God of the Impossible Genesis 17:1–8 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless. I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.” Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.” Apart from the appearance of God to Abram, first in Ur of the Chaldees and later in Haran, very little in the narrative about Abram before Genesis 17 has had anything to do with the miraculous. With Genesis 17 this changes. On the letterhead of the well-known Chinese evangelist Leland Wong are three sentences, each a verse of the Bible: “The sun stood still” (Josh. 10:13), “The iron did swim” (2 Kings 6:6), and “This God is our God” (Ps. 48:14). By this juxtaposition of verses, Leland Wong has affirmed that his God does the impossible. Abram is now to find this also. For his God is Jehovah, and Jehovah is the God of miracles. Abram had been eighty-six years old when his concern for a son had last been shared with God (Gen. 16:16). Abram was now ninety-nine years old (Gen. 17:1). Thirteen years had passed, and the time was gone in which he could procreate children. Besides this, Sarai too was past the age of childbearing. But God had given his promise, and its fulfillment now required a miracle. What did Abram do? The Bible tells us that Abram believed God. In the following year, Sarai gave birth to Isaac who was the son of promise and an ancestor of the Lord Jesus Christ. Father of Many This, in brief, is what took place. I have summarized it to provide a frame of reference. However, it is some of the details involved that throw the most light on Abram’s experience with God and most clearly highlight the supernatural demonstration of God’s power. No commentator has written of these details more graphically or with better insight into the narrative than Donald Grey Barnhouse, so I quote him at length here. Barnhouse begins with the significance of the patriarch’s original name. “Abram was his name in its earlier form, and the name Abram means ‘father of many.’ The key to the story is that this man, even though he had a name like that, was the father of none. At the age of seventy [sic] the Lord God of glory appeared to him when he was yet an idolater, living in the midst of a family of people of idolatry, and told him to get out from his country, and from his kindred and from his father’s house unto a land that God would show him. The vision must have been one of great glory and power, for Abram started moving, with his flocks and herds, and with his wife and servants, and kept on traveling, at least a thousand miles, until he came to the land that God had promised to show him, and which God now promised to give him, and which, later, God said he had given to him and to his seed forever. “When this promise of the land was given to Abram, it was stated that the gift was not only to him but to his seed after him. And the point of the story lies in the fact that Abram had no seed. This may not be a disaster in our western lands, but in the Orient it must have been particularly galling. The Orientals are a most polite people, and their politeness manifests itself in asking you many personal questions which would be considered impolite in our culture, but which must be asked in the Oriental culture.… “Abram was an Oriental. He was used to the palaver of the Orientals. Furthermore, he was strategically located athwart the roads of the camel caravans that carried the commerce of the ancient world between Egypt and the North and East. He owned the wells, and his flocks and herds were great. The Scripture says that ‘Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold’ (Gen. 13:2). When the caravans of the rich merchants came into the land, either from the north or from the south, they stopped at Abram’s wells. The servants of Abram took good care of the needs of the camels and the servants of the traders. Food was sold to the travellers. And in the evening time the merchants would have come to Abram’s tent to pay their respects. The questions would have followed a set pattern. How old are you? Who are you? How long have you been here? When the trader had introduced himself, Abram was forced to name himself: Abram, father of many. “It must have happened a hundred times, a thousand times, and each time more galling than the time before. ‘Oh, father of many! Congratulations! And how many sons do you have?’ And the answer was so humiliating to Abram: ‘None.’ And, many a time there must have been the half concealed snort of humor at the incongruity of the name and the fact that there were no children to back up such a name. Abram must have steeled himself for the question and the reply, and have hated the situation with great bitterness.” At this point Barnhouse adds that he once knew a man whose name was Wrench, who told him that he had divided his acquaintances into two classes: (1) those who did not make wisecracks about his name and (2) those who did. “He said that he automatically cringed when someone would hear his name and begin one of the wisecracks which he had heard in every possible variety: was he related to monkey wrench; was he the lefthanded wrench, and all the others. I knew a Mr. Meek who had been asked a thousand times if he had inherited the earth. “Abram would have understood him very well. Father of many—father of none. The possibilities were varied, and I believe that it is possible to detect in the psychology of the narrative the fact that there was much gossip about it. The servants who heard the jokes and who saw Abram’s embarrassment repeated the details with embroidered variations. It was a world of cloth and goat skins, where all lived in tents, and where there was little privacy from the eyes and none in the realm of the ears. There must have been many conversations on the subject—who was sterile, Abram or Sarah? Was he really a full man? Oh, he was the patriarch; his word was law; he had the multitude of cattle and the many servants, but—he had no children, and his name was ‘father of many.’ ” Abram and Hagar Barnhouse continues; “If someone thinks that I am imagining all this, let me present in proof the psychology of his wife, Sarah, who finally came to him and suggested that he take her servant girl, Hagar, and have a child by her. Sarah must have sensed that it was she herself who was barren. She was a very proud woman, and very sensitive, as the sequel shows, and she must have been goaded to her action by desperation which forced her to push her husband into the arms of another woman. “Remember, I say, that it was a world of cloth and skins—they lived in tents, surrounded by servants. The offer is made—Abram is presented with the slave girl as a concubine. The news must have spread with rapidity; the tent was prepared for the master and the slave girl; the servants who did the work and who surrounded the group, must have greeted one another with smirks and winks—old Abram, father of many, father of none, had gone into the tent with a concubine. “Days passed, while the idle speculation of the womenfolk fanned into greater gossip as the news was finally confirmed that Hagar was with child by Abram. Sarah saw herself despised in the eyes of the woman of Egypt. The news spread in the camp, for it was a matter of great importance, involving the inheritance of great riches. There was going to be an heir. Abram was looked at with a little more respect—at least it was now certain that he was a real man—here was the proof of it. And he had fathered a child in advanced age. Then it was Sarah after all—it was she who was sterile—a woman who could not fulfill the functions of a woman. “And then the child was born—it was a boy, and his name was Ishmael. The birth of a son is a very important event in the life of any man. … Abram was proud of that son; he was proud of himself. All the natural rising of the flesh was his. He was a man, and the little baby boy was proof of his virility. He partook of the universal feeling of manhood.