Transcript and outline generated by AI—please comment if you notice any errors.

Sermon Title: Welcoming the Lord’s Work

Main Texts:

* Luke 1:26–33

* Genesis 18

Outline

I. Introduction: Welcoming the Lord

* Theme introduced: How we respond when God enters our lives

* Opening text: Angel Gabriel's visit to Mary (Luke 1)

II. Mary's Story: Faith and Submission (Luke 1)

* Cultural and historical background of Mary

* Young Jewish girl, likely 13–15 years old

* Deeply rooted in Scripture

* Gabriel’s message

* She will bear a son, Jesus—Son of the Most High

* Mary’s knowledge of biblical patterns

* Miraculous births throughout Scripture: Elizabeth, the Shunammite woman, Hannah, Manoah’s wife, Rachel, Sarah

* Mary's faithful response

* Trusts the impossible: “Let it be to me according to your word”

* Offers her body and life as a vessel for God’s plan

* Isaiah 7:14 fulfilled: “The virgin shall conceive…”

III. Abraham's Story: Lavish Hospitality (Genesis 18)

* Context

* Immediate continuation of Genesis 17 (covenant of circumcision)

* The Lord appears at the Oaks of Mamre

* Abraham sees three men, recognizes the Lord among them

* Abraham's extravagant response

* Rushes to welcome them

* Prepares a lavish meal (20–25 lbs. of flour, tender calf, curds, milk)

* Symbolizes total surrender of his resources to God

* Parallel to Mary

* Abraham, like Mary, welcomes God with all he has

IV. Sarah's Response: Doubt and Denial

* Sarah overhears the promise

* She laughs in disbelief

* Her skepticism is rebuked

* God confronts her: “Why did you laugh?”

* Contrast with Mary

* Sarah doubts due to long delay (25 years of waiting)

* Mary believes despite physical impossibility

V. Application: Recognizing and Responding to God's Presence

* God initiates; we respond

* Through creation, Scripture, and personal calling

* Abraham and Mary welcome God lavishly

* Offer the best they have

* Sarah illustrates delayed hope and fatigue

* But God is still faithful

* Doubt is not sin—denying doubt can be dangerous

* Example of the Psalms: honesty before God

* “How long, O Lord?” prayers reflect faithful lament

* Mark 9: “I believe, help my unbelief”

VI. Encouragement and Practical Homework

* If you’re doubting God’s goodness:

* Write down how you’ve seen God work in your life

* Pray through a psalm each day until Christmas—learn how to talk to God honestly

VII. Conclusion: Trust God, He is For You

* God fulfills His promises

* Isaac is born to Sarah

* Jesus is born to Mary

* Romans 8:28 referenced—God works all things for good

* Mary’s Song (Luke 1:46–55) read in closing

* Expresses deep joy, faith, and biblical richness

Summary

This sermon explores how we respond when God enters our lives, focusing on two biblical examples: Mary and Abraham. Mary responds to an impossible promise with humble faith, while Abraham demonstrates lavish hospitality upon encountering God. In contrast, Sarah laughs in disbelief at God's long-awaited promise, reflecting exhaustion and doubt. The preacher calls us to recognize God’s pursuit of us and respond with trust and surrender. Even in seasons of doubt, we are encouraged to be honest with God and remain rooted in Scripture—especially the Psalms. Ultimately, we are reminded that God is good, faithful, and worthy of being welcomed into every part of our lives.

Transcript

We're going to be back in Genesis chapter 18 as we have been, but before we get there, I'm going to turn to Luke chapter 1. This is a sermon about welcoming the Lord. Luke chapter 1, I'm going to read verses 26 to 33 to begin with.

In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you. But she was greatly troubled at the saying and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

I want you to imagine this scenario. Mary is a young girl. She's betrothed to a man named Joseph. In that society, betrothal to be married would have happened probably in her early to mid teenage years. So this is a girl of maybe 13 to 15 years old. She's from, as we're going to see, a deeply religious household. They're devout Jews. She knows the scriptures very well. But regardless of how religious your upbringing, to have the angel Gabriel show up and say, "Hi, Mary, how are you?" would be terrifying. And she's greatly troubled, it says, at this message. But he comes to her, and this is the message that he has: you are going to conceive and bear a son.

As I said, we can see from Mary's song later on in this chapter that she is a young woman who knows the scriptures very, very well. As a teenager, she knows—I would say she knows the Bible better than probably most pastors in 21st-century America do. And she would know that when an unexpected person gets pregnant, it means God is on the move, that something is happening. We see this over and over again.

Earlier in Luke chapter 1, we read of God coming to Zachariah, the priest, as he's serving in the house of the Lord. And Zachariah is an old man. His wife, Elizabeth, is an old woman. They're childless. And the angel comes to Zachariah and says, your wife who has been called barren is going to bear a son. And it's so difficult for Zachariah to believe that he's like, this can't be. And the angel strikes him mute. He can't even speak until his son is born. And this is six months into her pregnancy that the angel is coming to Mary, and they are related, as we'll see.

So there's that, but then you start backing up in salvation history. The last of the great miracle-working prophets in the Old Testament is Elisha. So there's prophets all through the Old Testament, but really the concentrations of miracles only happen around the ministry of Moses and Joshua, and then Elijah and Elisha. One of the miracles that happens in the ministry of Elisha is he comes to this woman—she's not even referred to by name, she's just known as the Shunammite woman—and she's offered hospitality to the prophet. He promises her that a year later from his meeting with her, she is going to bear a son. She says, that's too good to be true. Don't tell me things that can't happen. And then it happens. Interestingly enough, that son also dies and then is raised from the dead by Elisha later in his ministry.

If you back up further into the start of 1 Samuel, that whole narrative, 1 and 2 Samuel, which mainly focuses on the rise of King David, opens with a barren woman, Hannah, who is longing for a son. When the Lord opens her womb and gives her a son, he is Samuel, the last of the great Old Testament judges who prepares the way for the monarchy, for King Saul, and then ultimately King David to come to power. He anoints King David king.

Backing up further into the book of Judges, the judge who gets the most airtime in the book of Judges is Samson, who is born to Manoah and his wife, who are also childless and longing for a son. It seems like they aren't going to have any. Then an angel comes to Manoah and promises, your wife will bear a son.

In the book of Genesis, Rachel, the beloved wife of Jacob, is childless and struggles mightily over her childlessness. When the Lord gives her a son, he is Joseph, who becomes a central character in chapters 37 to 50 of Genesis. Then you come all the way back to Sarah, who we're going to talk about here in Genesis 18 this morning, who is 90 years old and had been promised a son 25 years earlier, and nothing had happened. Until ultimately the Lord gives her a son.

Mary is going to hear this promise and have all of that background in play. And so she knows this is hard to believe. She's going to ask, how can this be since I am a virgin? You know, those other people, they were barren. They were old ladies. And it would seem unlikely for them to have children. But she says, for me, it's a physical impossibility. And yet she knows that if the unexpected woman is going to bear a son, it means—aslan is on the move, right? There's something strange happening when the unexpected woman gives birth to a child.

Again, she's not simply barren. She's never known a man, the text tells us. She's a virgin. Verses 34 and following: Mary said to the angel, How will this be, since I am a virgin? And the angel answered her, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called Holy, the Son of God.

And that language of the Most High will overshadow you echoes back to Genesis and the language of the Spirit hovering over the face of the waters. God actively working in creation. This isn't pagan mythology where there's intercourse between the gods and human beings. Rather, what we see here is that God is actively doing a special work of creation within the womb of Mary.

And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son and is in the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God. And Mary said, behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word. And the angel departed from her.

I don't know if it popped into her head immediately, but surely she would have thought of Isaiah 7:14, which says, Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel, God with us. And here she's being told by the angel, your son is going to be called Son of the Most High God. God with us is specifically what Joseph is told over in Matthew's account.

What is Mary's response to this news? Her response is to welcome what God is doing. This would have cost her mightily—cost her in social standing. For the rest of her life, people would have whispered about her getting pregnant before she was married. Nobody else is going to believe that she was a virgin when she got married. And we could think maybe 50 or 60 years ago that would have had a whole lot of stigma in our society. Still nothing compared to what it would have been for a first-century Jew.

This is a costly thing for her to receive, for her to bear, and yet she says, let it be done to me as the Lord wills. Let it be to me as you have said. She welcomes the presence of the Lord in her life, the work of the Lord in her life—even in her own body.

And that takes us to Genesis chapter 18. Last week we looked at chapter 17, where God comes to Abram, changes his name to Abraham, and gives him this covenant of circumcision that signifies Abraham's identification with God. All of the males in his household are supposed to take on this sign.

Usually, between the scenes in Genesis, there's quite some period of time. We can skip over a lot of time. That doesn't happen here. Chapter 18 follows quickly on the heels of chapter 17. It says, the Lord appeared to him, appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, which if you will remember is where Abraham had settled. He never builds a permanent home in the land of Canaan, but the oaks of Mamre are where he settled.

He lifted up his eyes, Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing in front of him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth and said, Oh Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought and wash your feet and rest yourselves under the tree while I bring a morsel of bread that you may refresh yourselves. And after that, you may pass on since you have come to your servant. So they said, do as you have said.

Abraham went quickly to the tent of Sarah and said, quick, three seahs of fine flour, knead it and make cakes. Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to a young man who prepared it quickly. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared and set it before them, and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.

The first thing we see here is that God initiates with Abraham again. God is always the one coming to Abraham, and this parallels with what we read in Luke 1, where God sends the angel Gabriel. Gabriel comes to her, and here the Lord appears to Abraham at the oaks of Mamre.

It says Abraham lifts up his eyes, and we're probably supposed to picture this old man sitting at the front of his tent. It's his equivalent of sitting on the porch in a rocking chair. Guy's 100 years old, and he's out there probably dozing off, taking a nap, and he lifts up his eyes, and there's three guys standing here. Where did you come from? But he immediately recognizes who they are. He recognizes their significance. He runs to them.

Now, this is not how a dignified, powerful, older man would normally act—to sprint towards his visitors and bow on the ground before them. Abraham's probably not doing this for anybody else who shows up. They would be coming to him and bowing and saying, “Oh great Abraham, owner of all these possessions, commander of all these men.” But here Abraham sees these fellows come up to him and he runs toward them and prostrates himself on the ground before them and requests that they not pass him by. He says, you've come here. Please let me just go get a little bit of water to wash your feet. Let me go get a morsel of bread to provide something for you. Do not pass me by.

Abraham recognizes the Lord and he welcomes him. That's interesting. Who is he recognizing here? There's three men. Who are these three men?

We're told in verse 1 that the Lord is who appeared to him. Some people will see these three men with the identification of the Lord in verse 1 and say, well, this is an Old Testament instance of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I don't think that's what's happening here. That doesn't really make sense of the text because if you continue on into chapter 19, two of the men go on down into the city of Sodom where Lot is, and they're referred to as angels.

So the two most likely understandings of this are: number one, that one of these men—the primary speaker—is a theophany, an appearance of God in human form. God doesn't have a body—John 4:24 tells us God is spirit, he's immaterial. But in the Old Testament, there are times when it seems that perhaps God is revealing himself in human form so that he can communicate with human beings.

Probably, I think the most likely understanding is that one of these individuals—the one who does most of the speaking—is God revealing himself in human form to Abraham, and the other two are angels who are accompanying him that he's going to send down into Sodom to rescue Lot later on.

It's also possible that all three of them are angels, but because they are from the Lord and are speaking with God's authority, it makes sense for the text to refer to them with the divine title. Like when Abraham speaks to them, he is speaking to the Lord because they are all authorized representatives of God. So that's possible as well. They could all three be angels, or two are angels and one is a theophany—an appearance of God in the Old Testament in human form.

Either way, God has come to Abraham. God is initiating, and Abraham recognizes that. And Abraham welcomes God's intrusion into his life.

You see this in the way that Abraham responds. He begs them to stay, and then the speaker—God—says, do as you have said. After Abraham has said, let me get you a morsel of bread, he runs into the tent and says to Sarah, “Quick, three seahs of fine flour.” Now, I don't know if you know how much a seah is. I didn't know how much a seah was. The equivalent of three seahs is about 20 to 25 pounds of flour. This is not a morsel of bread.

I don't know what your bread recipe calls for, but I'm thinking a pretty good-sized bread recipe would be like 8 to 10 cups, and this would be 10 times that. So this is a lot of bread. Now we know Sarah's not doing this by herself. She has servants, and so they get the bread-making crew together. Then he goes out to the herd and grabs a calf—tender and good—and then he gets milk and curds, which would have been luxury foods. So he is spreading a feast before God. He welcomes God's presence by giving God the very best that he has.

Again, this draws my mind to a parallel with Luke 1, where Mary welcomes the Lord, allowing the Lord to use her body as the home for the Lord Jesus—God the Son—for nine months. She offers the best that she has, all of herself, to the Lord. And here, Abraham, by offering the very best that he has, is symbolically saying, “God, everything that I have is at your disposal. It belongs to you.” Abraham welcomes the Lord's work and the Lord's presence in his life.

How do you respond to the Lord’s pursuit of you? The Lord initiates with each of us. If you've trusted in Christ as your Savior, it's because he's been at work in your heart, drawing you. I think even whether we choose to respond or not, there is a sense in which God initiates with each of us by revealing himself in creation. As we come to places where we hear the Word of God, he's initiating, he's speaking to us.

And then we are called to respond. In each of these times where God reveals himself to Abraham, God is the one initiating, and yet Abraham is responsible to respond to him. Abraham could respond by saying, “No, I don't believe.” But he has chosen—15:6—to believe, and it's counted to him as righteousness. And then that belief always works itself out in his actions.

Well, how do I respond? How do I welcome the Lord in my life? What kind of things do I give to him? Not that he doesn't have everything at his disposal—we don't give things to God because he needs them. God and these angels, they don't need Abraham to feed them. God's not needy here in this text. But Abraham is displaying, “I want God in my life,” by offering him everything that he has.

I think that's an important question for us to consider. Do you recognize and welcome God when he is at work? Do you recognize and welcome his work in your life, even when it might be hard—even when he calls you to do things like Mary, where it could be very costly for you socially?

Abraham lavishly responds to the Lord. He offers him everything he has. He holds nothing back from him. And that stands in parallel with Mary and in contrast with his own wife, Sarah.

Verse 9: they said to him—after they've eaten—they say to Abraham, “Where is Sarah, your wife?” And he says, “She is in the tent.” And the Lord said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah, your wife, shall have a son.” And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him.

Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah. So Sarah laughed to herself saying, “After I am worn out and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?” The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son.” But Sarah denied it, saying, “No, I did not laugh,” for she was afraid. He said, “No, but you did laugh.”

These men have come to reiterate the promise to Abraham that he is going to have a son and that that son will be born about this time the following year. He also comes to reiterate that promise because, if you know the rest of the story here in Genesis 18 and 19, God is about to announce his destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—Sodom being the city where Abraham's nephew Lot lives.

So I think it's important for Abraham's sake that God is coming to remind him of his promise to bless him and to give him a son and to give him descendants. As God is about to exercise judgment on this place where Lot lives, Abraham could read that as, “Ooh, has God given up on my family if this place where Lot has chosen to live is about to be destroyed?” But here God comes and reminds him of the promise: “Hey, remember that I am for you, Abraham. I am for you and for your family.” And he also does it in a way so that Sarah herself directly hears the promise.

We don't know for sure, but it seems like if you go back through the earlier promises that Abraham has received, that he's hearing from God directly and that Sarah's getting it all secondhand. But here Sarah herself, listening at the tent door, is able to hear God speaking to Abraham and giving this promise.

But Sarah, unlike Mary, doesn't hear this and receive it with faithful joy. Instead, she hears it and scoffingly laughs. “Is this even—how is this possible? I am old. My husband is very old.” Remember, she had given up and said, “Maybe take my maidservant. Maybe that's how God's going to give us a child”—thirteen years prior to this. She has given up on God, it would seem.

We shouldn't downplay—she's been very generous with her efforts and with her hospitality in this situation. Abraham storms in the door and says, “Grab 20 pounds of flour and start working.” She's been active in extending hospitality to these men. But you can tell she is just tired of this promise. Twenty-five years they've been waiting for God to come through, and it hasn't happened yet.

In the end, she doesn't even want to admit her own doubts. When the Lord asks Abraham, “Why did she laugh?” verse 15 says Sarah denied having laughed. “I didn't laugh.” Yeah. Yeah, you did. You did. And she's got every earthly reason to, right? Again, she's 90 years old. This promise is 25 years old. Physically, her cycle is not happening anymore. There's no reason to think that she is capable of bearing a child. And yet God keeps promising it.

And it's understandable on a human level that she would just laugh in disbelief. “Whatever, God.”

I think the difference between Mary’s response to God’s impossible promise—for a virgin to conceive, impossible—and Sarah’s response to a highly unlikely promise—for an older woman to conceive—is trust. The difference between “May it be to me as you have said,” and “Really?” is that Mary trusted the goodness of God. And it seems that Sarah has given up on the goodness of God.

Again, twenty-five years after hearing the promise initially, thirteen years after the prior failed attempt to “help God out,” and now with a husband who’s acting crazy—he’s circumcised himself and all of the males in the household, again not very long before this—and he’s asking her to make this lavish feast for three random guys who just showed up. And now I’m supposed to believe the promise is about to come true? “Shall I have pleasure? Will I really hold a son?” It’s a reasonable question to ask.

I wonder this morning, do you doubt the goodness of God? Do you wonder if he is really for you? Do you have things going on in your family, or in your finances, or at work, that make you scratch your head and go, “If God is real…” She doesn’t doubt that God is real. She just doubts that he’s for her.

I honestly don’t remember a time in my life where I’ve wondered if God is real. It just seems so manifestly obvious to me that this can’t all just happen by happenstance. But there have been a lot of times where I’ve wondered, “Are you good? Are you for me? Do you care about me?” And that seems to be where Sarah is at.

I think one of the things we can learn from this text here in Genesis 18 is that if we do doubt him, we should tell him. That doesn’t arise specifically out of the text, but Sarah’s denying the doubts, right? She’s denying that she laughed when God said she would bear a son. And that stands in stark contrast to the Psalms.

The Psalms, which are the songbook—the prayer book—of the Bible. You’ve got 150 of them, where the psalmists, of every emotional and mental state, pour out where they are to God. “How long, O Lord,” is one of the most repeated phrases in the Psalms. Psalm 13: “How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever?” Psalm 79:5: “How long, O Lord, will you be angry forever?” Psalm 89:46: “How long, O Lord, will you hide yourself forever?”

How long, O Lord?

So tell God where you are. Tell God if you doubt his goodness. I often think of the father in Mark 9 who is told to believe, and he says, “I believe—help my unbelief.”

One of the things that I think brings Mary to a state where she can hear this inconceivable news from God and receive it with joy is the fact that she is deeply, deeply rooted in the Scriptures. If you read through her song—the Magnificat—in Luke chapter 1, what you see is that, first of all, her song, even in its structure, is based on Hannah’s song in 1 Samuel 2. Then it is riddled, all the way through, with quotations and allusions—not just to that song, but also to phrases that come all throughout the Psalter. They’re showing up in Mary’s song.

She is a young woman who deeply knows the Lord because she deeply knows his Word.

So if you are doubting the goodness of God this morning, I have a homework assignment for you. And there’s two things.

Number one is to just go home this afternoon and write down the ways that you have seen him work positively in your life. Even if it’s in a hard circumstance—like “You brought me through this, and I learned this lesson,” or “I’ve seen you at work in this way.” Sarah’s forgetting. Yes, it has been a long time on this particular promise. But all the rest of the promises God made to Abraham—they’re already starting to see them fulfilled. God has made Abraham great, made him prosperous, has started to bless everyone around through him. The only thing that hasn’t started to happen is her pregnancy and giving birth to a son. Now, that’s a pretty big thing, right? Sometimes God leaves us waiting on really big things. But he has visibly been at work in her life, and she’s not recognizing that.

So write a list so you can see it in front of you—how God has worked in your life.

And second of all, take the Psalms and, just today, one a day from now until Christmas—I’m not saying you have to do this forever—but just like, from now until Christmas, take one psalm a day and look at how the psalmist talks to God. Try to talk to God like that. Use it as a model for prayer.

If you do that—especially if you do it over an extended period of time—today’s the 15th? Ten days till Christmas. That’s ten. That’s going to give you some variety. If you do it over a long period of time and cover the Psalter, what you’re going to see is that the psalmists come to God in their joys—they come to God when they are high and loving the fact that they know God—and they come to God when they are absolutely in the basement.

Psalm 42 and 43 both have this repeated phrase: “Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” The implication being: he doesn’t even feel like he can praise God. He feels so distant from God at that moment.

