Beyond the Shadow - Genesis 17:15-27

Bible Study Lesson for September 9

Introduction: We like to think of the life of faith as a progression. We think we will get more and more holy, that we will only take steps forward and never back. Somewhere along the way, we forget that we will always be human, imperfect, and that life gets in the way. The life of faith is riddled with obstacles as faith encounters the grind of day to day life. We know what God has promised, and we can’t understand why those promises haven’t been fulfilled. We find it hard to process our doubt, and often we are ashamed and think we are the only ones having a hard time.

One day last week, I was thinking about the Apostle Paul. I often compare myself to Paul, which is usually an exercise in feeling pretty bad about my own ministry. Paul is a model for faithful ministry. He shaped the growth of Christianity in the first century through his ministry to the churches of Asia and Europe. I forget sometimes that I need to imagine Paul as a fully human figure. I imagine Paul working, ministering, and preaching every day from sun up to sun down. Surely he was beyond the struggle, beyond the grind of daily life. Paul must have had his daily routine down pat and never said or did anything that he later regretted... Then I remember Romans 7:15, where Paul wrote: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” I wish we had those stories laid out a little more plainly. We do ourselves a disservice when we forget that the people in the Bible are people. Their faith is a model for us, not because they got everything right, but because even when they were wrong, they kept coming back to God. Their experiences show us that God will always take us back.

So it is with Abram. After he and Sarai have plotted to take God’s promise into their own hands, we might expect God to start over with someone else. But instead, God comes to Abram again and makes the expectations of their relationship more clear. In Chapter 15, we had the establishment of the covenant by a ceremony. In Chapter 16, we have a story about Abram and Sarai’s failure to believe the covenant promise. In Chapter 17, we return to the covenant, and God makes a lot of clear promises to Abram, including changing his name to Abraham. We talked about God’s promises to Abraham in this chapter last week, and in the verses that follow Abraham honestly grapples with the promise, but God continues to reassure him, to correct him, and to speak to him in his doubt.

Verses 15-16:

Picking up where we left off last week, God moves on to Sarai’s part of the covenant. God gives Sarai a new name, which echoes Abraham’s getting a new name in verse 5. However, Sarah’s new name does not carry the same sort of transformation in meaning that Abraham’s did; both Sarai and Sarah mean “princess.” Nevertheless, both Abraham and Sarai are consistently called by their new names for the rest of the story. Twice God says he will bless Sarah: first with a son and then by producing nations and kings from her offspring.

The important aspect of God’s promise about Sarah is that it implies a rejection of Ishmael as Sarai and Abram’s attempt to produce the promise for themselves. It is important that Abraham and Sarah learn to accept the promise by trust instead of striving for it by human effort, ability, and scheming. Since Abraham and Sarah are the ancestors of all of Israel, not through Ishmael but through the promised son, this means that Israel itself has its beginnings in a miracle. If we allow ourselves to imagine 99-year-old Abraham and 89-year-old Sarah, we will see the absurdity of the miracle. God promises them the impossible. Will they accept it?

Verses 17-18: Abraham’s Objections

Again we have an echo from earlier in the chapter: in verse 3, when God speaks, Abram falls on his face in reverence. Here again in verse 17, Abraham falls on his face, but in laughter. If we read closely, we can detect an interesting emotional range in Abraham’s response. First, the absurdity of the promise is not lost on him. He responds with a pair of rhetorical questions. Thirteen years have passed since Ishmael was born and Abraham is now 99 years old. Not many people become fathers at 99. Furthermore, Sarah is 89, which presents even more certain biological complications. She is well past the age at which women bear children. 

The absurdity results in Abraham’s laughter, but we should not read it as joy. Rather, I see cynicism in Abraham’s sarcasm. After asking his questions, Abraham pauses before speaking again, to intercede on behalf of his son Ishmael. Effectively, Abraham is asking if God can substitute Ishmael into his plan as the son Abraham already has. The human wisdom of this is something along the lines of “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” Why can’t God just use the child Abraham has instead of promising a new one? It is clear based on the rest of the story that Abraham is asking God about Ishmael not based on any devotion to him, but instead because Abraham is not allowing himself to hope.

The thing that strikes me most about Abraham is how he unapologetically expresses his doubts. If we remember that Abraham is talking to God, this reveals something to us about prayer. Abraham doesn’t pretend a false piety here, but very much expresses himself as the striving and compromising person we have seen him to be. He bargains with God and doubts the promise, just as he did when he took Sarai to Egypt, and again in taking Hagar as the mother of his firstborn. God will not punish him for his doubts, but will reassure him by reaffirming the promise with more details.

Verses 19-22: God Accommodates Abraham

God does not ignore Abraham’s objections. Instead, God responds by reassuring him: Sarah will be the mother of the heir. The name God gives to the child is Isaac, which derives from the Hebrew word for laughter. Abraham will not be the last to laugh at the absurd promise of this son and God joins in the joke by naming him Isaac.

Next, God reassures Abraham that he will not forget Ishmael. God repeats the promise made to Hagar in the last chapter, that Ishmael will also be the father of nations. Ishmael, born of Abram’s failure and doubt, is not punished. He does not bear the promise, but that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t care about him. God promises Ishmael much as well. We should always remember when reading the Old Testament that God’s love and care is not limited to the people inside the covenant.

God returns in verse 21 to Isaac, finally giving Abraham a timeline for the promise. By “this season next year,” Sarah will give birth to Isaac, who will be the next recipient of the covenant. After this, God departs, leaving Abraham to process this news.

Verses 23-27: Ceremonies of Covenant

As I pointed out last week, God is doing all the work in the covenant relationship with Abraham. God has promised to make Abraham the father a great nation, to give him land, and to be his God. Abraham’s part is to be obedient. Immediately after God leaves, Abraham does follow through with God’s instructions, circumcising himself, Ishmael, and every other male in his house. This is no small thing, as all those mentioned in the story are adults and adolescents who would experience the pain of the procedure as well as the expectation of the pain. Following through with circumcision would be a frightening process. Such is the path of obedience at times.

Abraham’s obedience does not take away his doubt. But I would argue that this type of obedience is a treatment for doubt. Abraham’s obedience did not force a miracle. God caused the miracle of Sarah’s pregnancy and Isaac’s birth. Abraham is not presented as someone who has certainty about the future, but as someone who trusts that God is faithful. Here his trust is put into action in his obedience. The question I think this text leaves us with is this: are we willing to be obedient to God even when our obedience does not seem connected to our success?

Conclusion:

When I think about obedience and success, I always come back to the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). Jesus commands his disciples to do a lot of things in the Sermon on the Mount. His concern seems to be their faithfulness and not their success in terms of riches or even safety. Turning the other cheek does not guarantee that an assailant will not attack you again. But what is at stake is our willingness to be faithful to the God who calls us to do hard things. This God will produce the future the Bible promises us. All we have to do is watch, pray, and live obediently. Even when it’s scary. Even when it hurts.