was sitting at the tent door in the heat of the day. When Abraham saw the three men approaching, he recognized the Lord immediately. Of course, the Lord had already appeared to him many times by that time. As S.G. de Graaf once again indicates, Abraham’s words in Genesis 18 and verse 4, My Lord, if I have now found favor in your sight, please do not pass your servant by.
That response of Abraham points to something more than merely Eastern hospitality. In this context, the Lord let Abraham know what he was going to do, since Abraham was to found a great nation, and to bring great blessing on all the nations of the earth. Abraham was the bearer of the promise, and in him the victory of God would be assured.
Therefore, God made him, that is, Abram, his fellow worker. One purpose of the Lord’s appearance there in this text in Genesis 18 in particular was to encourage Sarah’s belief so that in faith she could receive the ability and the strength to conceive and bear the child of promise.
The Lord accomplished this in Sarah by chastening her for her unbelief. While the three men were eating at Abraham’s invitation, they asked about Sarah, for they had come mainly on her account. However strange the promise may have seemed to him, Abraham really believed that he and his wife would have a son in their old age. Unfortunately, Sarah had not yet come that far, yet she too would have to believe if she was ever going to conceive and receive a child.
Therefore, the Lord purposed to bring her to faith. Evidently, the angel of the Lord was sitting in front of the tent with his back to its opening. In a voice so loud that even Sarah could not help but hear, the Lord said that she would bear a son in about a year. The Lord himself was speaking to her. Surely she would believe now.
Yet she laughed at this word of the Lord, feeling that it was simply impossible for her to become a mother. She was far too old, and so too was her husband. The Lord then asked Abraham why Sarah had laughed. Was there anything too wonderful for the Lord? At this point, the Lord repeated his promise with emphasis. Sarah now had to reveal herself, but she denied that she had laughed, for she was afraid of the Lord.
The Lord reprimanded her for her unbelief, saying, No, but you did laugh. To be sure, unbelief and doubt are sin. The word of the Lord is indeed the truth. We should not doubt his word. By means of the Lord’s rebuke, Sarah was brought to faith. And by that faith, she did receive the ability to conceive that she would receive her baby from the Lord for her as well as for us. The Lord’s promises would be fulfilled by faith alone. According to promise, Sarah gave birth to Isaac. No doubt when Isaac was born, Sarah must have left a great laughter.
Her question of doubt, after I have become old, shall I have pleasure, my Lord being old also? Genesis 18, 12. In Genesis 21, verse six, Sarah said, God has made laughter for me. Everyone who hears will laugh with me. She adds, who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have born him a son in his old age. So it is that our writer of Hebrews testifies in chapter 11, verse 11.
By faith, even Sarah herself received ability to conceive even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore there was born even of one man, and him as good as dead at that, as many descendants as the stars of heaven in number, and innumerable as the sand which is by the sea shore. To be sure, Sarah, like the others named in Hebrews 11, died in faith without receiving the heavenly and eternal promises. But having seen them, and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed, she along with the others, that they were exiles and strangers on the earth, and in so doing fulfilled the promises, waiting upon the fulfilled promises that would come to us all in these latter days, and that by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, in whom is life for them who believe in the blessed seed of Abraham, through whom salvation has come to the world. Out of death, life. Out of His life, Jesus’ death, life forevermore. Let us join today, even now, in the heavenly laughter. As we offer worship and praise to Almighty God, even forever and ever, ours will be a forever of laughter.
Amen. Let’s sing together, shall we? Well, let’s pray together, first of all. Father, we thank you for the word of truth, and we’re thankful for the miracle of our redemption, which has come to us in Christ Jesus. And we ask, Lord, that even now, as we reflect upon this great and wonderful thing accomplished in the days of Abraham and Sarah, bringing birth to Isaac, through whom a nation would come to be, and indeed, a faith that would be Abraham proving to be the father of the faithful throughout the nations, throughout the generations, May we, Lord, rejoice in the hope that is ours and the wonderful things that have been accomplished, things that are impossible for man are possible with the almighty God who has saved us in Christ Jesus. Help us to rejoice, to give thanks, and to sing with joy that which you have made known unto us in Christ Jesus, our Lord, in whose name we pray, amen. So now let us open our hymn books to number 626. Bless the man that fears Jehovah.
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