God is big enough to handle all of your doubts and all of your worries and all of your misgivings and mistrust. The danger in the Scriptures is not to have those feelings and thoughts. The dangerous thing is to have them and then not go to God with them. If you try to bottle those up and handle them on your own, you are putting yourself in a dangerous situation spiritually. But if you will go to God and be honest with him, he is big enough to handle it.

Friends, we need to welcome the work of the Lord in our life like Mary did, like Abraham is happy to do here. But we will not do so regularly or in the way that we ought to if we do not trust that he really is for us.

It may seem like a promise—like Romans 8:28, that God is working all things together for good—you might look at your circumstances and say, “That’s not possible.” And humanly speaking, it may not be possible for this thing that you’re going through, or that you’re experiencing, or that you’re feeling, to be turned for good. But it is not impossible for the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Not to bury the lead here, but they get their son, right? They get the child. God does bring laughter—not of disbelief—but he brings laughter of joy. Nothing is too hard for him.

I want to close by reading Mary’s song in Luke 1, beginning in verse 46:

And Mary said,“My soul magnifies the Lord,and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;for he who is mighty has done great things for me,and holy is his name.And his mercy is for those who fear himfrom generation to generation.He has shown strength with his arm;he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;he has brought down the mighty from their thronesand exalted those of humble estate;he has filled the hungry with good things,and the rich he has sent away empty.He has helped his servant Israel,in remembrance of his mercy,as he spoke to our fathers,to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”

Friends, the same God that Mary spoke to, the same God who came to Abraham and Sarah, is the same God who is at work in this world today and wants to be at work in your life today. So you should trust him. You can trust him, because he is for you. And so, welcome him.

Let’s pray.

Father, we ask that you would teach us to welcome your work in our life, whether it’s easy and pleasant in the moment or hard and painful. The psalmist writes in Psalm 119 that you are good and do good. And so we ask now that you would teach us your statutes, help us to trust you, to trust in your goodness, and to welcome whatever you would have in our lives. We pray in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.

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Transcription and outline generated by AI—please comment if there are any errors.

I. Introduction: Ceremony and Salvation

* Question posed: What is the relationship between religious rituals and salvation?

* All religions have rituals; Christianity is no exception.

* The preacher asserts: rituals do not save, but they still matter.

II. God's Covenant with Abraham (Genesis 17)

1. God Commands Obedience (vv. 1–2)

* God tells 99-year-old Abram to walk blamelessly before Him.

* Raises the question: Is the covenant conditional or unconditional?

* Conclusion: God initiates it unilaterally, but it involves mutual obligations.

2. God Declares Covenant Promises (vv. 3–8)

* God reiterates and expands His promises:

* Father of many nations.

* Everlasting covenant.

* Land of Canaan.

* “I will be their God.”

* Name change: Abram (“exalted father”) becomes Abraham (“father of a multitude”).

3. God Expects Covenant Obedience (vv. 9–14)

* Sign of the covenant = circumcision.

* All males in Abraham’s household must be circumcised.

* Circumcision doesn't save but represents faith and covenant belonging.

* Two theological reasons for male-only sign:

* Sexual holiness reminder.

* Covenant headship structure (from Adam to Christ).

4. God Clarifies His Promise through Sarah (vv. 15–21)

* Sarai renamed Sarah (“princess”).

* God insists that the promised heir will come through Sarah.

* Abraham laughs at the idea, suggests Ishmael instead.

* God says no—Isaac (whose name means "laughter") will be the covenant child.

* Ishmael will be blessed but is not the heir of promise.

5. Abraham Obeys Immediately (vv. 22–27)

* Abraham and all males in his house are circumcised that very day.

* Displays faith in action.

III. God's Covenant with Us

1. Continuity with Abraham’s Covenant

* Galatians 3: believers are Abraham’s spiritual offspring.

* Justification is by faith, as it was for Abraham.

2. Circumcision Not Required Today

* 1 Corinthians 7: circumcision/uncircumcision means nothing.

* Romans 2: true circumcision is of the heart.

* Physical acts do not bring salvation—faith does.

3. New Testament Sign: Baptism

* Baptism replaces circumcision as the sign of covenant membership.

* Symbolizes union with Christ in death and resurrection.

* Not necessary for salvation, but necessary to obedience.

* True faith expresses itself in obedience (e.g., baptism).

IV. Application: Three Levels of Response

1. For the Unbeliever

* Don’t start with a ritual—start with Christ.

* Trust in Him for salvation.

2. For the Believer Not Yet Baptized

* Baptism is not optional; it is a command of Jesus.

* It’s the public identification with Christ.

3. For the Baptized Believer

* Reflect on God’s grace.

* Like Abraham, even when we stumble, keep walking toward God in faith.

SERMON SUMMARY

This sermon on Genesis 17 explores the relationship between religious rituals and salvation. While ceremonies like circumcision (in the Old Testament) and baptism (in the New Testament) are important, they do not save—faith does. God initiated a covenant with Abraham, commanding obedience and providing a sign (circumcision) that symbolized belonging and commitment.

The promises to Abraham were ultimately fulfilled in Christ. Today, baptism is the sign of entering God’s family—not as a saving work, but as a declaration of faith and obedience. True faith always leads to action. Therefore, those who trust Christ should follow Him in baptism and in all areas of life.

The message ends with a call to three groups: unbelievers (to trust Christ), believers who haven’t been baptized (to obey in baptism), and baptized believers (to marvel at God’s grace and keep walking in faith).

Transcription

If you want to take your Bible and turn to Genesis chapter 17.

What is the relationship of ceremony to salvation? Different religions, different systems of belief all have their own ceremonies and symbols and rites and rituals. This is natural to all human religion—that we develop these systems of how we approach God, how we seek to be made right with God. Is finding the right set of rituals the real key?

Even in Christianity, we have these rituals, right? And different branches of Christianity think there are a different number of rituals that we need. The Roman Catholic Church has the seven sacraments. As Protestants, we believe that there are two sacraments instituted by the Lord Jesus: baptism and the Lord’s Supper—ordinances, as some people prefer to call them. Every religion has these things—these structures, these things that you have to do, that you have to go through. What is the relationship of those things to salvation? Do those rites and rituals bring justification, bring right standing with God?

Now, if you've listened to me preach more than like two sermons, you know my answer to that's going to be no. But if not, do they still matter? Are they still important? Why do they exist if they don’t save? Those are questions that are raised by our text today here in Genesis chapter 17.

So what I'm going to do is walk through the whole chapter, section by section, and then circle back around to press in on some of those questions. In Genesis 17, we see God's covenant with Abram. When Abram was 99 years old—so we left Abram in his mid-80s—he had decided... boy, it's been a long time since God made this promise to me. And Sarai, his wife, who is also quite aged, realizes it’s been a long time since God promised us that there was going to be an heir, that there was going to be many descendants from our family. And so Sarai comes up with a plan: “Well, how about—I've got this maidservant and she could basically serve as a concubine. You could have a child with her and it would count as my child. And maybe that’s how God’s going to bring blessing and descendants to our family.” And that... that doesn’t go so well.

I mean, it works in the sense that Hagar gets pregnant and has a son, Ishmael, but it's not God's plan. And so God doesn't honor that decision in the sense of—that's not how God's going to bring blessing to Abraham's family. There's this giant chunk of time, like 13 years between chapter 16 and 17. And God comes back to Abram now when he's 99 years old. He appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty. Walk before me and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you and may multiply you greatly.”

The first thing we see in chapter 17 is that God comes to Abraham and he commands obedience. He says, “Walk before me and be blameless.” That's pretty tough considering what we know of Abram. We just came off chapter 16, where he disobeys God's design in sexuality. We know earlier in the story in chapter 12, he's willing to kind of twist the truth about his relationship with Sarai so that he’s safer when Pharaoh might decide he wants to have his wife. Abram is not a flawless character. He's not blameless. Is he going to suddenly have the capacity to walk in blamelessness before God? Probably not. But God tells him, “That's your job. You are to walk blamelessly before me.”

And it might be a little confusing when God says, “That I may make my covenant with you.” How many covenants are there with Abram? We know specifically from chapter 15, God has already unilaterally instituted a covenant with Abram and cuts that covenant. And when he has Abram split those animals open, God's presence is represented in the passing of a torch and a fire pot through those sacrifices. So God has put himself already under covenant obligation to Abram. Chapter 12, God calls him out. And then in chapter 22, it's going to speak again of God's covenant with Abram.

And it could seem like, are there two covenants—chapter 15 and chapter 17? Are there five covenants, each of these five times that that kind of language or structure is seen? But the New Testament talks about a covenant with Abram. And what we see is, throughout Abram's life, there is this unfolding of all of the different pieces of God's covenant with him. And so God is just revealing another piece of his covenant here with Abram.

God is going to show Abram more of his obligations—more of Abram’s obligations to God in this covenant. God’s made all kinds of promises to Abram. Now he’s going to tell Abram what he expects of him—namely, obedience. So is this covenant unilateral or is it conditional? Well, it's unilaterally initiated by God. God is the one making all the steps forward, and yet it has mutual obligations. God is making promises, and Abram is expected to respond in obedience and in faith.

The second section of this text, in verses 3 through 8, we see God declaring covenant promises to Abram. Abram fell on his face as God appears before him. If someone appears before you and says, “I am God Almighty,” with the glory of God spread around... we were just reading with the kids the story of the transfiguration from the Gospels. Peter is dumbfounded, and they’re blown away by the glory. Well, that’s probably a similar experience to what Abram has here. He sees the glory of God, God speaks to him, and he falls down on his face. And God says to him, “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession. And I will be their God.”

Now, it’s interesting. In the first couple of verses, God had told Abram, “You walk before me and be blameless that I may make a covenant with you.” And yet immediately afterward, God doesn't wait for Abram to obey him. He hasn’t even told him specifically what to obey yet. God just starts pouring on the promises. He starts telling him, “Here is what is going to happen.” And some of this is a reiteration of things that God has already said to Abram.

He says that this covenant is going to be everlasting, repeating what he had said in chapter 13. He promises him the land of Canaan, which had been promised in chapter 12, and chapter 13, and chapter 15. And most importantly, in verses 7 and 8, God promises to be his God, to be with him: “to be God to you and to your offspring after you.” The very end of verse 8: “I will be their God.” The most precious promise that God ever gives in the Scripture to his people is that he will be with them as their God.

Old Testament scholar Walter Kaiser notes that throughout the Old Testament, there are three things that kind of circle around as three aspects of the promise of God to his people: “I will be their God, they will be my people, and I will dwell in the midst of them.” That comes to its culmination in the book of Revelation in chapter 21, when the church, the people of God, descend from heaven as the New Jerusalem, and God dwells there in the New Jerusalem. He says, “I will be their God, they will be my people, and I will dwell in the midst of them.”

So that’s the beating heart of God’s promise in Scripture—that he’s going to call out a people for himself. They will be his, he will be theirs, and he will dwell with them. That’s what God is promising to Abram here. Those things are all reiterations of things that he’s already said. But then he takes it a step further than he has previously. Before, he has told Abram—now Abraham—that he’s going to be the father of many people, that he’s going to have descendants as many as the stars in the sky. That’s chapter 22. But previously, as many as the sand on the seashore.

Here, he tells him that he’s going to be the father of many nations, and that kings will come from him. That’s beyond what he’s already been told. And it’s this further extending of the promise that leads to the change in Abram’s name. The name Abram means “exalted father”—one who is high, one who’s seen as lofty and powerful. Even though Abram only has one child and not through what God would consider a legitimate means, he’s still an exalted father. He’s a father over a household. He’s got over 300 warriors at his disposal. He’s exalted. But God changes his name to Abraham, which means “father of a multitude.” Even in the name that he gives him, he’s reiterating the promise that there is going to be innumerable descendants, now even many nations that flow from him—and kings will come.

That becomes important as the biblical story develops—that God is going to bring salvation through a king. Abraham’s grandson Jacob has 12 sons, one of whom is Judah, who is promised that the scepter—the rule—will not depart from his household. From the line of Judah comes King David. To King David is given the Davidic covenant—that there will come from him a ruler whose rule will have no end. This promise of kings to Abraham here in chapter 17 of Genesis is going to carry through all the way to its culmination in Christ.

So God opens with a command, but then he does not delay in pouring on promises to Abraham.

Section three, God expects covenant obedience from Abraham.

Verses 9 and following say, “And God said to Abraham…”—it’s interesting, just like that, there’s an immediate transition. God gives him a new name, and now we don’t ever hear about Abram again. It’s all Abraham. God refers to him by the name that God has given him. “As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. 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.”

Now, this is a strange command. The Jewish people did not invent circumcision. It was already present in the world at that time. The Egyptians used it as part of a purity rite for some of their priests. It existed in the Mesopotamian region as well. So this isn’t a new thing that God is introducing here. But never before had God—or anyone—decided, “Hey, this should be a defining mark of an entire people, that the males should all be circumcised.” So it’s not a unique thing, but the universality of it for God’s people is.

Why would God give a sign of the covenant that was only for males? This is kind of strange when we think about it. I think there are two potential reasons here. It’s not explicitly spelled out for us in the text, so this is slightly speculative. But first of all, you’ve got the connection, obviously, to male sexuality. In chapter 16, we had seen Abram and Sarai trying to help God along in fulfilling the promises by stepping outside of God’s pattern for sexuality—only in the context of a one man, one woman marriage. So here with the covenant of circumcision, there is this reminder constantly that God expects sexuality to stay within this context.

That’s important, because that would set Judaism apart from every other religion in the ancient world. I would say even in the modern world, most religions embrace some form of deviant sexuality as opposed to Genesis 1 and 2’s pattern. So there’s that constant reminder: God’s people live in a way that is holy and set apart in this most intimate area of life.

The second reason that there would be a male-only rite is this acknowledgment of the covenant structure—not just of God’s relationship with Abram, but of God’s relationship with the world, with humanity in particular. God relates to all of humanity through the headship of our father, Adam. That’s what Romans 5 teaches us—that in Adam’s sin, we are implicated. He is the head of our household, as it were. And when he sinned, it had implications for all of us. Now, we all willingly choose to follow him in that sin. We are all bound by sin, Jesus says in John chapter 8. We are by nature children of wrath, Ephesians 2 says. But that’s all tied back to the fact that we are identified with our father, Adam.

So if salvation is going to come, it’s going to need to come through an identification with a new head of the covenant—a new representative to stand in our place. You see that with promises given to Adam, now to Abraham, then again to David, and finally to Christ. Christ becomes the new Adam for us. So it makes sense that the sign of the covenant there in the Old Testament would be something that was identified with the males—this symbol.

The sign of the covenant, as God calls it here, doesn’t establish Abram’s covenant with God. Romans 4 makes that clear. A couple weeks ago, we looked at Genesis 15:6—what made Abraham right with God? Faith. He believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. So it’s not circumcision that makes him righteous. Circumcision is a sign of that previous faith.

But it is required. Verse 14 makes clear that if there’s any male in Israel—that’s anachronistic—in the people of Abraham who refused the sign, then they are cut off from God because they have not embraced his covenant. So it’s not the thing that creates the relationship with God—faith creates the relationship—but if you are to stay within it, you have to obey God.

Section four. Then we go from God expecting that covenant obedience to God specifying more promises. Verses 15 to 21:

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 moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.”

Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, “Shall a child be born to a man who is 100 years old? Shall Sarah, who is 90 years old, bear a child?” And Abraham said to God, “Oh, that Ishmael might live before you!”

God said, “No, but Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. As for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation. But I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year.”

In this section, God gives Sarai a new name—Sarah. Now, it’s interesting: if you have a Bible with footnotes, they’ll point out that Sarai and Sarah both mean the same thing. While Abram goes from “exalted father” to “father of a multitude,” both of her names—Sarai and Sarah—mean “princess.” I don’t know what to make of that exactly, but it is a difference between the two name changes. Still, God gives her a new name as well.

He clarifies that she is going to be the one through whom Abraham’s nations, his descendants, are going to come. He says that she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her. Abraham is dumbfounded by this. He falls down on his face and laughs. Before, he was falling down in reverence before God, and some commentators will say he’s just laughing with joy. I don’t think so. Listen to what he says to God: “Really? I’m 100 years old, God. This is 13 years after we had basically given up and tried our last-ditch effort. I’m going to be 100 years old soon, and really, I’m going to have a son?”

“Shall my wife,” who the next chapter says “the way of women had ceased with her”—she has ceased having a cycle—“she’s not going to have any children, right?” Apparently, God says she is. And through her will come this son whose name—Isaac—means “laughter.” That’s who the promise is going to come through. God says, “Oh, you’re laughing now, Abraham. You’re really going to be laughing a year from now.”

So God promises that through Sarah now, the blessing is going to come. Abraham follows up that laughter by saying, “Oh, that Ishmael might live before you!” He’s got a 13-year-old son who probably really does mean a lot to him. He’s the son of his old age, right? He’s going to have a deep care for his son. Abraham says, “I know, Lord, we stepped out of your plan. I know we didn’t do things quite right. But could you just bless him instead? Why do we still need to keep doing this promise-to-Sarah thing that hasn’t panned out for 25 years?”

God says, “No. I’m going to bless you through Sarah. But I have heard you. I will bless Ishmael as well.” But it’s clear—he’s not the child of promise. God says, “I will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation.”

But listen to the difference between the promises to Ishmael and the promises to Isaac. To Ishmael, God says, “I’ll make him the father of twelve princes.” But to Isaac, he says an undefined number of kings will come from his line. He says, “I’ll make him into a great nation”—as compared to “a multitude of nations.” God promises to bless Ishmael, but it is not going to be the same way that he blesses Isaac—the son of laughter, the son of promise.

Finally, in this chapter, we see that God not only has expected and commanded obedience, he receives obedience from Abraham.

Finally, in this chapter, we see that God not only has expected and commanded obedience—he receives obedience from Abraham.

Verse 22: “When he had finished talking with him, God went up from Abraham. Then Abraham took Ishmael his son and all those born in his house or bought with his money—every male among the men of Abraham’s house—and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskins that very day, as God had said to him. Abraham was 99 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. And Ishmael his son was 13 years old when he was circumcised. That very day Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised. And all the men of his house, those born in the house and those bought with money from a foreigner, were circumcised with him.”

So when God leaves Abraham, Abraham immediately obeys. He does not delay. He does exactly what God said, when he said to do it. Good job, Abraham.

Now, what does that have to do with us 4,000 years later?

The second section of the sermon here is a much briefer section: God’s covenant with us.

First thing we need to realize is that there is continuity between the covenant that God made with Abraham—to bring him salvation and blessing—and the covenant that God makes with us through Christ. Galatians chapter 3 (we read this a couple of weeks ago), verses 7–9 say this:

“Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’ So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.”

So Abraham was counted righteous by God because of his faith in the promises of God. And so too we, in this age, trust the promises of God—spelled out more specifically—that Christ died in our place for our sins and rose for our justification. If we trust in Christ, we are counted righteous, and we are Abraham’s children. That’s the language of Galatians.

So then the question is: okay, the covenant sign that God gave to Abraham is circumcision—so is that still required? Is that still the sign?

Well, 1 Corinthians 7, among other places, says no. Paul says circumcision or uncircumcision is not anything. That was for a specific time when God was dealing specifically through the Jewish people descended from Abraham through Isaac. That sign was for them. But in this new age, when we come to the promises of God through faith in Christ, that sign is no longer in force. It’s no longer necessary.

Again, like I said, Jews didn’t invent circumcision. There are all kinds of reasons to or not to—and I’m not a doctor, so you can talk to your doctor about that—but it’s not necessary for salvation. In fact, further on in the book of Galatians, there’s a group of people called the Judaizers who are trying to come into the church and say, “If you want to trust Christ as a Gentile, you have to adopt all of the Jewish customs and practices—including circumcision.”

And in chapter 5, Paul says, “I am so annoyed with these people who would disturb you, I wish they’d just slip up and cut the whole thing off.” That’s what he says.

He makes it clear that that’s not necessary for us today. We are not brought into Christ by any physical action. True circumcision, the New Testament tells us—Romans chapter 2, still the apostle Paul—it’s important that Paul writes a lot of this stuff, because Paul was a Pharisee. Paul was a Hebrew of Hebrews. He was the most Jewish of all the Jewish apostles. And he says in Romans 2:28–29:

“No one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit—not by the letter. His praise is not from man, but from God.”

So Paul makes clear that the circumcision that we really need is to have the deadness of our heart cut away. It’s analogous to the promise of Ezekiel 36, where God promises to remove the heart of stone from his people and give them a heart of flesh. We need to have our hearts cut open by God and set aside, set apart to him.

But if circumcision is not the sign of the covenant in the New Testament, is there a New Testament sign or symbol that’s analogous to it—or is it all invisible?

