Rejoice at the Lord’s Great Plans
Genesis 17:15–22
15 And God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. 16 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.” 17 Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, “Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” 18 And Abraham said to God, “Oh that Ishmael might live before you!” 19 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. 20 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. 21 But I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year.”
22 When he had finished talking with him, God went up from Abraham.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, we thank You for keeping Your Word of promise that through Abraham’s Offspring all nations would be blessed by the Savior, the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ. Grant us faith to trust Your Word and rejoice at Your great plans for our salvation. Amen.
Dear Friends in Christ,
My dad often said, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” How true this is. From my own experience and many conversations with other people, this so often seems to be the case. How many of us have had times where we said, “I will never do that or could do that!” And then sure enough, we find ourselves proven wrong. We also have times where we are dead set on a particular plan… but then that plan falls apart. Certainly, God laughs at man’s great plans.
Today, in our lesson, we are picking up with the story of Abraham. We rightly think of Abraham as a pillar among God’s faithful Old Testament people. The Lord had called Abraham out of the land of the Chaldeans to the land of Canaan when he was seventy-five years old (Genesis 12:4). Not necessarily an ideal age to leave your country, your people, and your home. But Abraham demonstrated great faith, by obeying God’s Word and trusting that God would give him the land of Canaan. The Lord promised to make Abraham a great nation, with descendants as numerous as the dust of the earth (Genesis 13:14). God reiterated this promise to Abraham in Genesis 15, when he said that his descendants would be as countless as the stars in the heavens. And Scripture says, “And [Abram] believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness” (Gen. 15:6).
Yet, we also learn in the very next chapter of Genesis, Sarai’s plan to have Abram take her maidservant, Hagar, as a wife. It’s easy for God’s people lose patience. Abram and Sarai had been in the land of Canaan for over ten years, but they had no child, and they were both getting older. We should not excuse their sin, but as sinners we can understand their thought process. God had given them land and riches, but no son. How could Abram have descendants as numerous as the sands of the earth and the stars in heaven, if they didn’t have any children? So Sarai takes it into her own hands (following the cultural norms of their day) and Abram heeded her voice. Hagar would give birth to a son, Ishmael, but this would only bring division into Abram’s family.
Over thirteen years later, Lord appeared to Abram again, when he was ninety-nine years old. And God once again confirmed his promise to Abram. As a witness to his promise, he changed Abram’s name to Abraham, which means “father of a multitude,” for he would be the father of many nations. And the Lord makes plain to Abraham that the matriarch of this great nation would not be Hagar, but his wife Sarai.
“As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. 16 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.” We can understand Abraham’s shock. They had lived twenty-five years in the land of Canaan. Not only was his wife barren, but she was now well beyond the years of childbearing. Now she would conceive? At this news we are told, “Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, ‘Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?’”
This promise was so great, so unthinkable, so unexpected, that all Abraham could do was laugh. And can we blame him? In wonder and doubt, Abraham reasons that God must be referring to Ishmael. But God said, “No, but Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac.” Before Sarah had even conceived, God names Abraham’s son—Isaac. And it’s no coincidence that Isaac’s name means laughter.
The Lord has a sense of humor. He made Abraham and Sarah parents at the ripe old age of ninety and one hundred! Besides the valuable lesson that the Lord’s plans are not always our plans, why does the Holy Spirit record this portion of history for us?
We learn one of the most important things there is to know about God—when he speaks, it comes to be. When God names it, it happens. It is done. God’s word is powerful—it does the very thing it says. Sometimes we refer to God’s word as performative—because it performs and does the very thing he says. God said, “’Let there be light;’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). God said that Sarah would conceive and bear Abraham a son, and he would call his name Isaac. It didn’t matter that Sarah couldn’t have children—she was barren. It didn’t matter that Sarah was well-beyond the age of bearing children. “For with God nothing will be impossible” (Luke 1:37). God keeps his word. He makes the impossible, possible! This is truly one of the most comforting teachings in the Bible—there is nothing that can stop God from keeping his word.
But boy, do we sure sometimes act as if we did not know this to be true. Especially when we must wait to see God’s word come to be. It’s amazing how waiting can dwindle our faith and trust in God, like sand leaving the upper chamber of an hourglass. We also live in an age where patience is hard to come by. People want results fast. They want to see change quickly. They want to see the great glories of God now! Like a toddler, we say, “I want it now!”
There are many things we must wait for. Maybe, it’s that present that you really want for Christmas. Maybe, it’s finding the perfect job or the right home. Maybe, it’s getting to retirement and finally taking it easy. Or maybe it’s something more serious. Like a person wanting to get married, but no suitable spouse is in sight. Or an elderly person, who knows their days in this life are numbered, but prays that Christ would take them home now and make them wait no longer. Or it’s the Christian undergoing persecution who prays, “Lord, come quickly.”
Waiting can bring us to our weakest moments. We grow impatient and frustrated and try to take matters into our own hands, but then things often end up worse than before. Just consider all the trouble, division, and heartache that would come from Abraham and Sarah’s attempt to speed up God’s plan and promise. We sin in our weakness and frustration. We fail to obey God’s Word and trust in him. And because of our sin, we deserve God’s wrath and punishment.
But this is exactly why God made his promise to Abraham. While it did teach him to trust in God’s word, more importantly, through God’s promise to Abraham, he would provide him a Savior—through whom all people would be blessed. The Lord said, “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 22:18). And Paul explains in Galatians 3:16, “Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as of many, but as of one, ‘And to your Seed,’ who is Christ.”
Why did God take such care to preserve Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the Israelites from Pharoah, the Philistines, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and then Romans? Because through Abraham’s descendants the Savior would come. The entire Bible is the history of God remaining faithful to his first promise to Adam and Eve to send a Savior.
And this Savior has come. He was born in manger and wrapped in swaddling clothes. God and man in one person. This little Christ-child came to live a life of perfect obedience to God’s law in your place. He came to pay for your sins, to redeem you, not with gold or silver, but with his holy precious blood shed on the cross for all people. He was named Jesus, “for He will save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). This is why Christmas is so important; the Son of God became man to save us! He is the Prince of Peace who gives us hope of an everlasting kingdom. This holy Child would bear the cross for me and for you, so that we could have peace with God and be made heirs of heaven.
When Abraham heard God’s word that Sarah would give birth to Isaac he laughed. That Hebrew word for laugh is sometimes translated as “rejoice” depending on the context. Dear friends, we don’t need to laugh, but instead, rejoice at God’s great plans. He keeps his promises—his word is reality. The history of the Bible teaches this. And you have become a part of this history. God’s promise of salvation has jumped out of the pages of Scripture and been spoken over you when you were baptized into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. You are a child of God. He has spoken, it is true. You and I come to church as frustrated and worn-out sinners, but God lifts us up by forgiving us our sins in the words of absolution. You are forgiven. You are an heir of heaven. God has spoken, it is true.
It’s good for us to study the history of God’s people, of those who waited on God’s promises. We learn that, like us they had moments of weakness and sin. Yet, they were righteous before God through faith in the promised Messiah. We too are righteous before God through faith in Jesus. We might not see it now. We may not always look like saints nor do we see heaven now. But we are and will be—for God has spoken. And when God speaks, it happens. Therefore, we can rejoice at God’s great plans to save us. Our plans may fail or not turn out the way we expect. But God’s plans for us and for our salvation will never fail. Amen.