… “Several years passed and the Lord God appeared to Abram and reminded him of the previous unchangeable promise that he should have seed as the stars of the sky and the sands of the sea. Abram cried out: ‘Oh that Ishmael might live before thee’ (Gen. 17:18). It was a cry of ignorance, and sets the scene for the background of the faith that followed in the life of the patriarch. In the New Testament the contrast between the son of the slave and the son of the wife is set forth in the Epistle to the Galatians. We read in Galatians 4:21–31, ‘Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman. He who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the Mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Hagar. For this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and’ the Bible continues, ‘corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. For it is written, Rejoice thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not; for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband. Now we, brethren, are the children of promise as Isaac was. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was after the Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless, what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son; for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.’ “Now the teaching of this paragraph in Galatians gives us the sure meaning … of the historical incident as it is recorded in the Book of Genesis. There is every indication that Ishmael was born of the natural virile powers of Abram. That child was born as all other children are born. There was no miracle connected with his birth. Abram was eighty-six years old, but it was a child of his natural powers. “Now, when the travelers came to the wells to camp and came to call upon Abram, the question of the name was not quite so difficult as before. What is your name? Abram, father of many. Oh, congratulations! And how many sons do you have? I have one son. True, it was not very many, but it was enough to keep the smirk off the faces of the strangers and the winks from the glance of the servants who stood nearby. Abram had a son. He was a man. The Covenant Confirmed “Thirteen years passed thus. Abram had declined in health, and was now feeble. He was ninety-nine years old when God appeared to him and reminded him of the promise which had been made to him. Abram’s first reaction was to remind God that, after all, he did have a son, Ishmael, and that the existence of this one son was enough to keep God from being a liar. Even if Abram died then, God could give Ishmael a multitude of sons and fulfill the promises. But God does not work in that fashion. The line of the Messiah was not to come through the womb of a daughter of cursed Ham by means of the finagling of Sarah trying to help God out of a fix. “God said unto Abram, ‘I am the Almighty God; walk thou before me, and be thou perfect. And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly’ (Gen. 17:1). Now observe well that this covenant which established the Hebrews as a race and gave them the start of their religion took place at least fifteen years after Abram had been called and had left his land. His salvation was by grace, and now God proceeds to elaborate on the covenant. Abram fell on his face before God, and God continued, saying, ‘As for me, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram; but [thy] name shall be Abraham, for a father of many nations have I made thee’ (17:4, 5). “There are some things in the Bible that cause me to chuckle, and there is a thought in connection with this verse that always has had that effect on me. I cannot help but think of what must have happened when Abraham broke the news to his family and servants that he was now changing his name. They all knew that his former name was Abram, father of many, and they knew it had been somewhat of a thorn to him. So we can imagine the stir of interest and curiosity when he announced, ‘I am going to change my name.’ Were there some who said to themselves with a laugh, ‘The old man couldn’t take it. It got under his skin. After all, to be father of nobody for eighty-six years, and then be the father of only one, with a name like he has—father of many—must have its rough moments. So he is going to change his name. I wonder what it will be.’ ” Barnhouse concludes his account of what took place with these words: “And then the old man spoke. ‘I am to be known as Abraham—father of a multitude.’ We can almost hear the silence of the stunned moment as the truth breaks upon them. Father of a multitude? Then the laughter broke forth behind the scenes. ‘The old man has gone crazy. He had one child when he was eighty-six, and now at ninety-nine he is beginning to get ideas. Father of a multitude! was there ever anything more ridiculous for a man of his age?’ ”1 Faith of Abraham From a human point of view, it may have been ridiculous for a man of ninety-nine to think like this. But it was not ridiculous from God’s point of view, and Abraham saw things from the viewpoint of God, who promised them. This was a promise from God, and nothing is foolish when it comes from him. Paul writes that even “the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength” (1 Cor. 1:25). Abraham believed God. Paul says of him, “Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised” (Rom. 4:19–21). Do you have a faith like that? A God like that? The God we worship is the God of Abraham, and this God works in men to bring forth faith like Abraham’s. This God brings life out of death, love out of hate, peace out of turmoil, joy out of misery, praise out of cursing, and strength to those who trust him. In our day he does so through Jesus Christ, who is the focal point and heir of the promises. Will you trust him? Will you trust his promises of salvation—of forgiveness of sins, of access to his presence, of eternal life? Remember that God cannot lie and that God always performs what he has promised. Boice, J. M. (1998). Genesis: an expositional commentary (pp. 574–579). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 03:01:01 +0000
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