Well, back in Galatians 3, I think Paul gives us a hint. Galatians 3:27–29 says:

“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; there is neither male nor female—for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.”

People take that out of context sometimes and say, “Well, there’s no distinctions at all.” No. The New Testament is still full of distinctions between men and women, and between slave and free. It doesn’t remove all distinction. But what Paul’s saying is that in Christ, we’re all equal. We’re all level in that we need salvation.

And if you are baptized, then what that’s symbolizing is that you’ve been buried with him in his death and raised with him in his life. That’s the symbolism. It shows that baptism is the symbol of entry—the sign of entry into the people of God.

Does baptism bring about the reality of unity with Christ? No. Just like circumcision didn’t. Again, Paul’s whole argument in Romans 4 is that Abraham was justified by faith before God brought this symbol, this sign of circumcision, to him. But for those who have come to Christ by faith, baptism is still the sign. It is the symbol.

So is baptism necessary to be saved? No. The thief on the cross—he was saved. He wasn’t baptized. But is it something that, as Christians, we can skip? Is it unimportant? Does it not matter then? If it doesn’t bring salvation, then is it optional?

True faith, as we see here in Genesis chapter 17, always has obedience as a character trait. The Reformers said, “We are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone.” True faith is not just intellectual assent to a set of ideas about God and about sin and salvation. Faith—trust in Christ—means you are giving him everything. You’re giving yourself to him.

That’s what faith in Christ means—that you trust him. Well, Jesus’s definition of what it means to trust him and to be a disciple includes being baptized and being identified with him. Jesus tells the disciples in Matthew 28:18–20:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit… teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Jesus’s definition for his disciples about how to make disciples is: they need to hear the gospel, they need to be baptized, and they need to be taught to obey everything he commands. I think the implication with that order is that if they are not willing to be publicly identified with the triune God—Father, Son, and Spirit—then they’re not going to learn to obey. If you won’t obey command number one, you’re not going to obey the rest of it.

So true faith follows through in action. The sign in the Old Testament, yes, was circumcision for the males. It didn’t bring saving faith to Abraham. He was already saved by faith. But his faith worked its way out in obeying everything that God told him to do. Yes, imperfectly—very imperfectly—but genuinely, seeking to obey God.

So the principle for us today, as we read Genesis 17, is to think about the three levels here:

Level one: I don’t trust Christ. I don’t believe in God. The message for you is—don’t start with a symbol. Don’t start with a sign. Go to Christ. Trust him. Trust the promises of God for salvation in Christ. That’s the message for someone who doesn’t know him already. “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.” That’s what Paul says in Romans 10.

Level two is for the Christian—someone who has genuinely trusted in Christ—and then hears that, “Oh, I’m supposed to be baptized. I’m supposed to be identified with him publicly as one of his people, as united to him and to his church.” It’s not optional. It’s not a nice add-on to the Christian life. It’s a necessary part of Christian obedience.

Level three: For those who have been baptized, identified with him publicly in baptism, and have trusted him prior to that with faith, then the message for us is just to meditate on how gracious it is that God initiates relationship with sinful people like us. That he would welcome into his family those of us who, just like Abraham, are a mess. Abraham doesn’t get so many things. And yet Hebrews 11 says that he is a model of what it means to walk in faith—because he trusted God. And even when he stumbled, he kept walking towards God.

And that’s what we should do—in joy—to keep walking toward God.

Would you pray with me?

Father God, we pray that you would help us to walk toward you in faith, to obey all that you have commanded, all that you’ve shown us in Scripture. Help us to live lives that reflect the glory of your Son Jesus, who died for us. We pray in his precious name. Amen.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit remsenbible.substack.com

Transcript and outline generated by AI. Please comment if you notice any errors.

Introduction

* Opens with a fictional story about a boy and his father’s delayed promise of a mountain bike.

* Illustrates impatience and lack of trust when promises are not fulfilled immediately.

* Draws parallel to how we often feel when God's promises seem delayed.

I. God Sees Your Faltering Faith

* Genesis 16:1–6

* Sarai, after years of infertility, suggests Abram take her servant Hagar to bear a child.

* This plan is based on cultural norms, not God's command.

* Abram passively agrees; Hagar conceives, leading to conflict.

* Sarai blames Abram; Abram abdicates responsibility.

* Hagar is mistreated and flees.

Key Point: Like the boy in the story, Sarai and Abram grow impatient and try to fulfill God’s promise their own way, resulting in sin and strife.

II. God Sees Your Suffering

* Genesis 16:7–12

* Hagar, now a pregnant runaway slave, encounters the angel of the Lord by a spring in the wilderness.

* God tells her to return and submit, promising protection and blessing.

* Hagar is to name her son Ishmael (“God hears”)—a sign that God has listened to her affliction.

Key Point: Even when people sin and cause suffering, God sees and responds with compassion and grace. Hagar, a marginalized outsider, is noticed and blessed by God.

III. God Sees You

* Genesis 16:13–16

* Hagar gives God the name: “You are the God who sees me” (El Roi).

* She names the place Beer-lahai-roi, “Well of the Living One who sees me.”

* God’s interaction with Hagar highlights that He sees not just the faithful (Abram and Sarai), but also the afflicted and marginalized.

Key Point: God’s character has not changed. He saw Hagar, and He sees us. His awareness is constant and personal.

Summary of the Message

The sermon explores Genesis 16 to show that God is a God who sees—our doubts, our pain, and our circumstances. Through the example of Abram, Sarai, and Hagar, the message emphasizes that human attempts to “help” God fulfill His promises outside His will lead to sin and suffering. Yet even then, God is compassionate and active. He intervenes to protect, restore, and reassure.

We are called to live coram Deo—before the face of God—with patience, obedience, and trust, knowing He has not forgotten or overlooked us. Just as the little boy needed to trust that his father had a plan, so too must we trust in God’s timing and care.

Transcript

If you want to take your Bibles and turn, we're going to be in the book of Genesis and chapter 16. Genesis chapter 16.

I want you to imagine with me a boy. The boy is maybe five, let's say five years old. And this boy has a dad who—this is a completely fictional story, BT dubs—but he lives here in our area and works in Colorado. So he's gone all week during the week, and then he comes home on the weekend and he hangs out with his family and loves his kids.

When he's in Colorado, though, he has a little bit of free time. So he takes up a hobby that works out there. He gets really into mountain biking and he loves the scenery as he's driving along these mountain trails and gets to cover a lot of country that he couldn't get to just on foot. He's really enjoying it. He comes back on the weekend and he's telling his sons about how much fun it is. And he tells his five-year-old son, “One of these days, I'm going to buy you a mountain bike so that when we go out there on vacation together, you can ride mountain bikes with me.” You know, when you're a five-year-old kid and you hear something like that—when are you expecting it? Like yesterday, right?

But then the kid's birthday comes—no mountain bike. Christmas comes—no mountain bike. Through the summer—maybe dad's forgotten. Another birthday—no mountain bike. Another Christmas—no mountain bike. He's seven years old now. Has his dad forgotten about him? Is dad failing to fulfill his promises to his son?

And as he comes to the next summer, what the boy decides is, “Well, dad's forgotten about this. And I love dad. I'm not going to be mad at dad. I'm just going to solve the problem myself. I'm going to try to get mom to give me some odd jobs around the house and I'm going to save my pennies and my quarters and my nickels and my dimes.” By the end of the summer, he's scraped together enough to go to the yard sale next door and buy a single speed bicycle.

His dad comes home that weekend, and do you think dad is excited when he sees that single speed bike? Probably not. Not that there's anything wrong with a single speed bike. They can do a lot of cool things—they're better for tricks than mountain bikes for the most part. They're great for riding around a flat town like Remsen. But is that actually going to do what dad wants to do on bikes with his boy? Is he going to be able to go ride those mountain trails? Probably not. It's not going to fulfill the purpose. It's not the bike of promise, if you will.

What was the boy's problem? He doesn't see. The dad hasn't forgotten. The dad just knows, “I want to share this experience with my son, but he has to be old enough to actually ride the trail, and he's going to need a bike that's fit for the task.” So dad's going to take him one of these years over to Bike Central in Le Mars and get a really fancy e-bike that's got some pedal assist so he can get up the hills. He's got something better in mind for his son.

But the son grows impatient. He has what we might describe as a lack of faith. But what that lack of faith stems from is this underlying belief that the boy has: “Dad has forgotten about me. Dad doesn't see me. He doesn't see how much hope I've tied into this promise.”

I wonder if you ever feel like that little boy. Like God has made a promise to you and he's failing to follow through on it. That, yeah, God is out there—he rules in the heavens, I don't have any doubt about that. I've looked at creation. I know it didn't just happen. I know there's a God. I know he's real. But does he see me?

That little boy didn't believe he was seen. And often we don't believe that we are seen by God. But the message of Genesis chapter 16 is that God is a God who sees. God is a God of seeing.

First of all, we see that God sees your faltering faith. God sees even when your faith stumbles.

Genesis 16, beginning in verse 1. We'll read the first six verses:

Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said to Abram, “Behold, now the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai.

So after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife. And he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress.

And Sarai said to Abram, “May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my servant to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!”

But Abram said to Sarai, “Behold, your servant is in your power; do to her as you please.” Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her.

So what's the presenting problem in the first part of this text? The presenting problem is that Sarai continues to have no children. We're ten years now from God's initial call to Abram and Sarai to leave their home, to leave Ur of the Chaldeans and Haran where they had settled.

What we've seen in the last several chapters is that God has blessed Abram. God has poured out material blessing upon Abram, and he's also blessed those around him. He saved Lot—I mean, Lot initially moves away from Abram because so much material wealth has come to him because of his association with Abram. Then he moves down to Sodom—wrong place to go—but then when he's captured there by the kings of Mesopotamia, Abram is able to go and save him, and then save those who are associated with him. God is pouring blessing out on those around Abram. God's already beginning to fulfill his promise.

But Sarai continues to have no children.

Now, last week we looked at chapter 15. In the first part of chapter 15, Abram brings this to God as a question: “How are you going to bless the world through my family? Right now, my heir is a guy from Damascus. It's a Syrian. It's not even someone who's related to me.” And God says, “Come on outside, Abram. Look at the stars. Those will be fewer in number than your descendants. If you can count the stars, then you can count your descendants.” Abram knows he can't count the stars, but he doesn't disbelieve God's promise. He doesn't doubt God's promise. It tells us in chapter 15, verse 6, that Abram believed the Lord and it was counted to him as righteousness.

Abram hears God promise, “Your descendants will be like the stars in the sky,” and Abram believed God's promise, and God declares him righteous because of that.

But put yourself in Sarai's shoes. God has poured out his blessing on Abram’s life. God has been fulfilling all of these promises to Abram—except the promise of children. And why is that? It's because Sarai is herself barren. She's probably starting to wonder, “Am I the problem? Am I the one interfering with God’s blessing to my husband coming to full fruition? How can we solve this?”

It's a very natural thing for people to feel—I think maybe specifically women—to feel like there's something out there that your spouse wants, that you're supposed to accomplish. “Am I getting in the way of it? Well, how do I fix it?” And she comes up with an end-around. Like, here’s how we can solve this problem.

She's got a female servant—Hagar. And Hagar had probably been part of the spoil, part of the blessings of wealth that were poured out on Abram when they were in Egypt. When Abram comes up from Egypt, he comes up blessed—with camels and herds of sheep and donkeys, as well as camels—but he also comes up with male and female servants. And Hagar the Egyptian is probably one of those servants. She becomes Sarai’s handmaiden. She's the one who attends directly to Sarai.

And Sarai says, “Well, what the people around us do”—this was a common practice in the ancient Near East—“if you have a woman who's unable to conceive and to have children, her handmaiden could have children in her place.” She would become a concubine. And so Abram, if he has children with her, those children would be considered Sarai’s children.

“Maybe this is how God intends to fulfill his promise.” It seems logical to her, at least in worldly terms. And immediately, Hagar conceives. So it might seem like it works even.

But what we see over and over again in Scripture is that there are so many things that seem logical to us as human beings—like we’ve solved this problem. But if we step outside of God’s design, we have not solved any problems. We have multiplied our problems. And that is what we see in this case.

Never in Scripture, though polygamy is often presented as something that happened or taking concubines as something that happened, it’s never approved of. I think it’s ironic. There are people who will argue that, well, because in Genesis, these men who are considered righteous do these things, they must be okay with God. But all you have to do is read the text and see—how does this go? Does God actually bless them stepping outside of his plan?

A really stark example of this is Abram’s grandson, Jacob. He has two wives—bad start, like two actual wives—and they have a child-having contest. One is losing really bad, and so she has her servant start having children for her. And then, well, Leah gets behind Rachel now, and so she’s going to have her servant have children. And now Jacob is having children with four women. And then the brothers start selling each other into slavery. They start getting into fights. They initiate conflict with the surrounding country—it’s not good.

Never is the multiplication of wives—any kind of stepping outside of God’s sexual ethic, designed in the garden, one man, one woman, in a monogamous union for life—once you step outside of that, you are courting disaster. And we see that here. Because while it seems like this is working—Hagar gets pregnant immediately—the problems in the house are not solved. They are multiplied.

Hagar then looks with contempt, it says, upon Sarai. Why would Hagar have contempt for Sarai? Why wouldn’t Hagar have contempt for Sarai? There’s several levels where she could have contempt for her.

You know, Sarai and Abram have probably been married for close to 50 years at this point. It would be fair to guess that—75 and 85 years old—maybe more. Maybe they could have been married for 60 years at this point. And Sarai has been unable to conceive. And she gives Hagar to Abram, and Hagar conceives almost immediately.

Well, and in that society, your worth as a woman would largely have been tied to: Are you able to have children? Are you able to produce an heir? “Well, here’s this man whom God’s made all these blessings to, and who’s able to produce an heir for him? Not you, Sarai—I am. Why am I the servant? I’m the one who’s actually able to produce what he needs.”

Or she could be thinking through it in terms of: “Here, this is happening to my body. I’m going through the pregnancy. I’m going to go through labor and delivery, and yet this child is going to be considered yours? That’s hardly right.” That could breed feelings of contempt.

Sarai doesn’t respond very well to that. And she goes to Abram. She says, “This is on you. This is your fault.” And I read Sarai’s question, and we need to ask—we actually need to grapple with—is she right to blame Abram here?

Now, in one sense, she’s obviously missing something, in that this was her idea, right? She’s not right to overlook her own fault and responsibility in the situation. This is something men often complain about women—because it’s not an unusual... this is an extreme circumstance—but she brings up an idea, he does it, and then she’s not happy with it. And he’s going, “But I thought...?” Right? If you don’t want to admit that that happens—I don’t know what to tell you. This happens.

And she’s wrong to overlook her own responsibility there. But she is right to say that this is Abram’s responsibility. That language that’s used multiple times here of “he listened to the voice of Sarai” should hearken us back to the Garden of Eden, where Adam listened to the voice of his wife Eve. And she’s coming with a solution—she’s coming with, “Here’s how we fix this problem.” And she’s his helpmate. He needs to take what she says into consideration.

But ultimately, when he evaluates what she says, he shouldn’t just say, “Okay, honey, whatever you want.” He should say, “No. In this circumstance, your counsel is not wise.” And he should lead her back towards godliness and trust in the promises of God, rather than trying to fulfill God’s promises for him in a way that disobeys Him.

The principle here for Abram is that he should have told her no, and he is responsible for this situation and its fallout. He is at fault.

He doesn’t want to see that. Verse six: Abram said to Sarai, “Behold, your servant is in your power. Do to her as you please.” He punts. He says, “You’re whining, but it’s your problem, so you solve it.” And Sarai decides, “Well, if he’s not going to deal with it, I’m going to deal with it my way.” And she’s harsh and hard on Hagar, to the point where Hagar feels like her best option is to flee.

Abram and Sarai had lost sight of God’s sight of the situation. They sought to keep God’s promise for Him, and disaster ensues in their household.

I wonder where you have lost sight of God’s promise-keeping power in your life—and what sins that might lead you to. Where is failing to recognize that God is here, He is present, He is at work? I can trust Him. When you forget that, where does it lead you? Where does it take you?

One thing we should never do is think that we can step outside of God’s revealed will in Scripture—in this case for them, it’s God’s prescribed sexual ethics—and think that God’s going to bless that and make it work out okay. God sees their faltering faith, and they are going to have consequences for it. He’s still at work. He’s still ruling and reigning over the situation. God’s not surprised by it. But He is not honored by us disobeying Him in order to serve Him.

Those are the kinds of mental games we play with ourselves: “Well, it’s for the greater good that I’m going to do this thing that I know is wrong.” It doesn’t work that way.

Second thing we see, though, is that God doesn’t just see your faltering faith—God sees your suffering. We see that in the circumstances of Hagar.

Verse 7: The angel of the Lord. So Sarai has dealt harshly with Hagar—verse 6—and Hagar flees. Verse 7: the angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, on the way to Shur.

I’m struck by that language: “the angel of the Lord found her.” Now, God hadn’t lost track of Hagar and had to go looking for her, right? But in a physical manifestation, the angel of the Lord comes to her and finds her by this spring of water, and He speaks to her.

Do you ever feel lost by God? Like God has lost track of you, like He doesn’t know where you’re at? I’m always reminded of the words of Psalm 139. It says, “Where can I go from your presence? Where can I flee from you? If I ascend to heaven, behold, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol—in the grave—behold, you are there.” There is nowhere you can go to flee the presence of God. You can’t get away from Him.

And here, Hagar finds that out. Hagar would have had, prior to encountering Abram and Sarai, no experience of the living God. Her only knowledge of the true God—she’s coming from pagan Egypt—and she’s brought into Abram’s household where they worship the Lord. They build altars to Him. They are interacting with the living God. When she removes herself from His presence, she is in a sense fleeing from God—though in her immediate circumstances, she’s fleeing from a cruel mistress.

She is, practically speaking, fleeing from the presence of God. But God does not let her get away. He chases her down. He finds her by the well. And He speaks to her. And what He says to her is maybe surprising to us as 21st-century people.

Verse 8: He said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” She said, “I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai.” The angel of the Lord said to her, “Return to your mistress and submit to her.”

That sounds pretty harsh to our ears today. She’s being mistreated. She’s being—maybe our language would be—abused. And God says, “Go back.”

Is God okay with how Sarai’s treating her? No. But we need to pull ourselves out of our century and drop ourselves down there. Yes, she’s being mistreated in Sarai’s household as Sarai’s servant. But that is still the safest place in the world for her in the year 2000 B.C.

If she’s separated—if she’s in Abram’s household, carrying Abram’s child—Sarai is being mean to her, but she has protection. Abram is not going to let anything happen to her that would harm his child. He’s going to protect the child as well. Abram has a vested interest in at least the physical safety of Hagar. No one else that she encounters will have that same interest or that same care for her. She is in deep physical danger to be separated from Abram’s household.

And so the angel of the Lord comes and says something to her that may well be hard for her to hear, yet nonetheless is the most important thing for her to do—for her own safety. And furthermore, for her to be blessed, which is what we see in the verses following.

Verse 10: The angel of the Lord also said to her, “I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.” And the angel of the Lord said to her, “Behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael”—Ishmael means “God hears”—“because the Lord has listened to your affliction.”

God comes to her and He says, “Go back. And I am going to bless you.” He gives her a modified version of the promise that’s come to Abram multiple times. God told Abram, “I’m going to make your descendants so numerous that you cannot count them.” And here God says to Hagar, “I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.” God promises that through Ishmael will come nations and peoples that cannot be numbered for multitude.

He is not the child of promise, but God gives him promises anyway. And He tells her to name him Ishmael because God has listened to her. He’s listened to her pain. He’s listened to her affliction. God hears her prayer.

Last week we read in our Scripture reading, Ecclesiastes 8, and we read it again last night, and I was thinking about it in connection with this. Chapter 8, verse 2 says, “Do not be hasty to leave the presence of the king. And do not take your stand in an evil cause, for who can say to him, ‘What are you doing?’” In Ecclesiastes 8, I think what Solomon’s saying is, you don’t want to be quick to leave the presence of the one who has power. Because if you leave his presence—his place where he is ruling, and where he is executing with kindness, with good intention toward those around him—and you set yourself against him, things might not go well for you.

And while we know Abram is the most powerful man in this region at the time, and he’s the only one to whom God has promised to pour out blessing on his family, what God seems to be reminding Hagar of in these verses is that if you remove yourself from Abram, you remove yourself from my blessing. But if you go back in obedience to my word, I will pour out blessing not only on you, but on your son and his descendants as well.

Now, the promise of verse 12 doesn’t sound quite as encouraging: “He shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.” She is told the character of Ishmael is not going to be necessarily always upright and good. He’s going to be in conflict with those around him—and by implication, his descendants will be as well.

That doesn’t faze her, though. She still looks to God and recognizes that God has heard her cry, that God has seen her in her pain, seen her in her affliction.

Verse 13: “So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, ‘You are a God of seeing.’” That could also be translated, “You are the God who sees me.” I think that’s one of the most profound names of God in the Old Testament: “You are a God of seeing. You are the God who sees me.”

So often—I know personally—I have felt as if no one sees. No one knows. Proverbs says, “The heart knows its own bitterness.” Like, no one gets it. God does. God sees. God knows. God gets everything that you are going through.

“For she said, ‘Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.’” That’s the translators trying to help you get the thrust underneath. The literal translation would be: “Truly, I have seen him who sees me.” The angel of the Lord appears to her, and she says, “I have seen the God who sees me.”

Therefore, the name of the place was called Beer-lahai-roi. It lies between Kadesh and Bered. That name means “well of the Living One who sees me.” She names the place after the fact that there she encountered the living God who sees her.

And Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram called the name of his son whom Hagar bore Ishmael. Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.

The final thing we need to see as we think about this text is that God sees you. He didn’t just see Abram and Sarai. He didn’t just see Hagar. He didn’t just see these people 4,000 years ago. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And so God sees you.

Do you recognize that? Do you recognize—in your pain, God sees you? In your doubts, God sees you?

This truth should provoke trust. There’s never a time when we’ve escaped the notice of God. He hasn’t forgotten about us. It also should give us a determination to make every decision and live every moment—the Latin phrase is coram Deo—before the face of God. That is how we should strive to live.

Abram and Sarai walked into sin because they failed to recognize that God was at work. He had not forgotten His promises. And so they start making sinful choices in order to help God out.

Whereas if they had recognized, “No, God is here, and He is at work, and I need to make each choice with reference to—Is this pleasing to Him? Is this right in His eyes? Or does it just seem smart to me?”

It’s very, very easy for us to quit thinking about what is most important to God and instead try to figure things out for ourselves. But if we are living moment by moment before the face of God—we are literally before the face of God at all times—but recognizing that fact, it will shape how we live.

So humble yourself before Him and before His ways. Submit to His word, no matter how hard it might seem at the time, and no matter how veiled the outcome.

Because in that story, what that little boy doesn’t know is that on his 10th birthday, dad is giving him that mountain bike, and they are going on a trip to the mountains. He is going to see the things that his father wants him to see. But he has to have the patience to do it right. He has to have the patience to know—to trust—that his father knows more than he does.

Do we have that patience? Do we have that trust—that God knows more than we do?

Let’s pray.

Father, you do know more than we do. It’s so easy for me to go day in and day out not recognizing that you are at work, and that my role is simply to trust you. And so I presume. I presume that’s probably true for most of us, Lord. And we ask that you would change that. Shape our hearts so that we are vertically oriented—that we are living before your face, seeking to honor you moment by moment, day by day, with the confidence that you do know and see everything that we’re going through.

I pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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Counted Righteous

Genesis 15; Remsen Bible Fellowship; 11/24/2024

Introduction

You are, by nature, a wicked person. You have thought, felt, said, and done things which are offensive to God and deserving of his wrath. You might not like that description of yourself, someone who is by nature wicked, but it is precisely the Bible’s description of you. How can we, who are wicked, be made right with God? This is the question religion seeks to answer. How can you be made right with God? Different religions have different ways to answer that question. Follow this code, partake of these sacraments, attend these special services, undergo these certain rites.

But God’s answer, according to Scripture, is that God pardons repentant sinners. If you humble yourself before the Lord, agreeing that he has every right to condemn you, but plead for his mercy on the basis of his promise and Christ’s blood, then you will be forgiven and welcomed into relationship with him. That is the pattern revealed to us, not only in the New Testament, but even here in Genesis 15. Salvation is given by the forgiving grace of God, and is received through faith.

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Genesis 15: 1 After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” 2 But Abram said, “O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.” 4 And behold, the word of the LORD came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” 5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 6 And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.

7 And he said to him, “I am the LORD who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.” 8 But he said, “O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” 9 He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” 10 And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. 11 And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.

12 As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. 13 Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. 14 But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15 As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. 16 And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”

17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. 18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, 19 the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, 20 the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, 21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.”

Summary of the Text

This chapter breaks into two basic parts: v1-6, and v7-21.

God’s Promise, Abram’s Question, God’s Assurance, Abram’s Belief (v1-6)

In verse one, we are situated back into the context of Abram’s history. Last week we saw how God had continued to fulfill his promise to make Abram’s name great, and this was displayed through his military might in rescuing his nephew Lot from a coalition of Mesopotamian kings. He then turns down the blessings offered by the King of Sodom - this is not because taking the spoil would be wrong, per se, but because he has determined that this would give the evil king of Sodom leverage over him that he shouldn’t have. And Abram knows he isn’t indebted to Sodom, or Gomorrah, or their allies. He is indebted to the Lord God, God Most High, Maker of Heaven and earth. This God gave him victory, and pronounced blessing over him through the mysterious figure of Melchizidek, priest-king of Salem, king of Righteousness and Peace, giver of bread and wine.

After all of these events, God comes to Abram in a vision. Based on v5, we can assume this vision was at night. And God speaks to Abram: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield.” This language may draw your mind to the places in Psalms that speak of God being a shield, a protection for those who fear him:

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Psalms 18:2, The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

Psalms 119:114, You are my hiding place and my shield; I hope in your word.

That’s the kind of reminder Abram may well need at this point. Though he had a victory over the kings of the north, he may well have been concerned that they would regroup and be coming for vengeance. The reminder that God himself would protect him was something Abram would need to hear.

But a further implication of this shield language is hinted at in the rest of v1, “your reward shall be very great.” There is some debate among scholars on this point, but a pretty strong argument can be made that God is not just telling Abram that there is reward coming for him, but that God himself is Abram’s reward. God pledges himself to Abram, as the seal of Abram’s security and blessing. In Psalm 3:3, David expresses this same idea: “You, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head.”

The next movement in the text is Abram’s initial response - how can I understand this, Lord? What can be given, when I don’t have any children? Abram is somewhere between 75 and 86 - we don’t have exact timestamps between the departure from Haran birth of Ishmael - but it’s probably pretty safe to assume that he is in his early 80s. And even by the standards of his day, that’s pretty old to be childless. Some years have passed since God had promised in 12:2 to make Abram into a great nation. So Abram’s question in v3-4 is not an example of doubting God, but of asking a legitimate question: you’ve made this promise, but how will it be fulfilled? You’ve still given me no children, and my heir is a Syrian, Eliezer of Damascus. God speaks, though, with a word of promise and assurance: “this man will not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir” (v4). He then brings Abram outside to look at the stars: can you count the stars Abram? If you can, then you’ll be able to count the number of offspring who will come from you. You’re worried about having one son: I’m promising you a family beyond counting.

How would you respond in Abram’s shoes? But God, give me a sign! Prove it! But that’s not what we read. Instead, we read one of the most important verses in all of the Bible: v6, “And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.” Abram trusted the promise of God, and God counted him righteous on account of that trust, that faith.

So the movement of the first section is from God’s promise, to Abram’s question, to God’s reassurance, and Abram’s faith.

God’s Covenant (v7-21)

The second section, v7-21 follows a similar pattern. It begins with God reminding Abram who he is, who God is - he’s the God who brought Abram out of the land of Ur, and into the land of promise. He is reminding Abram that not only will he have many descendants, but they will possess the land of Canaan. And, as in the first section, Abram responds to God’s self-description and reassurance with a legitimate question: how can I know, Lord?

God responds with another object lesson. But instead of taking Abram out to look at the stars, this time he gives Abram a list: bring a heifer, a female goat, a ram, a turtledove, and a pigeon. Abram then splits each of the mammals in two, creating, as it were, a center isle.

These aren’t sacrifices that Abram is offering to the Lord. Abram has made altars for the Lord before, we see that in 12:8 & 13:18. But here, there is no altar. God has instructed Abram to prepare for a covenant cutting ceremony. In these covenant ceremonies, a superior king (in this case, God) would make a covenant, or treaty, with a lesser king (in this case, Abram). The covenant was unilateral, it was not an agreement between equals. The great lord would give promises and impose conditions upon the lesser ruler, and then the lesser king, or vassal, would be held to these conditions upon pain of death. That’s what is symbolized by the split animals - if you violate the terms of the covenant, you take on the same penalty as these animals. The covenant is sealed in blood.

And so Abram prepares for this covenant ceremony. Abram has apparently spent all day getting this ready, because in v12 the sun is going down again, and the Lord puts Abram into a deep sleep, and a dreadful and ominous darkness settles over this sleep. Into this darkness, the Lord speaks. The promise he starts into has a nightmarish beginning - know that your offspring will be sojourners in a foreign land, and that they will be mistreated there for four centuries. But the promise continues - out of death and suffering will come salvation: They will be brought up out of the land of their sojournings, blessed with abundant possessions.

Abram certainly would recognize that God is promising to do for his descendants what he had already done for Abram - though Abram sojourned in Egypt, God brought him up out of that land, loaded with great blessings and possessions. He then promises Abram that he himself will live to a good old age, and die in peace. When his offspring are eventually brought back, it will be associated with judgment upon the iniquity of the Amorites.

He promises to give Abram’s descendants all the land from the Euphrates river all the way to “the river of Egypt” - there is some debate as to whether this is the river which forms the border of Egypt, or the Nile which was the heart of the Egyptian empire - but he then spells this out with a list of peoples whose land will become the possession of Abram’s offspring.

And how can Abram be certain all of this will happen? He can be certain, because God does something very unusual: though he is the Great Lord, and Abram the vassal, the lesser, God does not put Abram under the curse of death for breach of covenant. Rather, God makes unilateral promises, and then passes through (symbolized by the smoking fire pot and flaming torch) the cut animals, signifying that God puts himself under pain of death in order to assure Abram of the certainty of these great promises.

God is both the dictator of the terms of the covenant, and the guarantor of their fulfillment. This has profound implications, both for Abram, and for us.

By Grace, Through Faith

As we ponder the shape of this passage, I want to note the direction of all the promises: God is coming to Abram with promises. To circle back to our initial question, how can wicked humans be made right before God? Here is the starting point for the answer: God must do something. On our own, we are destitute, far from God, and worst of all - we want to be far from God. We by nature are children of wrath (Ephesians 2:3) who hate God. If this is to be overcome, God himself must do something.

And friends, that’s precisely what we see in this text. God continues to initiate with Abram. God is not sitting back on his heels, waiting for Abram to figure out what to do. God is pursuing Abram, God is giving promises which Abram then needed to respond to.

Make no mistake, human beings are responsible for how we respond to God. But we must realize that we are responding to his gracious initiation, we are being called to believe the promises he gives, we are called to accept the forgiveness he offers. We are not accomplishing any of this on our own, nor are we even so much as reaching as high as we can in order for him to reach down the rest of the way. We are called to trust what God says, and to act on the basis of that trust.

Where is this coming from in our text? I mentioned earlier that verse 6 is one of the most significant verses in all the Bible. “And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.” Abram, like you and I, needed to be righteous in order to commune with God. Remember that it was disobedience and rebellion - unrighteousness - which had caused Adam and Eve to be expelled from Eden. Does the text tell us that Abram atoned for all of his sin properly through means of sacrifice, and then by achieving a certain state of sinless living that enabled him to be perfectly righteous in God’s sight? No. No, he believed the promises of God. And that believing was counted or reckoned to him as righteousness.

Righteousness before God is something you cannot achieve through good works or law-keeping or rule-following. Because even if you went forward perfectly from this second forward - and you won’t - you would still have the massive debt of your previous sins weighing you down. In Romans 4:3, Paul quotes this verse to prove that salvation is not given as a response to our good works or our merit, but is graciously poured out upon those who place their trust in Jesus. He then quotes Psalm 32, where David rejoices over God’s forgiveness for sin - and David had plenty of reason to be happy about that!

But, Paul anticipates a possible objection: maybe this is only for those who are the physical descendants of Abram, may this is only for the circumcised? Maybe you have to be a Jew in order for God to deal with you in this way. But then Paul’s argument gets a little tighter, and so I want to read verses 9-12.

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Romans 4: Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. 10 How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. 11 He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, 12 and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.

Paul’s argument is that circumcision was not efficacious, it did not create the reality it symbolized. Circumcision was given to Abram/Abraham as a sign of God’s covenant with him. But Paul’s point is that the reality of the covenant comes before the covenant symbol. Abram did not receive God’s grace because he had been circumcised, he was circumcised because he had received grace. By what means did he receive this gift of grace, the gift of being declared just or righteous in God’s sight? He received it through faith.

We’re going to talk, Lord willing, about the connection between circumcision and baptism and faith and baptism in a couple of weeks - how do we connect the signs with the realities they symbolize? But for our purposes this morning, the main thing is to notice that Paul separates the sign or symbol from the reality. Circumcision is not a prerequisite for justifying faith, because even Abram was justified by God and brought into covenant relationship with God before he received the sign thereof.

I want to circle back to a specific word used by Moses in verse 6: counted. What does it mean that God counted Abram righteous? I’ve already said that Abram did not achieve righteousness, and we’re going to see in the very next chapter that he continues to make some cataclysmic mistakes - he’s still very much a sinner in terms of his actions. But, nonetheless, God considers or counts him righteous. How can this be?

Because, as Paul explains elsewhere (places like 2 Corinthians 5:21, or back in Romans 3:21-26), justification is not a statement about a truth inside of you. When Abram placed his trust in God to fulfill his promise to bring blessing to all the nations through him, to make his offspring as many as stars in the sky, God counted that faith as righteousness.

This is a pattern pulsing all the way through the Old Testament - God graciously gives salvation to those who trust in him. But throughout the Old Testament, this reality does leave a question - how can a just God, a good God, pardon sinners? Doesn’t this create a contradiction? How can God bless a sinful man like Abram, let alone call him righteous?

Because God had a plan from before the foundation of the world to save sinners. And when we trust what he has revealed to us - for Abram he had the promises of Genesis 3, the story of the flood, were God saved through judgment, and the promises in his own life for the future - God imputes to us a foreign righteousness. A righteousness not accomplished through works, but given as a gift by God.

In the New Testament we find out on what basis God can do this and continue to be a just and holy God. He justifies the ungodly who have faith in Jesus Christ. Paul continues to write in Romans 4:23-25,

23 But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, 24 but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, 25 who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

Friends, your sins stand between you and God. But if you repent of your sins and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation, God will count you righteous. The perfect life and obedience of Jesus Christ are imputed, counted, to everyone who believes in him alone for salvation. He took your sins on the cross - the great exchange. He was counted guilty for us that we might be counted righteous and forgiven. Will you trust him?

There are times when believing that God could forgive my sin, that he could bring salvation to this sin sick soul can be just as hard to believe as a childless man in his 80s would be the father of many nations. But the heart of faith, the heart that receives God’s forgiveness and is clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, is the heart that reflects Abram’s. As Paul puts it in Romans 4:21, he was “fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.”

God has promised to forgive you, save you, and welcome you if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. Do you trust him? Are you convinced that he will deliver on that promise?

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Transcript and summary produced by AI — please comment if you notice any errors.

Outline of the Sermon

I. Introduction

* Opening prayer.

* Reading of Psalm 110 – the most quoted Old Testament passage in the New Testament.

* Emphasis on Jesus’ identity as the Messiah and the "Lord" in Psalm 110.

II. Jesus and Psalm 110

* Jesus uses Psalm 110 to challenge the Pharisees’ understanding of the Messiah.

* The Messiah is both David’s son and David’s Lord, showing Jesus’ divinity.

* Key theme: Jesus is the warrior king, seated at God’s right hand, equal with God.

III. Melchizedek and Genesis 14

* Introduction to Melchizedek, mentioned in Psalm 110 and Genesis 14.

* Genesis 13 recap: Lot chooses Sodom for prosperity.

* Genesis 14 narrative:

* War between four powerful kings (led by Ketolamer) and five Canaanite kings.

* Lot is captured in the conflict.

IV. Abram’s Response and Rescue

* Abram hears of Lot’s capture and leads 318 trained men in a successful night raid.

* He rescues Lot and others, recovers their possessions.

V. Meeting Melchizedek

* Melchizedek, King of Salem (peace), Priest of God Most High, meets Abram.

* Brings bread and wine, blesses Abram, and acknowledges God’s deliverance.

* Abram responds by giving a tenth of the plunder.

VI. Spiritual Significance of Melchizedek

* His title (King of Salem), name (King of Righteousness), and roles (priest-king) are unique.

* A foreshadowing of Christ:

* Jesus is a priest not by Levitical lineage but after Melchizedek’s order.

* Referenced in Hebrews 5–7 and Psalm 110.

VII. Jesus: King of Righteousness and Peace

* Jesus is:

* Righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30; 2 Cor. 5:21).

* Peace (Eph. 2:14; Col. 1:20).

* Through Jesus, we have peace with God (Rom. 5).

* Jesus is both king and priest, interceding for us.

VIII. Contrast Between Abram and the King of Sodom

* King of Sodom offers Abram all the goods.

* Abram refuses: he will not let evil claim credit for his prosperity.

* Instead, he honors God with a tenth and gives the rest to his allies.

IX. Principles of Generosity

* Abram’s giving was an act of faith and worship, not obligation.

* Application of 2 Corinthians 9:6–15:

* God provides so we can give generously.

* Giving is an act of gratitude and trust in God’s provision.

X. Conclusion

* The life of Abram models faith in action:

* Obedience, sacrifice, generosity.

* Final challenge: How is God calling you to honor Him?

* Closing prayer.

📝 Summary of the Sermon

This sermon explores the rich connections between Genesis 14, Psalm 110, and the New Testament teachings on Jesus as both King and Priest. It begins with a reading of Psalm 110, emphasizing its prophetic description of a Messiah who is both divine and victorious, seated at God’s right hand. The sermon then turns to Genesis 14, where Abram rescues his nephew Lot from invading kings. After the battle, Abram is greeted by Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of God Most High, who brings bread and wine and blesses Abram. In response, Abram gives him a tenth of everything.

The preacher explains that Melchizedek is a type of Christ, a figure pointing forward to Jesus, who is described in Hebrews as a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Jesus, like Melchizedek, is both king of righteousness and king of peace. His death and resurrection establish him as our intercessor and high priest who gives us righteousness and peace with God.

The sermon contrasts Abram’s faith and generosity with Lot’s short-sighted pursuit of wealth and the king of Sodom’s corrupt offer. Abram refuses worldly gain that would rob God of glory and instead chooses to honor God with his possessions.

Finally, the preacher draws practical application from 2 Corinthians 9, urging believers to trust God’s provision and practice generosity as an act of worship, not compulsion. The message closes with a call to consider: “How is the Lord calling you to honor Him?”

We're going to be in the book of Genesis again this morning, but before we go to Genesis, I want to read Psalm 110.

Psalm 110. This is the most cited Old Testament passage in the New Testament. Psalm 110 begins this way. A Psalm of David. The Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies. Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power in holy garments. From the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours. The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. The Lord is at your right hand. He will shatter kings on the day of his wrath. He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses. He will shatter chiefs over the wide earth. He will drink from the brook by the way. Therefore, he will lift up his head.

If you want to turn to Genesis 14, that's where we're going to be this morning. But that psalm, Psalm 110, as I said, it's the most cited text from the Old Testament in the New Testament. It was foundational both to Jesus' own self-understanding of who he was as the Messiah and also central to how the apostles and the writers of the New Testament understood who he was, who Jesus came to be.

You might think one of the most famous places that Jesus quotes that passage is when he is stumping the Pharisees, and they've been asking him all kinds of questions, and he says, oh, I've got a question for you. And then he quotes Psalm 110 and says, the Lord said to my Lord, well, how is the Messiah David's son? That's what they thought, like 2 Samuel 7, there was a promised coming son of David that would be the everlasting king. So they were right to assume that the coming Messiah was David's son. But Jesus says, David, who wrote Psalm 110, says, the Lord, Yahweh, says to my Lord, my Adonai, my ruler. So David is referring to this Messiah of Psalm 110 as his Lord. So Jesus self-identifies as the one that Psalm 110 speaks about, this coming warrior king.

He is the one who is coming, and he's going to crush the enemies of God. He's going to destroy God's enemies, and he sits at the right hand of God. He's distinct from God, and yet he is equal with God. He's distinct from the Father, and yet equal to him. He is this warrior king.

But in the middle of that psalm, Psalm 110 verse 4, is a reference to this man named Melchizedek. You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. It's the only reference to Melchizedek in the Old Testament outside of our passage here in Genesis 14.

One of my favorite signs driving through South Dakota is when you get close to Canabek. It says, where the heck is Canabek? I could not stop thinking this week as I was looking at this, who the heck is Melchizedek? It's a question people often ask when you come across him in the book of Hebrews, which we'll go to later, or when you see him in Psalm 110, you go, after the order of Melchizedek, who is this guy? We'll find out.

Before we get there, we need to connect back to where we were last week. Last week, we looked at chapter 13, and we left Lot headed for Sodom. Not a good place to go. But Lot and Abram had both grown very prosperous. Abram more so, but Lot was prosperous as well. And the land where they were dwelling together couldn't support both of them. And Abram says to Lot, we need to split up so that we can continue to be at peace. And he gives Lot the choice of where to go. And Lot heads to the valley of the Jordan. He sees this plain where there are these cities, including Sodom and Gomorrah, they are very well watered. They are lush. They are perfect places to graze your herds. And they are filled with these cities of Canaanites who are identified by their wickedness. Chapter 13, verse 13. Now the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord.

So Lot chooses to pursue his own earthly prosperity, pursue his own glory, as we talked about last week, by putting himself in league with these Canaanites, in league with these cities. It's not wrong to look for things to be advantageous in terms of your earthly prosperity—to think about how to make a living and how to provide for yourself and your family. Those are good things to do. But Lot did so at the expense of considering the spiritual well-being of himself and his family.

And we're going to see this morning how that goes…

In the days of Amraphel, king of Shinar, Ariok, king of Elessar, Ketolamer, king of Elam, and Tidal, king of Goim, these kings made war with Bera king of Sodom, Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, Shemeber king of Zeboyim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar). All these joined forces in the Valley of Siddim (that is, the Salt Sea). Twelve years they had served Ketolamer, but in the thirteenth year they rebelled.

In the fourteenth year, Ketolamer and the kings who were with him came and defeated the Rephaim in Ashteroth-Karnaim, the Zuzim in Ham, the Emim in Shaveh-Kiriathaim, and the Horites in their hill country of Seir, as far as El-Paran on the border of the wilderness. Then they turned back and came to En-Mishpat (that is, Kadesh), and defeated all the country of the Amalekites and also the Amorites who were dwelling in Hazazon-Tamar.

Then the king of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, the king of Admah, the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar) went out, and they joined battle in the Valley of Siddim with Ketolamer, king of Elam, Tidal king of Goim, Amraphel king of Shinar, and Ariok king of Elessar—four kings against five. Now the Valley of Siddim was full of bitumen pits, and as the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, some fell into them, and the rest fled to the hill country.

So the enemy took all the possessions of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their provisions and went their way. They also took Lot, the son of Abram’s brother, who was dwelling in Sodom, and his possessions, and went their way. So here we see that Lot has gone down to Sodom to pursue his prosperity, but then he is in league with these Canaanites.

These five Canaanite kings who lived in the Jordan Valley—they were kings of city-states. They weren't kings of entire countries as we would think of today, but they had their cities that they ruled, and then they would have ruled the countryside surrounding each of those cities. And then over them was Ketolamer, who was king of Elam, which is a region up in Mesopotamia, quite a ways away. The only other land that we recognize in history from this is Shinar, which would have been Babylon.

So those four kings are powerful kings from quite a distance away. And Ketolamer is apparently exercising such military influence in the region that he's able to exact tribute from these Canaanite kings. And at some point for a dozen years, they're paying him taxes. And at some point, they say, no taxation without representation, and they rebel against him. They say, no, we've had enough of this.

Ketolamer pulls together his coalition, and they come down and they sweep through the entire region. The Rephaim referenced in verse 5—those would have been giants. They are cleaning house of all the people in the land, and they finally get down to the region of Sodom and Gomorrah, and they demolish them as well. They chase them into the hill country. They take all the possessions in the cities, and Lot is captured. Everything that he had pursued, everything that he had gained, he lost. And he himself is captured by this king.

Who's going to save him? What's going to happen to Lot? He's chosen a path that took him away from the blessing of God, that took him away from Abram and the connection with worship of Yahweh, and now he's been captured. What's going to happen? God could just leave him. Abram could just leave him. And yet Abram shows steadfast love to his relative, to his nephew. Here we read verses 13 through 16.

Then one who escaped came and told Abram the Hebrew, who was living by the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol and Aner. These were allies of Abram. When Abram heard that his kinsman had been taken captive, he led forth his trained men, born in his house, 318 of them, and went in pursuit as far as Dan. And he divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants, and defeated them and pursued them to Hobah, north of Damascus. Then he brought back all the possessions, and also brought back his kinsman Lot with his possessions, and the women and the people.

It seems here not only has Lot been captured, but his whole family, the families of these people in Sodom and Gomorrah have been captured as well because he's bringing back the women and the people—probably the women and the children. Word comes to Abram in verse 13 that this has happened. And he's where we left him. At the end of chapter 13, he had moved his tent and settled by the oaks of Mamre at Hebron.

Mamre is this man who lives in the land, an Amorite. And his brothers are hanging out close by, and Abram allies himself with these men. He's a good neighbor, just like chapter 12 God had promised to him. God is blessing Abram, and he's making him a blessing to those around him. Abram's not out to try to conquer them. He's not trying to conquer the land. All he's doing is living there, dwelling, prospering, but he's doing so in a way that brings blessing to those around him.

Mamre and Aner and Eshcol apparently consider Abram a good neighbor, someone they want to be allied with. And they probably also want to be allied with him because he is exceedingly powerful. It says he has 318 men trained for war who were born in his house.

His household is not like... that's bigger than a Remsen family. This is a lot of people that are under the control, under the influence and the leadership of Abram, such that he has— even if these guys aren't like full-time warriors, because that probably would have been very unusual in the ancient world—but still men who have been trained for battle and are fit to go on a raiding mission, 318 of them. When Abram hears word that Lot has been captured, he pursues them.

And this reference to Dan—there wasn’t the city named Dan yet in that region. This is a later clarification of a place name. It had a different name at that point. Anyway, that's all kind of irrelevant. It's way up north, right? Okay. So from where—let me see if I can do this map backwards in my head—where Abram is at in Hebron, the kings of Sodom and where Lot is located is down here. Dan, he's pursuing them up to Dan up here. And they're headed for—probably they're headed back towards Babylonia and Elam. They're headed back towards where these kings, Ketolamer and his company, are from. And Abram is able to overtake them.

And he comes upon them by night and he splits his forces and attacks them and plunders them—probably chases them out of the country. There's a great slaughter, it says in Hebrews 7 when it recounts this story. It tells us that there is a slaughter of the kings. And so Abram ambushes them by night and devastates them and is able to remove Lot and all of his possessions back towards his homeland.

Abram has become mighty way beyond what we originally saw. We saw that he was blessed with camels and with servants and with donkeys and with herds. But the Lord has also blessed him with military might and with prowess, understanding of how to execute a battle like this.

And so we might expect that the next thing we see in the story is that Abram's going to enjoy the spoils of war, that he's been this blessing, and now he's going to become king of all the land of Canaan. At this point, he's just defeated the guy who had possession, who had rule over all of this region.

And so we might think—if you just... Ketolamer is, in some sense, you might say the king of kings in the region. And Abram's defeated him. Is Abram not now going to take his place as the king of kings in the land that God has promised him? He's going to execute his place, get to his place, by means of military might.

That's not what we see.

Verses 17 through 20 give us a different picture. After his return from the defeat of Ketolamer and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley). This is a valley to the east of Jerusalem.

And Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High. And he blessed him and said, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand.” And Abram gave him a tenth of everything.

So Abram is traveling back south. He's taking Lot and his crew and all that they have received—or all that they have plundered, really—from Ketolamer and their outfit. He's bringing it back south. And as they come past Jerusalem, the king of Sodom comes up to meet him—probably to pursue some sort of peace talk, right?

And then the king of Salem, the king of Jerusalem—Salem is a shortened form of Jerusalem—comes out to meet him. And this might seem just perfectly reasonable and logical at first. If I'm a Canaanite king in this region right now, and I've heard about what Abram has done, I'm going to go take him a gift. I'm going to go show him that I'm on his team. I don't want him to come conquer me too.

But that's not how Abram receives this. Melchizedek, again king of Salem—it’s interesting, why doesn't the author call this city Jerusalem? But it's emphasizing what “Salem” means. Salem means peace. It's a form of “shalom.” He comes out, and he comes out bringing bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High. And he blessed him and said, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth. And blessed be God Most High who has delivered your enemies into your hand.”

Melchizedek doesn't come out begging. Melchizedek doesn't come out trying to make some kind of peace treaty. He comes out to tell Abram what God has to say. He brings provision for him, and he comes out to make a pronouncement on behalf of God.

This is strange in some sense—that the New Testament authors, and David as he's writing Psalm 110, make so much of this one shadowy figure. We don't know who he is. We don't know. I'm saying he's a Canaanite because of where he lives, but we don't actually have any lineage for him. All we know is that he's the king of the city and that he's a priest of God Most High.

Which, again, is interesting because throughout that region, people have rejected the Lord. They've turned away from him. You see that from the Tower of Babel on forward. The people have walked away from God. Even Abram’s own family had walked away from God and were worshiping idols when God calls Abram out.

And so here we have Melchizedek, someone who is worshiping the Lord, someone who is a priest of God Most High. What are the details of his story—the connections, the types—that seem so important to later authors of Scripture? I think it's contained in his title, his name, and his roles.

So his title is king of Salem. He’s the king of peace. And his name, Melchizedek, means righteousness—king of righteousness. And his role is that he is a priest-king.

Now, later on in Israel’s history, when God rescues the people from slavery in Egypt and gives them the law at Sinai, he’s going to establish these roles of prophet and priest and king. And they’re all separate. The prophets can come from any of the tribes, but they’re kind of a wild card thing off on their own. Like, God will give the Spirit at different times to individuals to speak his word. But they’re kind of off on their own doing their own thing and coming into Israel’s history to call people back to the Lord and call people back to his law.

The priests were all descendants of Aaron in the tribe of Levi, whereas the kings all came from the tribe of Judah. In Genesis 49, when Jacob blesses his sons, he says to Judah, “The scepter will not depart from Judah.” And so priests and kings couldn't even come from the same family in later Israelite history.

And so what David notes in Psalm 110 is that this coming warrior king is also going to be a priest. And he's not going to be a priest from the tribe of Levi. He's not going to be a priest in the way that Aaron’s family was a priest. But he’s going to be a priest after the order of Melchizedek.

Melchizedek serves in Psalm 110 and in Hebrews chapters 5 through 7 as a type of the kind of king that Jesus was going to be, the kind of priest that Jesus was going to be.

I just want to read chapter 6, verse 19 through chapter 7, verse 3 of Hebrews. Like I said, it starts talking about the connection between Jesus and Melchizedek back in chapter 5 of Hebrews. It goes all the way through the end of chapter 7, but I just want to read these few verses here that kind of encapsulate it.

Speaking of the sacrifice that Jesus made for us and the fact that in him we can go to the throne of God, Hebrews 6:19 says, “We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain”—the most holy place, the presence of God, the holy of holies—“where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”

“For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him, and to him Abraham apportioned a tenth part of everything. He is first, by translation of his name, king of righteousness, and then he is also king of Salem—that is, king of peace. He is without father or mother or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God, he continues a priest forever.”

Now, I don't think the author of Hebrews is telling us that Melchizedek literally has no mother and father, and literally doesn't ever die, but we’re never told about his beginning or his end. If he were still living at the time of Jesus, it would have been pretty notable. These people would have remembered who Melchizedek was. But he’s using it as this picture, as a metaphor, a type of the kind of priest-king who was coming.

And Jesus is one who comes without human gene... We have two long genealogies, but they're all traced through his... physically through his mother legally. We also have a genealogy—probably in Matthew’s gospel—is traced through Joseph’s side, but it’s not a... it doesn't establish his physical descent. Right? Jesus doesn’t have a human father whose genealogy we can trace back. His coming is from of old. He’s the eternal Son of God. He doesn’t have a beginning, nor does he have an end.

Later in Hebrews 7, it’s going to talk about the power of his indestructible life, such that even though Jesus died, we know that the grave could not hold him. He was vindicated, proven to be the Son of God in power when the Spirit raised him from the dead, Romans 1 tells us.

He is—Jesus is—more so than Melchizedek ever could have been, the king of righteousness. Isaiah 32 and verse 17 says, “The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.” In the book of Jeremiah 23, it tells us that there would be coming a day when the Lord himself would become our righteousness.

And in the New Testament, Paul connects this directly to Jesus. First Corinthians 1 and verse 30 says that Jesus Christ has become our righteousness. And he tells us in 2 Corinthians 5 how that happens—when we trust in Christ, we’re given a new nature and we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. Second Corinthians 5:21 says, “God made him who knew no sin”—Jesus—“to be sin on our behalf, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Jesus is our righteousness. To be clothed in him is to become the righteousness of God. Jesus is our king of righteousness. He’s also the king of peace. Ephesians 2 and verse 14 says that Jesus is our peace. He himself is our peace. Colossians 1 and verse 20 tells us that he made peace by the blood of his cross.

Jesus Christ, in dying on the cross—his body broken for us and his blood shed for us—is the one who gives us the gift of his righteousness, and in giving us the gift of righteousness, makes it possible for us to have peace with God, as Romans 5 talks about. When we are justified by Christ, we who were enemies of God can now be at peace with God.

Jesus is our king of righteousness and our king of peace. He's not just the king who rules us, though he is that. He commands us all to bow the knee to him. He's also the priest who intercedes for us. The end of Hebrews 7 says that he ever lives to make intercession for the saints. He prays for us. He stands. He’s the only mediator. He’s the only priest we need. He’s the only mediator who stands between God and man—the man Christ Jesus.

Melchizedek is this figure who points toward that.

In Genesis 14, Melchizedek comes out bringing a gift, bringing a meal of bread and wine. Nowhere else in this passage does it talk about, when it’s talking about provisions or when it’s talking about possessions—it doesn’t give us specificity. But here, when it tells us the meal that is brought forth by Melchizedek, it tells us he brings out bread and wine.

Like the Lord Jesus, who on the night when he was betrayed took bread and broke it and said, “This is my body, broken for you,” who passed the cup—the cup of the third cup of the Passover supper, the cup of blessing—Paul in 1 Corinthians 10 says, “This cup of blessing that we bless,” that it’s representative of his blood spilled out for us. And here we have a picture of that in Melchizedek. He brings out bread and wine to sustain Abram and his men. He brings out the gift of provision and rest. And then he brings the blessing of God: “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth. And blessed be God Most High who has delivered your enemies into his hands.”

So here we meet this man, Melchizedek, who is a picture in the Old Testament of Jesus Christ. And how does Abram respond to him? Again, Abram has just come off a great military victory. Abram—if I was Abram in this circumstance, at least—I would feel pretty tempted towards self-sufficiency. To thinking, I’m pretty great. I’m pretty awesome. Look what I just did. I defeated the king of kings. And yet, when he encounters this priest of God Most High, he honors him by giving him a tenth. Of everything that he took, everything that he received in that raid, he gives the tenth.

How should we respond to the God who provides for us? How should we respond to him? I don’t think the New Testament gives us a standard where it says you have to give X percentage of your income or you have to tithe, “quote unquote.” But there is a pattern here before the law is ever given, where Abram honors the Lord and his provision by giving a tenth to this priest, giving a tenth to the priest who has provided and come out and blessed him.

We see this stands in contrast with the way the world would expect us to respond. Verse 21 says, “The king of Sodom said to Abram, ‘Give me the persons’”—so, you know, you’ve come and you’ve rescued everybody and you’ve brought back all of our stuff—“you know what? Just give me the people. Let the people come back to Sodom, and you keep everything else. Take the goods for yourself.”

But Abram said to the king of Sodom… So Abram says—the king of Sodom comes to him and says, hey, you take it all. I mean, I’d like the people back, but you take everything. You earned it. You deserve it. And Abram says, I don’t want you to say that you made me rich. God has already provided for me everything that I need. God is the one who has promised to bless me. I’m not going to let—what is this guy’s name?—Bera, whose name means “evil”—I’m not going to let evil be my provision.

Go ahead. I’ll take my expenses. I’ll be reimbursed for what the young men ate. And these, my allies who came with me, they deserve their portion of the spoil. They put themselves at risk. They deserve that. Let them have their share. But I’m not going to take a sandal strap from you.

Notice the difference between how Lot perceives Sodom and its wealth in chapter 13 and how Abram perceives it here. Sodom is this wicked, evil place—already known for that. We’re still chapters from seeing its destruction. It’s known as a place of evil. Lot looks at that and he says, “Opportunity. Opportunity for my growth.” Abram looks at it and says, “I don’t need it. I don’t need it.” He’s not—again, I keep saying this—he’s not opposed to material abundance. God gives him that. But that’s not what he’s pursuing. He’s pursuing obedience to the Lord and honoring the Lord. And his material abundance is a side effect of that. It comes along because God chooses to bless him in that way.

But Abram is offered the opportunity to have even more here. And he says, no, I want to honor God. And the way he honored God was by giving a tenth.

I sometimes wonder—again, let me repeat—I don’t think we’re given a standard in the New Testament. Second Corinthians 9 says that, “Let each one give as he has determined in his mind. The Lord loves a cheerful giver.” So we should give as we pray and consider, “Lord, what would you want me to give?” This is a matter of wisdom, and it’s a matter of seeking to personally be obedient to the Lord.

But I think one of the things that often stops us—that can certainly stop me at times from being more generous in how I give—is that I’m afraid of how am I going to provide for myself? How am I going to make this work?

And I just want to read that passage from 2 Corinthians 9, because I think it speaks directly to that. 2 Corinthians 9:6–15:

“The point is this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. Whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. As it is written, ‘He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.’

“He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others, while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God upon you. Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!”

Abram wasn’t giving to God as a way of earning from God. Abram gave that tenth to Melchizedek, the priest of God, as an expression of his gratitude for what God had already provided for him. And I think that is the kind of faith that we are called to.

The whole point of the story of Abram’s life is that the just shall live by faith. The next chapter, 15:6, “Abram believed the Lord and it was counted to him as righteousness.” But the faith that Abram models is a faith that works. It’s a faith that leaves its home country in order to follow God. It’s a faith that’s willing, in chapter 22, to take his son up, trusting that the Lord would provide a sacrifice. And here, it’s a faith that says, “I’m not going to pursue wickedness in order to increase my wealth. Instead, I’m going to give to God the tithe and honor him with what he’s given me.”

And I think that’s a model for us. As we close, my question is: How would the Lord call you to honor him? How is he calling you to honor him?

Would you pray with me?

Father, we thank you for your immeasurable and indescribable gifts to us, more than we could ever ask or think. And thank you for the words that we read there in 2 Corinthians 9—that you will take care of us. You provide for us in order that we might bless others. And so we ask that you would help us to be faithful, faithful with what you have given, faithful with what you will give. We pray that corporately as a church that we’d be faithful with the resources that you provide, and we pray that as individuals, that as you provide for our needs, you would help us to see where you would have us to be generous with others so that we might reflect you and that we might honor you with what you’ve given.

We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit remsenbible.substack.com

Receiving Glory

Genesis 13:2-18; Remsen Bible Fellowship; 11/10/2024

Introduction

Where does glory come from? Where does your glory come from?

Human beings long for glory.

Before we reject that out of hand as bad or prideful, consider:

We were made for glory

Gen 1, the image of God

Other things proclaim his glory, we are his glory (1 Cor 11:7) : the grand canyon, the stars in a Western sky, a birdsong in springtime, the awe-inspiring vastness of the ocean - these proclaim his glory. Human beings, bearing his image, are his glory.

In his essay, The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis writes about this reality of human glory:

“It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor…

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.

There are no ordinary people.

You have never talked to a mere mortal.

Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.

But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

As Christians, we believe that the human being is a soul: a reality of body and spirit combined. At Creation, this unity imaged and proclaimed the glory of God. This is, in significant ways, affected by sin - as Lewis points out in that quote, the glory that will be revealed in those who reject the Lord will be a horror beyond our earthly imagining. But for those who have trusted in Christ, we have been redeemed for glory. Glory beyond our wildest imaginations and dreams.

Redeemed for glory

Transformed into his image, 2 Cor 3:17-18

Glory revealed in/to us: Romans 8:18-19

Partakes of the divine nature 2 Peter 1:3-4 - there is a glory that comes with growth in Christ

Transition

The temptation for us, though, is to glory-grab. Eve was tempted by the fruit - because it was desirable to make one wise. That wisdom, according to the serpent, would make her like God. Instead of imaging God, glorifying him, through obedience, Eve sought to grab glory for herself in the garden.

Glory is not evil, glory is what we were made for. But let me come back to my original question: where does glory come from? With that question in mind, let’s read Genesis 13.

Read the Text

Abram’s Glory

Note in v2: “very rich.” He was heavy, weighty, glorious

* Where did Abram’s glory come from?

* God’s blessing of him in Egypt, and now in the land of promise; 12:2

How did he respond to the giver? V3-4

* Abram’s greatness came from the Lord, and he honored the Giver

* There is a great temptation with worldly success to credit ourselves, to tell others how its done, to make ourselves out to be smarter or more powerful or more effective than we are. We forget all the help along the way, both human and Divine

* Abram recognized the source of his greatness, and responded accordingly

But with this greatness, this weightiness, came problems: conflict

* [Cannanites, Perizzites] This is likely pointing out that the land is full of both city and country dwellers. That is, it wasn’t just wide open spaces waiting to be filled. This was a populated land.

* Lot had grown along with Abram: Abram had been a blessing to Lot Genesis 12:3

* Abram proposes a solution, and it is a generous one: let’s split, you take your pick

* Abram didn’t have to do this (older, superior in might)

* But, he puts the ball in Lot’s court: what will Lot do? Where will Lot look to grow in glory?

Lot’s Choice

Lot lifted his eyes and saw the Jordan Valley, v10

* What did Lot see? A place to make his name great, and to pursue his earthly glory

Lot’s choice: rational in human terms: fertile, prosperous, a place to grow:

* are these bad things to consider? No, cf a land flowing with milk and honey (Ex. 3:8)

The problem was not what Lot saw and admired: the problem was what Lot was willing to overlook: the character of the inhabitants (v13)

* why does this matter?

* Your character is shaped by the company you keep

* Lot’s later story: Gen 19

* Lot threw in his lot with the wicked cities in order to prosper materially

* Does this work out in the long run? Short term, yes, he likely still prospered: but we get foreshadowing in v10

* Abram’s prosperity was given to bless those around (like Lot). Sodom’s was accrued for carnal and selfish ends (Ezekiel 16:49)

* This means it doesn’t work in the end: God brings it to ruin

* It also had disastrous consequences for Lot

* He is a righteous man (2 Peter 2:7-8; cf he came with Abram to follow the Lord)

* Yet, his family is subsumed by the culture: his sons in law think God’s judgment is a joke, his wife longs for the judged city, his daughters acquire the sexual perversions of their home

* Lot’s righteous soul is tortured because he didn’t take into account spiritual matters at the outset

How can we learn from this?

How do you make choices about where to work, where to live, where to go to school?

* consider tangible and material things, absolutely: we aren’t gnostics or platonists

* But don’t merely consider those things. Consider first the spiritual health of yourself and your loved ones. How do you help your kids think through career, college, etc? Money is a legitimate concern, quality of life matters. Quality of spiritual life matters more.

* Good church? Potential for godly spouses?

* Just looking temporary will steer you wrong.

Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 6:14-15 are relevant: don’t be yoked together with unbelievers.

We must not look simply for this-worldly glory. Look for eternal glory.

Back to Abram

What does God promise him? It will all be his (v15)

Though he does not take the most profitable land, and indeed never builds a permanent dwelling, God promises him the world. (v14-17)

Hebrews 11:8-10

* Think generationally, think eternally, the promises are for us and for our children (Acts 2:39)

We long for glory, for us and our children. That comes from building a spiritual legacy of faith in the God who glorifies his people. What we learn from the Biblical story is that glory is a gift. When we walk by faith, the Lord promises glory as the result - not because we deserve it or have in any way earned it, but because he has attached his own honor to fulfilling his promises given to those who walk by faith.

So do not seek to accrue or demand or build your own glory here on earth: instead, look to pursue faithful obedience to the Lord of heaven and earth. He may, in his providence, grant you a measure of glory and greatness in terms that the world understands - money, possessions, and the like. Or he may not. But he will, if you walk in faith, grow you in conformity to his glory, and cause that glory to be revealed through your life in increasing measure. Further still, he promises you a royal place in that future city whose founder and builder is God himself.

The chapter concludes with Abram building another altar, this one in Hebron. Our faith, like Abram’s, is one centered around believing the promises of God for the future. We look backwards to his faithfulness, and our faith is strengthened. We look forward in hope, and walk in obedience, confident that God will always fulfill his purpose and promise. Including the promise of working glory in your life.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit remsenbible.substack.com

The Faithfulness of God

Genesis 12:4-13:1; Remsen Bible Fellowship; 11/3/2024

Introduction

Is God waiting around to zap you every time you do something wrong? I think there are a lot of Christians who walk around with this paralyzing fear that if they somehow miss out on or step out of “God’s perfect will” for their life their lives will be ruined, God’s blessing squandered, and they will have blown it irreparably. But what we find out when we read the Bible is that God is writing this whole story using flawed and sinful characters.

We can talk about God’s will in two senses: his revealed will, that is what Scripture tells us to do. Behave, think, and life in this way, not that was. And life is better when we walk in obedience to his revealed will. But there is also the secret or providential will of God, by which he (according to Ephesians 1:11) brings all things to pass. And you can’t get outside the providential will of God. You can’t thwart him, you can’t stop him, you can’t mess up God’s plan. You aren’t that powerful. He is working all things together for his glory. And if you love him, that which brings him glory is also that which is for your eternal good. He uses it all, the good and bad, the easy and hard, your obedience, and even your sin. That’s good news for us, because we are all too often marked by doubt, sin, and failure.

Transition

Last week we read God’s call and promise to Abram. Abram was to leave his home, his family, and all he had known in order to follow the Lord to an unknown land. But the Lord promised that this would ultimately result in Abram being blessed - God would show him a land, make him into a great people, make his name great, and bless all the world through him. Now that promise - and Abram’s obedience - will face its first stress test.

Text

Genesis 12:4-13:1, So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5 And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, 6 Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him. 8 From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the LORD and called upon the name of the LORD. 9 And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.

10 Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. 11 When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, “I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance, 12 and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. 13 Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake.” 14 When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. 15 And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house. 16 And for her sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels.

17 But the LORD afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. 18 So Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? 19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife; take her, and go.” 20 And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had.

13:1 So Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the Negeb.

God Calls Abram Out (v1-3) and Abram Responds in Obedience, v4-6

Let’s first notice the admirable obedience of Abram. It is, to state what I hope is obvious, an obedience birthed of faith. Unless he believed what God said in verses 1-3, there is no was he would have uprooted his family. God called in verses 1-3, telling Abram to leave his family and home, and head for a land God would show him. God promised to make him a great nation and people, and to make him a blessing to those around him. Further, he promised to bless all the nations of the earth through him.

The text doesn’t explicitly tell us that Abram believed God, but it becomes obvious in his actions: “So Abram went, as the LORD had told him.” He uproots his family, at 75 years old, takes everything he owns, and goes. His possessions at this point seem to be extensive: notice that verse 5 speaks of all their possessions, and the people that they had acquired while in Haran. The mention of Abram’s already extant wealth reminds us that this obedience truly is remarkable. How easy it is for such possessions, or the desire to acquire them, to get in the way of pursuing the Lord. Have you ever experienced God pulling you to do something, and your response is, “but what about ---?” and you then fill in the blank with a merely material goal, disconnected from God’s priorities? God’s promise to Abram is not merely spiritual, it includes material wealth. But if Abram’s highest priority had been material goods, would it not be tempting to sit tight where he was? Things were going well.

But he followed God’s call. He burnt the boats, as it were, and headed south. He heads into the land of Canaan. Now, we read this knowing Canaan was where he was supposed to go - but he didn’t know that. His father had originally headed for the land of Canaan (11:31), but hadn’t made it. The region of the Negev, south of the Dead Sea, where Abram eventually ends up, was commonly used for pastureland, though in the summer it dried out significantly. Probably not nearly as promising a land as Abram and his family had known in Ur of Chaldeans, or in the land of Haran. But he obediently starts traveling, and trusts the Lord for clarity.

God is Faithful to His Promise (and Abram Responds with Obedient Worship), v7-9

The Lord faithfully responded to Abram’s obedience by fulfilling his promise to show him a land. As Abram passed through the land, and set up camp at Shechem, the LORD appeared to him and spoke: “To your offspring I will give this land.” God had called Abram out, and now he has shown him the land he is to inhabit. Now, it’s key that God promises the land to the offspring of Abram. Remember, he doesn’t yet have any offspring. Further, this land is inhabited. The Canaanites are dwelling in the land, the descendants of Ham’s son Canaan. Now, we don’t know how aware Abram was of God’s promises in the past, but as readers we should certainly note that God had cursed Canaan, prophesying that he would be a servant of his brothers (Genesis 9:25), and that God would God would enlarge the tents of Shem such that Canaan would be his servant (9:26).

So what we see in this text is that God has given Abram, in the line of Shem, a promise to enlarge his tents - to make his name great and bless him - and here he is giving him the land of the Canaanites. The inhabitants of the land, God seems to be saying, will become the servants of your offspring.

How should Abram respond to God’s faithful promise-keeping? Just the way he did in verse 7: “he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him.” He continues to travel through the land, and on arrival at Bethel, builds an altar there as well. The idea of altars being a place of sacrifice where one can meet with God predates the Mosaic law - it was in that later law where God gave structure to this practice for his people.

We should also note the words of v8: when Abram builds an altar at Bethel, he calls there on the name of the LORD. This should draw our minds back to 4:26, where in the days of Seth’s son Enosh people began to call on the name of the LORD. Abram has moved beyond simply trusting the Lord, and acting in faith. He begins to call on his name, he worships, and he communicates dependence upon the Lord. All of this is in response to the gracious initiation of God. God called him first, God initiated. We don’t initiate with God, we respond). We don’t “reach up so that he might reach down”. We respond to his gracious call and initiation.

God is Faithful (Despite Abram’s Doubt-filled Faith), v10-20

So far, so good. But then, in v10, we read that there was a famine in the land. It’s generally easier to walk in obedience to God, to exercise faith, when we pursue him and things start to fall into place. But what happens when the pieces start to feel like they’re sliding out of place? That would be a famine for Abram. He’s a shepherd, he has flocks to water, which is his way of providing for and sustaining his household. What should he do?

The text doesn't tell us specifically what Abram should do. We are told what he did, which is travel to Egypt to sojourn in the land. But while the text doesn’t explicitly commend or condemn Abram’s actions here, we should do some critical thinking as readers. God had brought him to Canaan and told him “this is the place.” Is the right response at the first sign of trouble to abandon it? Probably not.

But if that isn’t bad enough, when they approach this foreign land, Abram unveils his “protect my own neck” plan to his wife. She is supposed to tell everyone that she is his sister (v13). Abram’s concern is born of the fact that Sarai must be an absolutely stunning 65 year old woman. Let’s be honest, most 25 year old women aren’t so beautiful that their husbands worry about getting murdered. And his hope is that, with her posing as his sister rather than his wife, things will be easier for him.

This, again, is not explicitly condemned by the author of Genesis - but he doesn’t need to editorialize, because he can just show us how the story turns out for us to see how foolish Abram is in this situation.

Remember, God has promised Abram offspring and to make him a great nation. That obviously won’t happen if he dies childless. So his concern over being murdered is a colossal failure of faith. On a human level, his fear makes sense - immediately when they enter the land (v14) the Egyptians take note of Sarai. And they praise her to Pharaoh himself. Abram wasn’t crazy when he thought they’d take note of her. But then - did this enter into Abram’s calculations, you’d think it must? - she is taken into Pharaoh’s harem.

This isn’t just a failure of faith on Abram’s part, but it is also a failure to protect his wife. Like Adam in the garden, he tries to play it safe, sits back, and just watches what unfolds. His wife, then, is placed in a situation that is very dangerous, at least in a moral sense. Abram’s fear over his own safety leads to him failing to protect his wife. There’s a lesson here for men: don’t be like Adam, and don’t be like Abram. Your role as the head of your home is to take initiative for the good of those in your care, your wife above all others. She is more important than your children, more important than your parents, more important than your friends, and certainly more important than you. Take faith-driven initiative for her good. Don’t live in passive fear.

God is at work, though. We see that in two different ways. First, in v16 we see Pharoah dealing well and generously with Abram on account of Sarai. It seems when Abram is hoping for the Egyptians to deal well with him in v13, he’s mostly just hoping to not get killed. But what in fact happens in v16 is that Pharoah gives gifts of sheep, oxen, donkeys, servants, and camels. God is prospering Abram’s household, even in this awkward and precarious Egyptian sojourn.

Second, we see that though Abram failed to protect Sarai, God remembered her. This will be a theme in Genesis, that God is a God of seeing. He sees her plight, and instead of allowing her to remain in Pharaoh's house, he afflicts Pharoah and those within his household with plagues of unnamed and undescribed sorts. This leads, understandably, to outrage on Pharaoh’s part. He calls Abram to him in v18-19, and demands to know why Abram felt it was okay to deceive him. Abram doesn’t seem to be given an opportunity to respond. And perhaps that is just as well, as when Pharaoh sends Abram away, he does so in very generous fashion. All the gifts that had been given to him are sent away out of Egypt with him (v20). So God protected Sarai, and he abundantly blessed Abram, even in the midst of his fearful disobedience. God’s promise would not be thwarted.

But while God’s promise would not be thwarted, we should not minimize Abram’s failure in this story, or fail to see the seeds of danger which were sown. First, with this dramatic and sudden increase in goods, conflict arises in the next chapter between Lot’s servants and Abram’s servants. Would this have happened if Abram had remained in Canaan and his prosperity grown more slowly? We can’t know for sure, but their conflict over goods comes in the very next chapter. Second, we are told in v16 that part of what Pharaoh gifted to Abram were female servants. Very likely, this includes an Egyptian female servant by the name of Hagar. Her son by Abram, Ishmael, would be the father of the Ishmaelites, who became long-term enemies of the people of Israel.

This story also follows a pattern that comes to be paradigmatic for the people of Israel: to head into Egypt may at times be necessary, but it is certainly never a good circumstance. Joseph, Abram’s great-grandson, was sold into slavery by his brothers and eventually wound up in Egypt. There he prospered, and when there was a great famine in that whole part of the world, his family came down and joined him in Egypt. There they, as a people, prospered, until they were brought under bondage by Pharaoh. And there, again, the Lord delivered them. He brought plagues upon the Egyptians, as he had brought them upon Pharaoh’s house in Abram’s day, and the Lord brought his people up out of the land of Egypt and back toward the promised land.

The people who had been brought out of bondage were the very ones who would have been the first audience of the book of Genesis. Moses is writing down this book, this origin story, for a people who have been brought back out of the land of their sojournings. The father had protected them through years of bondage, a reality which we will find promised in chapter 15, but which is foreshadowed by what we read today in chapter 12.

Conclusion

In the final verse we read this morning, 13:1, Abram comes up out of Egypt. He, his wife, his nephew, and all they have come up out of Egypt and head back to the region of the Negeb. Pharaoh had kicked him out, but this was simply God’s providential method moving him back to where he was supposed to be.

In all of this story, we continue to see God’s faithfulness. Abram starts off well, going into the land of promise and calling there on the name of the Lord. But he stumbles, stepping out of God’s revealed will and into Egypt. There he strays further, by putting his wife at risk in order to save his own skin. But is God’s plan ever in danger? No. Even though Abram sinned, the Lord brought him material prosperity. He continues to fulfill promises to Abram, even when Abram wasn’t walking in the path of obedience.

When we say salvation is by faith, we need to recognize that the most important thing about faith is not how strong or perfect our faith is, rather, it is whom we have placed our faith in. It is the object of our faith, not its strength, that ultimately matters most. Do you ever falter in your obedience to God? Do you ever stumble or turn from the path he has laid out in his word? Yes, you do. Don’t look inside and ask how your faith could be stronger. Look outside yourself to the faithful God. See the God who conquers unbelief by the power of his Holy Spirit. See the God who so loved the world, in its sin and rebellion - so loved you, in your sin and rebellion - that he gave his only Son. See the God who welcomes, and even blesses, sinners who repent of their sins, trust in Christ, and follow his call. Trust in the only True God: the faithful God of Abram, the faithful Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit remsenbible.substack.com

Outline and transcript generated by AI — please comment if you notice any errors.

DETAILED OUTLINE

I. Introduction

* Speaker: Pastor Will, Remsen Bible Fellowship

* Opening Question: How is God going to fix the world?

* Common human responses: politics, technology (e.g., AI)

* The Bible anticipates this question

II. Genesis Overview: The Problem of Sin and Human Rebellion

A. Creation (Genesis 1–2)

* God creates a good world in six days, rests on the seventh

* Pattern established for human life: work and rest

* Genesis 1:31 – God calls creation “very good”

B. The Fall (Genesis 3)

* Introduction of sin via the serpent

* Eve listens to the serpent; Adam follows her

* Humanity falls into sin; all humanity is affected (cf. Romans)

* Yet, a promise: Proto-Evangelion – Genesis 3:15 (first gospel)

* A descendant of the woman will crush the serpent

C. Spread of Sin and Death

* Genesis 4: Cain murders Abel – conflict of two “seeds”

* Cain’s descendants multiply evil

* Genealogies: “And he died” – recurring result of sin

* Genesis 6: Nephilim and wickedness provoke God’s judgment

D. The Flood and Noah (Genesis 6–9)

* Noah: a righteous man, preserved through the flood

* A new beginning with Noah, but he too fails (drunkenness)

* Ham's sin leads to Canaan’s curse

* Noah dies like the rest—no ultimate solution found

E. The Table of Nations (Genesis 10)

* 70 nations from Noah’s sons – figurative for all nations

F. The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1–9)

* People unite to build a city and tower “to the heavens”

* Rebellion: desire to achieve greatness apart from God

* God scatters them by confusing their languages

III. Transition to Hope: The Call of Abram (Genesis 11:27–12:3)

A. The Generations of Terah

* Terah fathers Abram, Nahor, and Haran

* Haran dies; Abram marries Sarai (barren)

* Family leaves Ur but stops in Haran; Terah dies

B. God’s Call to Abram (Genesis 12:1–3)

* Abram is 75; Sarai is 65 and barren

* God calls him to leave his land and follow Him

IV. Sevenfold Promise to Abram

* Land: “To the land I will show you”

* Nation: “I will make of you a great nation”

* Blessing: “I will bless you”

* Great Name: “I will make your name great”

* Purpose: “So that you will be a blessing”

* Protection: “I will bless those who bless you, curse those who curse you”

* Global Impact: “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed”

* Contrast with Babel:

* Babel: human self-glory

* Abram: God-given greatness and global blessing

V. Abram as the Model of Faith

* Abram obeys without knowing the destination

* God's call requires leaving the known and secure

* Not a map or manual—but a promise

VI. God’s Long-Term Plan Through Abram’s Family

A. Shift in Genesis Structure

* Genesis 1–11: 2,000 years, global scope

* Genesis 12–50: 350 years, focused on one family

* Entire Old Testament traces this line of promise

B. Connection to the New Testament

* Galatians 3:7–9: Those of faith are sons of Abraham

* The gospel was preached to Abraham in the promise

* Salvation has always been by faith, not lineage or law

VII. Conclusion: How God Fixes the World

* Through the promised line: Abram → Jesus

* Through faith in God’s promises

* Through changed lives and transformed communities

* Not self-effort or human glory, but divine grace

VIII. Application

* Believe the promises of God

* Trust Christ, Abram’s greater Son

* Be willing to leave behind comfort and idols

* Follow the call of God to salvation and transformation

IX. Closing Prayer

* Acknowledgement of unworthiness

* Gratitude for God’s generous promises

* Plea for faith like Abram’s

* Hope rooted in Christ’s death and resurrection

SUMMARY

In this sermon, Pastor Will explores the critical question, "How is God going to fix the world?" By tracing the narrative arc of Genesis 1–12, he highlights the unfolding human rebellion, from Eden to Babel, and God’s progressive work of redemption. At the heart of God’s plan is His call and promise to Abram—a barren man with no children—through whom God promises to bring blessing to the whole world.

This promise, rooted in grace and dependent on faith, is the beginning of the redemptive line that leads to Jesus Christ. Pastor Will draws connections between Genesis and Galatians, showing that the New Testament gospel is the fulfillment of God’s ancient promises. Ultimately, God's solution to the world's brokenness is not political, technological, or human achievement, but a promise to bless all nations through faith in Jesus.

Transcript

This morning I want to start with a question: how is God going to fix the world? Have you ever asked yourself that question? Just look at the walk down the street or hear the news or open up your social media app and go, “This is such a mess. What are you going to do?” Just vote for this candidate and everything's gonna be okay. Or adopt this new piece of technology and your life is gonna be so much better. There are many people investing many dollars in the advancement of AI because AI is going to fix everything.

The Bible itself sets us up to ask this question: how is God going to fix the world? The first 11 chapters of Genesis... To kind of recover where we've been in Genesis, the first chapter and a little bit of Genesis chapter 1:1 through chapter 2:3 is a prologue. It's poetic in its structure. It gives us the history of God creating the world in six days and on the seventh day resting. And memorable form with that rhythm of six days and one day of rest that becomes the pattern for how we are to live our lives with six days of work and one day of rest. That's what Exodus tells us. And at the end of chapter one, Genesis 1:31, God looks at everything that he has done and he says, "Behold, it was very good." God makes the world and he makes it very good.

The narrative shifts with the phrase “the generations of.” Adam and Eve are given a commission to rule creation, to have dominion, to cultivate and to keep the garden. But the generations of the heavens and the earth take a cataclysmic turn in chapter 3 verses 1 through 7 when a serpent enters the garden. A serpent comes in and tempts Eve and he says, “Did God really say?” So God has created this very good world, he's put the man and the woman in charge of it, and then a snake comes in and says, “Yeah, but does God really have your best interests in mind? Does God really have your best interests at heart?” And the woman follows the voice of the snake. And then the man standing there follows the voice of his wife. And they enter into sin. And in the rebellion of Adam, the entire human race falls, is what Romans says.

And we see the curse that arises because of the presence of sin in the world. But within that curse, there is hope. Genesis chapter 3, verse 15, we have what people have classically called the Proto-Evangelion, the first gospel, where God promises that the seed of the woman would be in conflict with the seed of the serpent, but the seed of the woman would conquer, though his heel would be bitten by the snake.

There is someone who is coming. But he doesn't come right away. In Genesis chapter 4 we see the first murder take place as there's this conflict between Cain and Abel. Cain, representing the seed of the serpent, rises up and kills his brother Abel who had offered an acceptable sacrifice to God. And things don't get better throughout the rest of that chapter. As the descendants of Cain come, they multiply their evils. They multiply their sins.

The genealogy continues with names and each of them concludes, with the exception of Enoch, who walked with God and was not, because God took him. There's an interesting bright spot in there. But the resounding theme of that chapter is: and he died. He lived out his years and he died. The wages of sin is death.

Wickedness had increased so greatly. In fact, there seems to be some kind of intercourse between angelic beings and human women that are producing this race of giants. And God looks in disgust on the world and decides to wipe them all out. This brings us to the character of Noah. In chapter 6 and verse 9, we're introduced to the generations of Noah. And Noah was a man who is, again, a bright spot on the landscape. God wipes out all of humanity, with the exception of Noah and his family.

When you come to the end of Noah's story, though, we think, oh, okay, we've got a new Adam figure, a new creation with the earth being wiped out by the flood. They're going to come out on this new earth, and Noah is a new Adam, but this new Adam fails. Noah becomes drunk and is lying exposed in his tent. His son, Ham, comes in and shames him, comes out, laughs at him to his brothers, and says, “Hey, look at Dad.” And when Noah awakes and realizes what has happened, he curses Ham's son, Canaan. He places a curse on him, and things just are not looking wonderful for the human race. This man who was righteous and found favor in the eyes of God, even he ends with this shameful story. That's the last we hear of Noah. He died just like everyone before him. Noah died too.

Which brings us to the generations of the sons of Noah in chapter 10. This is what people have traditionally called the Table of Nations. There's these 70 nations listed here who descend from Noah. In the Bible, that number 70 becomes an important figurative number for the nations. The number 70 is used to represent completeness or totality of the peoples.

They begin to multiply and fill the earth. And so maybe they're starting to obey God. But then you get to chapter 11 and realize that the way they started to spread was not because they were obeying God. It was because they were in abject rebellion against him. Chapter 11 verses 1 through 9 give us the story of Babel. The people had gathered together after the flood and said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens.”

They want to build a city and a tower to the heavens. They want to re-achieve heaven without God, without reference to God. They want to just establish a lasting name for themselves. That’s the next thing it says: “Let us make a name for ourselves.” They want to come together and produce something great. That’s a natural human desire, to have greatness. But they want to achieve it for themselves—again, without reference to God.

God had commanded humanity to subdue the earth and fill it with image bearers of God. Adam and Eve had been commanded to multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. The image of God, the name of God, is to be made great in creation as human beings fill the earth and exercise his dominion over it. But instead, they say, “Let's come together and build something great for us.” So they're in rebellion.

Now, Noah had three sons. We just read the Table of Nations in chapter 10. But then it focuses here on one particular son. And that’s Terah—the line of promise, as we will come to find out.

So let's read our text for this morning. It's a long introduction. I don't normally do introductions that are that long, but we'll just kind of reestablish where we are in Genesis.

Genesis 11, beginning in verse 27, says:

Now these are the generations of Terah. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran. And Haran fathered Lot. Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his kindred in Ur of the Chaldeans. And Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor's wife Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah and Iscah. Now Sarai was barren. She had no child. Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife. And they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan.

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation.”

Well, at the end of chapter 11, we see continued problems. We're introduced to a new section, the Generations of Terah, and this section of Genesis carries us through the next 14 chapters into the middle of chapter 25. Interestingly, the generations of Jacob, in chapter 37, focus primarily on the character of Joseph, not on Jacob himself. I think this is just an interesting side note for fathers. Very often your children, especially your sons, will probably have a bigger portion in your story than you do. They will be more significant in your story than you are.

Terah has three sons. Haran is probably the oldest, dies in Ur. Now, sometimes in the Bible when you have names listed, the first name is the oldest. But that's not necessarily the case in the Bible, right? So if we try to put this together with Stephen's recounting of the story of Abraham in Acts chapter 7, to get the dates to make sense, probably Abram is not the oldest son. Haran is probably the oldest son. Also, Haran has children that are grown. But they don't make it there. It says they come to the land of Haran, and verse 31 says they settled there instead. And then in verse 32, Terah, just like everyone else, dies.

He's 75 years old. He's gone with his father from his native land, thinking they're going to one place. They settle someplace else. They settle in the land of Haran. But now his father, whom he had traveled with, is dead. His wife is 65 years old. And verse 30 says she is barren. Again, that's a recurring theme in this biblical story, particularly the story of Abram's family here in Genesis, that there is a barren woman. Well, in this case, it's Abram's wife, Sarai, who is barren.

God comes to Abram and he issues a call to him. He says, leave your land and leave your father's house and go to where I'm going to show you, which may sound absolutely crazy. He's supposed to leave the security of the place he’s been and go to a land that God will show him. He's supposed to head for—he doesn't know where. We'll discuss, Lord willing, Abram's faith and his obedience next week. But this week, I just want to notice the nature of the call, which is to leave behind the safe and the known in order to follow God.

What was safe and known to Abram? Well, later in the Old Testament we're told that Terah and the family were worshipers of idols. And so Abram, we're never told explicitly that Abram participated in that idol worship, but that culture, that religious context, is what he knew. And God calls him out of that.

God often calls us out of things that are comfortable to us, perhaps precious to us, in order to follow him. Those things which will challenge us, which will hinder our following him, have to fall by the wayside in order that we can follow him wholeheartedly and devote his way. But it’s interesting to me that this call isn't then followed by a map to tell him where to go or by a set of rules to tell him how to live—but by a promise.

God gives Abram a promise, which depending on how you slice it up, there are at least seven aspects to this promise. The first is contained there in the call. He says, “I will show you the land.” I will show you the land. It was unknown to Abram at that time, but God would not keep it unknown. He says, I will show you where to go.

Number two, God promises to bless him: “I will make of you a great nation.” He promises blessing to Abram. God promises to provide more than he needed. Blessing—we, when we think of the word blessing in Scripture, need to think in terms of abundance, more than we could ask or think.

He promises to make Abram a great nation. The world, back in chapter 11 at Babel, they wanted to build a city and a tower in one place. God is promising Abram something more. He's promising Abram that he is going to become a great nation that's going to spread out, that's going to fill a great land—not just one city.

Now, Abram is 75 years old with a 65-year-old barren wife. Even with the timescale that they're working on, which is a little different than our timescale, they already know this is strange. Verse 30 of chapter 11 had pointed out to us that Sarah was barren. They wanted children and had no children. This is an amazing promise that God gives to him to make him a great nation.

Fourth, he says, “I will bless you and make your name great.” Again, the contrast is with Babel. This is intentional by the author, Moses. He's wanting us to see the difference between what humanity is trying to achieve for itself and what God is doing with this one man, for rescue. He is a great man, and God is the one who established that. God is the one who created that in him.

God then says to him, “So that you will be a blessing,” at the end of verse 2. God promises not just to bless Abram, but to bless others through him. God promised Abram that he would bring blessings to the nations. One of the contrasts between the biblical understanding of blessing and blessing as it's taught in prosperity circles today is people think, “Oh, God wants to bless me for me.” We're a conduit, right? We're not just getting poured into, we’re to be poured through. That blessing from God overflows. The cups that we have run over—the blessing is for others.

Sixth, God says he will bless those who bless Abram and curse those who curse him. That means that Abram doesn't have to defend his own honor. He doesn't have to defend his own name, because Yahweh, the almighty Creator of heaven and earth, has pledged himself to defend Abram's cause. As referenced in Psalm 23, that’s the same idea we have there: “He leads me in paths of righteousness for your name’s sake.” God attaches his honor to his protecting the honor of his people. So Abram doesn't need to take vengeance for himself. Abram doesn't need to worry about how others think about him. Just worry about honoring God, and he will take care of how others think about you and act towards you.

And seventh, God says to Abram that “in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed.” God promised Abram that the blessing would flow not just to those immediately around him, but to the whole world through his family. And again, remember—Abram has no children. None. His wife is barren.

So, to come back to our question at the beginning—how is God going to fix the world? We might read this and say, that's really nice that God made all these promises to a wandering nomad 4,000 years ago somewhere in Mesopotamia. What does that have to do with how God is going to fix the world? What does Abram have to do with God's plan to fix the world?

I noted earlier briefly a shift. In chapters 1 through 11 of Genesis, you have a focus on the whole history of the world. Those 11 chapters cover all of the peoples of the earth, and they cover about 2,000 years in 11 chapters. Well, starting in 11:27, through the rest of the book of Genesis, you only cover 350 years and you focus on one family. There's a changing of the emphasis, a shift in attention being given. Those first 11 chapters set things up for God to focus in on this one family.

The whole rest of the Old Testament covers God's dealings with this family. The first 11 chapters of Genesis cover the same amount of space as the next 39 books cover. These are the people through whom the promised snake crusher will come, through whom the world will be blessed. The promises to Abram were not just for Abram.

A lot of Galatians is actually Paul drawing on the story of Abram to explain that God's way of salvation in the New Testament isn't new—that it's always been by faith, that it's always been by trusting in the promises of God for salvation. But specifically, Galatians chapter 3, beginning in verse 7, says, “Know then that it is those of faith who are sons of Abraham.” So throughout the entirety of the Old Testament, God is focused on the lineal, physical descendants of Abraham. But here, Paul tells us it’s those of faith who are the true sons of Abraham.

“And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’” So that end of Genesis chapter 12 verse 3—Paul calls that “the gospel,” the good news. “So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.”

The path into God's favor—the path into blessing—is not by merit. It's not by obedience. It's not by bloodline. It's by faith. The only hope for sinful people, the only hope for sinful nations, is to stop looking to make our own name great. It's to stop worshiping ourselves and our desires. That doesn't get us anywhere. That's a dead end.

But we know the end of the story. One day, everything's going to be under his feet, right? We've got the end of the book—Revelation 21–22. Everything's going to be under Jesus' feet. Those united to him by faith will greet that day with joy. Titus calls it our “blessed hope” to see that day.

But between now and then, we ask, how is God fixing the world? He is transforming lives by the power of his Spirit. Sometimes, in his providence, even whole communities and nations are transformed as people turn to Christ, as they are changed. Again, one day everything will be. Well, how can we be in on that change? How can we be part of that change?

It’s by believing the promises of God in the Scriptures. It’s by believing the same God who gave a call and a promise to Abram. He called him out of his home country, he called him out of everything he had ever known, to follow the promise of God. And we have the opportunity to follow that same call too. Jesus says to follow him is to be willing to leave behind father, mother, brother, sisters, lands—not because those things are bad, but if they are pulling you away from Jesus, they're not worth it.

We follow the commands of God in the Scriptures. We follow the call of God to trust in Christ and receive free salvation. Be blessed along with Abraham and his greater Son, Jesus Christ.

Father God, we don't deserve any of that. You are kind and generous and abundant with your blessing. We praise you for that. We ask, Lord, that we would have eyes of faith to trust you regardless of what the circumstances around us would say. You promised to make Abram a great nation when he didn't have any children and was an old man. And he believed in you, and it was counted to him as righteousness.

Lord, if we look to Christ who justifies the ungodly and trust in what he did on the cross in our place—and victoriously in his resurrection, in power and in glory—it will be good news for us. It will be joy. It will be salvation.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit remsenbible.substack.com

A Healthy Marriage, Part VI: The Gospel Shape of Marriage

Ephesians 5:31-33; Remsen Bible Fellowship; 10/06/2024

Revelation 21:9-23 (ESV): Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.” 10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, 11 having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. 12 It had a great, high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed— 13 on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. 14 And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

15 And the one who spoke with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and walls. 16 The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its width. And he measured the city with his rod, 12,000 stadia. Its length and width and height are equal. 17 He also measured its wall, 144 cubits by human measurement, which is also an angel’s measurement. 18 The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, like clear glass. 19 The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, 20 the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst. 21 And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass.

22 And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. 23 And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.

Introduction

Marriage matters more than you think it does. If you think marriage is all about happiness, or companionship, or even procreation, then your view is too small. Marriage is for those things, but it is not just for those things. Marriage has a message.

The fact of there being a message behind marriage means that, if you are married, you are a preacher. Not in the formal or technical sense of someone called to herald the gospel at a particular time and place with your words. But in this equally profound sense: Your life, your marriage, is saying something about the gospel of Jesus Christ. If you are skeptical of that reality, let me direct your attention to Ephesians 5:31-33.

Text

Ephesians 5:31-33’ “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.’

Transition

In these three verses we encounter three realities: a creational basis for marriage, an eternal message in marriage, and practical implications for marriage.

Basis

Verse thirty-one takes us back to some well-worn ground that we have mentioned often: God’s original design for marriage. In the beginning, God created the man: Adam. After giving the man a task, which brought to the man’s attention the unsuitability of all other creatures in creation to be his helper, God put Adam to sleep. And when he awoke, he found that God had done some surgery: taking from his side a rib, and fashioning a bride: this at last! bone of his bones, and flesh of his flesh. He called her woman because she was taken out of man.

This original design, this first marriage, became the pattern for all marriages which followed. Paul, here in Ephesians 5:31, is directly quoting Genesis 2:24: “Therefore [that is, because of the pattern instituted at the beginning] a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

We’ve talked about the physical part of that one-flesh union last week, as in marriage two bodies truly do unite as one. But this unity is also significant for the fact that it is something new. A man shall leave his father and mother. This is a prerequisite to holding fast to his wife, at least in the proper biblical ordering. The marriage union takes two things which had been separate - the man and the woman - and brings them together. But in doing so, it also means a reordering of other relationships. The man’s position as a son is still present - his parents do not cease to be his parents, and his duty to honor them remains - but it is altered significantly as he takes a wife and establishes a new household. One in which he is not the son looking up to his parents, but the husband and father, responsible for those in his care. He continues to honor father and mother - but he does so primarily (though not exclusively) by taking care of his own household in a God-honoring fashion. He is no longer under the roof and authority of mom and dad. He has left them, and he holds fast to his wife.

There are many in our day who have said things like “the nuclear family is a mistake” or that it’s a recent invention. But the nuclear family, a household centered on the marriage of one man to one woman, is woven into the very fabric of creation itself.

Paul takes this fact as a given. So should we.

Message

But to have that as a given truly isn’t enough. Believing in households, built around the marriage of one man to one woman, as the basic building block of society is a good start. But it doesn’t get you anywhere near the finish line of God-honoring obedience you are intended to cross with your marriage. For that, you need to know the meaning behind marriage. You need to know this, you need to have a why for long-term marital faithfulness, fidelity, and fruitfulness, because marriage is generally a long and hard road. If you are running a marathon, but 8 miles in you forget that you are part of a race, and forget where the finish line is, you’d be in a bad situation. You might give up, or keep running, but off the course. So too with marriage. We need to know the why, we need where the goal of this thing is, if we are to stay on course all the way to the end.

There is a greater reality to which marriage points. And Paul makes this clear in Ephesians 5:32, “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” The word mystery is important in New Testament theology. It refers to something hidden or concealed - something which was present in past times, but which could not be fully understood without the more complete revelation we receive from and through Jesus Christ. In the 27 occurrences of this word in the New Testament, over 20 refer in some way to the gospel. Perhaps more significant for understand this passage, six of those occurrence - 22% - come here in the short book of Ephesians alone:

In Eph 1:9-10, we read of God showing his grace by “making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” The mystery was God sending forth Christ in the fullness of time, to unite heaven and earth.

In Eph 3:3-6 the word occurs twice in the Greek text, and is implied once more, which is why you’ll hear the word mystery three times in these four verses, “the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. 4 When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, 5 which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. 6 This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” In these verses, the mystery is that in the Gospel, Jew and Gentile alike are made partakers of the one salvation through Jesus Christ. And, as in chapter one, the theme is on uniting. But the Union Christ brings is not only vertical (reconciliation with God through Christ) but also horizontal (reconciliation with one another as we are brought to salvation in Jesus).

Just a few verses later, in Eph 3:8-10, we encounter the mystery again: “8 To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, 9 and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, 10 so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” Here, the mystery refers directly to the gospel of salvation through Jesus alone, the unsearchable riches of Christ of Christ our Savior, and to God’s plan which unfolded over the course of history, not being fully made known until the Son took on flesh and walked the earth, becoming the God Man who died and rose and is now ascended on high. That he came not only for the Jews, but for the Gentiles as well, uniting them in one church, has a purpose: through the church the manifold wisdom of God is made known to rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. That is, through the church, God is saying something to the angels, he’s saying something to the seraphim and the cherubim, he’s saying something to demons, he’s saying something to Satan. God is putting his wisdom on display for them all to see - by saving men and women, boys and girls, from every tribe and tongue and people and language, and making them part of the church, which is the Bride of his Beloved Son. We often think of the gospel as personal good news for needy sinners - and it is. But it is far more than that. It is also a declaration by God of his infinite wisdom above all rulers, authorities, and spiritual powers. The gospel is the power of God on display. The gospel has cosmic ramifications.

This is good news for anyone who will hear and receive it, for any who will bow the knee to Jesus when hearing of who he is and what he has done. Repentant sinners are united by faith to the ruling and reigning King of the Cosmos. So Paul asks the Ephesians in Eph 6:19 to pray for him, “that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.” This message needed to be boldly declared in words, in preaching.

But is that the only way this mystery is proclaimed? Not according to our text in Eph 5:32. Remember, Paul says, “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” Mystery, here, is the union of man and woman in marriage. But Paul is saying, though there is truly a mystery in the union of man and wife, there is something indescribable in what one writer has called the mingling of souls, nonetheless, this glory is penultimate: there is a greater glory still, one to which the most glorious human marriage pales in comparison. That glory is the union of Christ and his bride, the church.

This mystery starts to take shape in the Old Testament. There we often find the prophets speaking of God as a bridegroom and the people of Israel as the bride. This often comes up in contexts where God is calling the people to account for their unfaithfulness, their rebellion, and their sin. Sin is characterized throughout the Old Testament canon as a form of spiritual adultery. And, not coincidentally, spiritual adultery often was accompanied and characterized by forms of literal sexual immorality. Cult prostitutes, male and female, were staples of pagan temples. If you’ve ever been confused when reading the Old Testament about all the negative references to high places and under green trees, this is what is going on. Temples or tents of worship were generally set on hills, and in the cool of the shade people would offer wicked worship. And God describes these things not as isolated sins, but as characteristic of what spiritual rebellion is at its very core. It’s whoring after other gods.

But, when we turn to places like the book of Hosea, we find God promising a time when he would turn the hearts of his people back to himself. Though they were faithless, he would be faithful. And his faithfulness would be efficacious, it would create a loveliness in his people which they did not possess on their own.

Hosea 2:16-23: “And in that day, declares the LORD, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.’ 17 For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. 18 And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety. 19 And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. 20 I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the LORD.

21 “And in that day I will answer, declares the LORD,

I will answer the heavens,

and they shall answer the earth,

22 and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil,

and they shall answer Jezreel,

23 and I will sow her for myself in the land.

And I will have mercy on No Mercy,

and I will say to Not My People, ‘You are my people’;

and he shall say, ‘You are my God.’”

God promises in this text to take his rebellious people and remove the idolatry from their mouths. And he would make a covenant with them which did not merely impact them, but would impact all of creation, beasts, birds, and creeping things. Even the ground itself would rejoice with grain, wine, and oil - its produce exceedingly great as the Lord poured out blessing upon his bride. How would God do this? No one could say. It was a mystery. It had seemed earlier in Hosea’s prophecy as if God had perhaps cast off his people forever, calling them “not my people” and saying that he would have “no mercy” on them for a time. But we find from Paul’s letters - in the revelation of the mystery - that when Christ came, he was calling for the lost sheep of Israel, but he was also folding in the Gentiles. The “not my people” were not only rebellious Jews, but all of the nations in rebellion against God. And God would bring salvation to all of them. In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself. Is this starting to sound familiar? A lot like the mystery revealed in Ephesians?

Friends, in a sense, the whole Bible is the story of a bride - the people of God - wandering away from home. She is rebellious in spirit, decides to do things her own way, and finds herself in a chaotic mess, bound in slavery to her own wicked desires, and trapped there by a terrible dragon. The mystery of the gospel is that God, her creator, does not allow her to stay locked in the deep dungeons of the dragon’s lair and her own heart. Rather, he sends his Son into the wilderness of the world to do battle sin, to overcome both the fiery flames of the dragon, and the unwilling rebelliousness of the bride. And when he conquers the dragon, and wins his bride, he takes her, in the end, brings her home to a great wedding feast which sets the table for an eternity of fruitful joy in knowing One another.

We love fairy tales because they get at something true: when the knight conquers the dragon and brings the princess home, we are seeing the Bible in miniature. We are reading the story of the world.

Friends, your marriage is bigger than you. This story you are a part of is bigger than you. And yet, in God’s wisdom, kindness, and love, he allows us to participate in this most glorious mystery. Not only as believers who are folded into his church, but as preachers: those whose lives have an opportunity to reflect, however dimly, this most glorious reality in all of the cosmos.

Implications

That, then, is the glorious picture of marriage set forth in the Scriptures. What we have is a most wonderful union - one in which our roles as men and women are playing a part: that’s where Paul returns in v33, he says, don’t forget the practical piece here: love and respect. Husbands, you have a job: model what Jesus’ love looks like. Wives, you have a job: respect your husband and the role that he has.

In concluding our series on marriage, I also want to offer a couple of practical ways to hold marriage in high regard, especially as we consider it’s ultimate point: pointing people to the gospel.

First, how should we speak about marriage? Is your speech surrounding marriage characterized by criticism, complaint, or cynicism? Does that rightly reflect the nature of what marriage is for? How could you speak better of your spouse, more highly of marriage? I’m not suggesting you lie - for our speech to be transformed, our mindset will first need to be. Marinate on this passage in Ephesians 5 and consider how the Lord wants your mindset to change, and then ask how that ought to shape your words.

Second, and related: the church should be a bigger proponent of early marriage. Our society devalues marriage by seeing it not as a core institution for society, but as an optional and unneeded accessory in your personal fulfillment project. Evangelical churches have too often been party to this by extolling how wonderful it is to be single. Now, here me clearly: there are benefits to being single. Paul talks about those in 1 Corinthians 7. But those are strategic benefits for doing ministry while single, and he clearly sees long-term singleness as an anomaly.

Don’t buy society’s lies that you’ll be more free and fulfilled alone, or that you need to have all your ducks in a row and be in a perfect place of maturity before marriage. Most people won’t ever get to that place of maturity apart from marriage. If part of what we’re doing in marriage is learning what it means to picture Christ and his church, here is reality: you’ll never be ready for that.

To the younger single people here, from Cade down to Ross, let me be clear: none of this is to say you can’t love and serve the Lord and live a meaningful life while single. All of us are called, for some portion of our life, to do just that. But what I am far more concerned about, in our day, is an attitude that says marriage doesn’t matter, or it can wait for another 5 or 10 or 20 years. Biologically, that’s really not true. Emotionally and spiritually, there’s a real sense in which that isn’t true either. Don’t be desperate, do trust the Lord and his timing. But also don’t be foolish and think spouses just drop out of the sky when the time is right. Marriage is not only a great gift from God, it is a great gift we are to pursue.

Conclusion

We have spent a month and a half now thinking directly about God’s gift of marriage. This is worthwhile, not only because marriage plays such an important role in our earthly lives, but because, as we’ve seen today, marriage has a message. It has a cosmic meaning. And that meaning, that message, is the glory of the union between Christ and the church. As a man is one with his wife, so Christ becomes one with his people. He is the head, and we, the church, are the body of Christ. This union is not simply some abstract theological reality, it is the goal to which all of earthly existence is directed.

In his book, The Household and the War for the Cosmos, pastor C.R. Wiley puts it this way,

[I]n a real way, conjugal marriage is the end of the world. It connects this world to the next, it unites Heaven and earth, and it is a sign that reads, “This is the way the world will end, not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with wedding bells.”

In light of that, I want to finish our consideration of marriage with two texts from the book of Revelation.

Revelation 19:6-9, “6 Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,

“Hallelujah!

For the Lord our God

the Almighty reigns.

7 Let us rejoice and exult

and give him the glory,

for the marriage of the Lamb has come,

and his Bride has made herself ready;

8 it was granted her to clothe herself

with fine linen, bright and pure”—

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

9 And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.”

Revelation 21:9-14, 22-23, 9 Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.” 10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, 11 having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. 12 It had a great, high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed— 13 on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. 14 And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb…

22 And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. 23 And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.

Friends, all of history is moving toward a marriage, and a wedding feast. One day the Bride of the Lord Jesus will be revealed in full splendor - the church, described in Revelation 21 as the New Jerusalem. Fully cleansed and purged of all sin, and then positively beautified to the point where it is clear John is having a hard time describing it in words, the glory is so overwhelming. And the union of Bride and Groom is such that the light of his glory fills, permeates, the city, and all night is driven away. Perfect love has cast out sin and darkness and fear. In the words of Revelation 22:5, “the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.”

Loved ones, God has given us the opportunity in our earthly marriages, sinful and momentary though they are, to taste some glimpse of this heavenly reality. More than that, he has given us the opportunity as believers to intentionally order our lives in such a way as to point others to this reality. May our lives - our marriages - so convey the glory of Christ and his love for the church, that our friends and neighbors and families will want to know, “who is this Jesus, and how can I know him?”

Communion Meditation

We’re going to divert from our series of meditations on the creed, and just circle back to Revelation nineteen. There we read, in verse nine, “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” Friends, the Lord’s Table is a foretaste of the greatest of wedding feasts. Though at the Table we remember a somber event - the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus in our place for our sins - we do so as believers not only in the cross, but in the empty tomb. The same Lord who died for us rose again and returned to the Father. Having conquered the dragon, he will return one day to take us to the great wedding supper of the Lamb. In communion, we, his Bride, have the opportunity to taste that supper in advance. We remember that we are united to him, the conquering and coming King, and we proclaim his death until he comes. If you do not know the Lord Jesus, let the bread and cup pass by. There is nothing magical in them that will somehow impart spiritual good to you apart from faith in Christ. But for those of you who do know him, welcome to the table. Taste and see - remember, heart and soul - that the Lord is good.

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A Healthy Marriage, Part V: The Marriage Bed Undefiled

Remsen Bible Fellowship, 09/28/2024

Introduction

Hebrews 13:4, “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.”

What is the marriage bed for? Not having a biblical response to this question is a problem. We live in a society steeped in assumptions about human personhood and sexual expression that run contrary to Scripture. Often, we as Christians have these same assumptions without realizing it. Because of this, our understanding of a passage like Hebrews 13:4 is stunted. Worse, it sounds like bad news to us, rather than an implication of the good news.

This creates one set of problems when we’re having conversations at work or at school or in the community. How can I explain the Bible’s stance on homosexuality without coming off as anything except a complete bigot? How can I express what God says about fornication or adultery without seeming judgemental? When we’ve bought hook-line-and-sinker into many of the world’s presuppositions and then tried to mesh Biblical teaching with them, it’s tough. We feel uneasy, without sure footing. So that’s one set of problems.

The other set of problems, to our point today, have to do with the Christian couple in marriage. As we walk through this series on A Healthy Marriage we have discussed the importance of roles, the particular duties of men and women in their particular roles in the marriage, considered some principles and practices for moving toward healthy communication, and today we are going to consider what Hebrews 13:4 calls “the marriage bed.”

If that seems like a scandalous sermon topic to you, you should really read your Bible more. While Christians have often been silent in this area, God is not. His word gives clear, helpful, and sufficient instruction in every area of life. And that includes this area. 

This sermon is largely theological. We need a theological framework inside of which we can build lives that honor the Lord. There will be some practical suggestions at the end - but I don’t think they’ll mean much or be lastingly helpful without the theology. You need to build the house before you paint and decorate it.

So: what is sex?

We need to frame-up our understanding of this issue in light of the Scriptures. The first question we need to ask is, “what is sex?” To answer that question, we turn first to Genesis:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:27-28 ESV) 

The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.(Genesis 2:20-25 ESV)

We see here in Genesis chapters one and two that sex is, at its foundation, two things:

* sex is a good creation of God Himself. Sex is God's idea. Some Christians have tried to paint sex as bad, disgusting, or filthy. Nothing could be further from the truth. God made the first man and woman naked, told them to multiply, and called it very good. So, it’s his idea, he calls it very good, and who am I to argue with God about that? This truth is obvious in other parts of Scripture. For example, in Song of Solomon 4:16, we read,

Awake, O north wind,

and come, O south wind!

Blow upon my garden,

let its spices flow.

That was the Lover. His bride comes back with this reply,

Let my beloved come to his garden,

and eat its choicest fruits.

If you take the time to read through the Song of Solomon, you will find an exuberant celebration of married love, including its sexual aspect.

But it’s not just the Song of Solomon. This theme is present even on more “restrained” parts of Scripture. For example, we read in Proverbs 5:15-19,

Drink water from your own cistern,

Flowing water from your own well.

Should your springs be scattered abroad,

Streams of water in the streets?

Let them be for yourself alone,

And not for strangers with you.

Let your fountain be blessed,

And rejoice in the wife of your youth,

A lovely deer, a graceful doe.

Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;

Be intoxicated always in her love.

That’s the sort of thing that you could feel uncomfortable reading, if it weren’t in the Bible! God isn’t bashful in what he wants married couples to pursue in terms of taking delight in one another. In 1 Corinthians 7, the apostle Paul notes that your body, as a married person, no longer belongs to yourself - it belongs to your spouse. And this is God’s creational design.

* The second thing we note from the passages in Genesis is that sex is, in fact, a command of God. This does need some qualification, as this command is given to a man and a wife in the context of their marriage. But part of His charge to the human race is to multiply. All biblically approved sex occurs within the context of monogamous, heterosexual marriage; and so this command is what we might call a qualified command with universal implications. The qualification is marriage. But the universality remains because the continued existence of humanity literally depends upon it. We have already seen from the writings of Solomon God’s design for mutual pleasure; we’ll see later, in 1 Corinthians 7, Paul’s emphasis on married love as a means of fighting temptation. But the command in Genesis specifically relates to the multiplication of the human race, the raising of a godly offspring to rule, reign, and take dominion over all the earth. Let’s turn to Malachi 2:13-16,

And this second thing you do. You cover the Lord’s altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. But you say, “Why does he not?” Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. “For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless.”

God desires godly offspring to come from our unions. This means that sex is not, contrary to what our society teaches, mainly a means of happiness, fulfillment, and self-expression. Faithful marriage, including its sexual element, has as a core part of its meaning the creation and discipling of the next generation. This, of course, does not mean that all sex must have as its goal the having of children. God has withheld the gift of natural children from some couples, which can be a source of great pain. That doesn’t in any way diminish the value or legitimacy of the marriage bed. The procreative shape of sexual union doesn’t mean that older people have to stop enjoying one another once they are past childbearing years. I don’t think it prohibits, necessarily, all forms or uses of birth control (though I do have thoughts here and preached a sermon touching on it last year). 

Let’s return to our text in Hebrews 13:4,

Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.

Sex is God’s creation, His good and enjoyable creation. And, within the confines of Biblical marriage, it is indeed a command of God himself, given for the production of godly offspring. This command-gift to the married couple is to be held in high esteem among all, whether they are married or not. Sex is sacred. It is, in a very true sense, holy.

The Holiness of Sex

We saw above in the passage from Hebrews that God will judge the sexually immoral and the adulterous. The assumption behind this is the same as the first point in this sermon: that God is the creator of our bodies, and the creator of sex. As creator, He has absolute rights and authority over His creation, and thus sets the boundaries of what constitutes good, acceptable, and ethical behavior. Humans, of course, do not like this. Ever since our first father, Adam, took the fruit and plunged humanity into sin (Romans 5:12-14) we have been rejecting God's authority over our lives. We run headlong into all sorts of sins. Included in this sprinting away from God is a run headlong into sexual transgression. Scripture contains several passages listing different kinds of sexual sins and their consequences (eg, Leviticus 18, Romans 1, Galatians 5).

As I stated above, God created sex to live and flourish inside the confines of monogamous, heterosexual marriage. That’s an unpopular concept today. Our flesh hates it, because all of the promises which the world offers for sexual enjoyment, like fresh experiences, hookups, the perfectly romantic and ruggedly handsome man, passionate lovemaking all the time...these are not the realities of marriage. You marry one person. You spend an incredible amount of time with that one person, mostly outside the bedroom. You make each other mad, irritate one another, and are quite simply: human. And sinfully human, at that. This complicates the matter of sex. Because what Hollywood and pornography have told you was supposed to be an act of rip-each-other's clothes off passion becomes, in fact, a self-giving - in a sense, a self-sacrificing - sacrificing my needs for the needs of another.

Don't hear me wrong. Sex, as we’ve already argued from Scripture, is a most wonderful and beautiful gift. The exposure, the intimacy, the one flesh (Genesis 2:24) can be one of the most enjoyable things God gives us on this earth. But the joy, while including the physical pleasure that God intended, goes a whole lot deeper and past that. When God said that the man and woman become one flesh, he wasn't just saying that the puzzle pieces fit. The oneness that takes place in marriage, and in the marriage bed, is one of physical, emotional, and spiritual unity. Ephesians 5, where we will return next week, tells us that this pictures an even greater unity; namely, of Christ and His church.

When we remove sex from the realm of marriage, we make it a very dangerous thing. All of that exposure, intimacy, and oneness has now been offered to one who has promised nothing in return. In casting off God's law here, we cast off not a burden, but a safeguard for our soul.

I titled this section the Holiness of Sex, and you may be wondering why I am saying so little about that holiness. The word Holy carries the idea of being set apart, and this is exactly what I'm attempting to communicate here. That God has set sex apart, in the bond of marriage, for the safety, well being, and lasting pleasure of His creatures.

So: what do we do?

That’s a lot of framing work. But as I said at the outset, before you start painting the house, you have to frame it up. That being said, here are practical commendations from the Scriptures for honoring the marriage bed an pursuing a healthy marriage:

* Married couples should be together on a regular basis. 

1 Corinthians 7:2-5, “But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. 3 The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 5 Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.”

Paul makes clear that frequency is important if sex in marriage is actually going to work for one of its most important purposes: the protection of the couple from sin. Do not deprive, except by agreement, for very limited times, for prayer. I’m not going to give a number here, that probably varies per couple, season of life, etc. I’m a pastor, not a therapist. But as your pastor, I can point you straight to this text that says, your body belongs to your spouse. You need to view sex within marriage not merely as a place for your personal satisfaction, and participate according only to your feelings and whims. It’s a place of service to the needs of your spouse. And a means of protecting him or her from sinning against God and you.

* This assumes what we talked about last week: frank communication within marriage. These conversations can be very difficult or embarrassing. Some of you are no doubt embarrassed right now. But again, let me point your nose to the book, and say: God is not embarrassed. The language of Scripture regarding human sexuality is not crass or crude, but it is clear. It is honest. It is prudent but not prudish. As a couple, read and discuss the Bible together: especially passages like 1 Corinthians 7, Song of Solomon, Proverbs 5-7, Genesis 2, Ephesians 5. Your communication with your spouse needs to be clear: ask what they need, be clear about what you need. You cannot serve one another and love one another well without clear communication. Have hard and awkward conversations. You’ll love each other better for it. 

* We need to recognize that, in this fallen world, sin gets in the way of sex being the pleasurable experience that it should be for the Christian couple. 

* There is sexual sin in the past (your own)

* There is sexual sin in the past (someone else’s)

* There is sexual sin in the present. 

Let’s address them each in turn.

* Your own sin in the past. Friends, many of us have failed in this area. And I hope that it bothers you. I would be very concerned if sin in your past didn’t bother you when you think about it. But if your past disobedience to God is causing you troubles with current obedience and enjoying or serving your spouse, if you find you continue to carry shame over what you’ve done, let me point you to the cross. On the cross, our Lord Jesus bore the weight of your sin in his body on the tree, that you might die to that sin and live to righteousness (1 Peter 2:24). How is this possible? Because his sacrifice was sufficient to bear God’s anger against all of your sin. He canceled the record of debt that stood against you (Colossians 2:14). The sin has been killed, sin and its wages have died to you because of Jesus - so if you have received him as your Savior, you are forgiven, you are clean, you are a new creation, and you do not need to carry the shame of your past (2 Corinthians 5:21). If you have fornication, or adultery, or a pornography addiction, or any other sexual sin in your past, look to the cross of Jesus, who took your sin and carried it away. Do not carry shame for your past around like a badge of holiness - continuing to carry shame for what Christ has forgiven is not humility or holiness, it’s a deceptive form of pride. Thank him for his forgiveness, and ask him for freedom to walk in a newness of life and joy. The solution to your sin is the gospel.

* Other’s sin in the past. You may be carrying shame from the past that isn’t your fault. This is harder, because some people will tell you that there is no shame in that which you did not choose for yourself. We all know that isn’t true. You can feel a very deep and profound sense of shame over what has been done to you - especially if you’ve been violated sexually. Tamar asks her brother Amnon in 2 Samuel 13:13, when he intended to rape her, “As for me, where could I carry my shame?” After he violated her and then hated her, she lived the rest of her life a “desolate woman” (v20). 

If you have been violated sexually, here me now: it is not your fault. The sin of others is not due to some weakness or foolishness or fault in you. Your abuser committed a sin in the eyes of God - and whether there is ever justice carried out on this earth, they will one day stand before the just judge of all the universe and have to answer for what they did. Justice will be served. 

You also need to know that you can be rid of your disgrace. The shame and violation is real, but it does not define you. You are an image-bearer of God, a human being of immeasurable value and worth. If you have trusted in Jesus, he is reshaping you after God’s likeness. He is restoring what sin - both your sin and the sin of others - has marred and broken. The solution to the problem of other people’s sin is also the gospel. You are who Jesus says you are: loved, chosen, and valued. 

Practically, though, sex may still be harder or scarier for you. And here I would recommend not trying to go this alone. Working through the pain of your past with a competent Christian counselor could be a valuable investment in your own health and well-being, but also in the health of your marriage.

* Present Sin. What if the sin problem in your marriage isn’t back there in the past? Here we come back to the same answer: you must repent. The sexually immoral and the adulterous will not inherit the kingdom of God. Sexual sin is particularly dangerous to the soul, because it touches so close to the core of who we are. If you are driven by your lusts, if you are using porngraphy, if you are cheating on your spouse, let me be dead clear: your soul is at stake. Repent now, while you can still hear the call. Do not think you can hide your sin. Your sin will find you out (Numbers 32:23). So repent of your sin to God, to your spouse, and to a trusted friend or two who can pray for you. For the repentant sinner, there is great hope in the gospel of Jesus: 

1 Corinthians 6:9-11, “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

Such were some of you. But you were washed, set apart, and made just in the eyes of God by Jesus’ blood and the Spirit’s work. This changes everything about how we live. Including in our marriages. This doesn’t mean it will be easy. And if you are the spouse sinned against, there will be trust issues and potential problems that I can’t possibly get into without this sermon getting even longer - but let me again point you to the gospel, where Jesus carries away our sin; and to the practical help of competent counseling, where you can be shepherded with specific counsel and help for your situation. Do not try to walk these roads alone.

Conclusion

Friends, sex within marriage is one of God’s greatest earthly gifts. A healthy marriage cannot exist without a couple learning to grow in their knowledge of one another, service to one another, and delight in one another. There are hindrances which fight against this reality, and we must be diligent and purposeful to overcome those obstacles in obedience to Christ, in love for our spouse, and for our own earthly joy. Let the marriage be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed undefiled.

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