Abram messed up pretty badly in Chapter 16. Have you ever messed up so badly that you wouldn't blame God if He never blessed you again? This may be how Abram feels right now. He knows he didn't stand firm in faith against Sarai's idea to use Hagar as a surrogate mother for their child. He didn't wait for the Lord to fulfill the promise of a son but instead took matters into his own hands without consulting the Lord. Thirteen years have gone by since he made this mistake and he's had a lot of time to think about it and to beat himself up for it. I think he knows Ishmael is not the promised son, but the promised son still hasn't arrived, and he's ninety-nine years old now. He has probably convinced himself that God's promise has been voided because of his sin.
But God is the God of second chances. And of third and fourth and fifth chances. And of more chances than we can count. While it's true we can knock ourselves out of some blessings by getting out of step with God, when we repent and commit our ways to the Lord it's amazing how willing He is---over and over---to pick us up and dust us off and set us back on our feet. This is what Abram needs in Chapter 17, so God appears to Him and repeats the promises He's made before.
"When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, 'I am God Almighty; walk before Me faithfully and be blameless. Then I will make My covenant between Me and you and you will greatly increase your numbers.'" (Genesis 17:1-2) When the Lord urges Abram to be "blameless", He doesn't mean sinless. No human being is going to be sinless. In the original Hebrew the word translated as "sinless" means "whole". We can never be whole without a relationship with our Creator. The Lord is urging Abram to get back in step with Him, to walk with Him daily, and to believe His promises without thinking he has to do something to "help" the Lord to perform the promises. This is why the Lord uses the title "El Shaddai" for Himself in verse 1. This title means "all sufficient". The Lord doesn't need Abram's help to follow through on the promises He's made. Abram's help hasn't been very helpful so far; all he did was bring conflict into his home by going about things the wrong way. So now the Lord says to him, "I am the all sufficient God. I am able to do everything I promise to do---and more! Just trust in Me and believe what I say. Stay close to Me and watch to see what I'm going to do."
One time some years back a terrible situation arose in which I owed a pretty big debt that wasn't my own fault. Someone in my family used my computer login for one of my credit cards to take out a cash loan from my available credit, which was sizable. This many years later I don't recall the exact amount of the cash loan but I'm thinking it was somewhere in the neighborhood of $15,000. I could have reported this as fraud and had the person arrested, maybe, although in the legal advice I received was that it would be difficult to prove someone had access to my laptop and my saved passwords without my permission. The person who had taken the money was a person who desperately needed the Lord and I felt like the Lord was telling me not to do anything to them but to let Him handle what was wrong in their heart. Instead of going the legal route and charging them with fraud, I consulted the credit card people to explain the situation and see how I could fix the mess. I was told they would write off the majority of the debt if I made a payment of a certain amount by a certain date. They forgave about two thirds of the debt, but the amount I still had to pay seemed astronomical at the time because my husband was out of work.
I was frantically trying to figure out how to raise the money. I was at the point of going to the bank to take a lien against my paid-off car when the Lord said in my spirit, "Stop! Don't try to work this out yourself. Stand back and watch what I'm going to do." All He asked me to do was calculate how much money I needed to save every week in order to have the full amount by the date it was due, and I was to put that money in an envelope every Friday when I got paid at work. I didn't know how I was still going to pay household bills and put food on the table while saving enough money to pay the bill, but by the date the payment was due I had enough money in that envelope right down to the penny! I don't know how He did it. I don't know how He kept my household going while at the same time telling me to put so much money aside. Somehow He made the money stretch enough to cover everything it needed to. In addition, He dealt with the heart of the person who had wronged me. Since then, that person has repented of their sins and accepted Christ as their Savior and has apologized to me for what they did. This person is living an honest and responsible life now.
I had nothing to do with how the money multiplied or with the person turning to Christ. That was all God's work. But what if I'd disobeyed the Lord? What if I'd refused to trust that He would provide? What if I'd taken legal action against this person in spite of the Lord telling me to let it be? My financial problem may not have worked out very well. The person who wronged me might have continued to resist the Lord for a lot longer after I---a Christian---had them prosecuted even though the Lord told me not to. I wish I could say I've always heeded the word of the Lord instead of trying to fix things myself and making a mess of them. But that wouldn't be true. So the lesson here is: when the Lord wants us to participate in the work He's doing, He will tell us what to do. But if He wants us to stand back and watch Him work, we better stand back. In our passage today the Lord is telling Abram to stand back and let Him do what He intends to do.
Abram surrenders wholly to God on this matter. There have been times when I've meddled in things I should have left alone, and when confronted with God's immeasurable ability to sort things out, there's nothing I can do but surrender and submit. When we get even the tiniest glimpse of His awesome power, we see how puny our own efforts are. Abram sees this and falls at the feet of the Lord. "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 now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.'" (Genesis 17:3-8)
Abram is going to end up with two sons: the one he obtained by human effort and the one obtained by a miracle of God. This is why the Lord says he will be a father of "nations". Originally the Lord promised He'd make a great nation come from him (Israel) but now that Abram has messed up the Lord mercifully blesses the other family line that will come from him. Ishmael's line will also be fruitful. The Lord changes his name from Abram (which means "exalted father") to Abraham (which means "father of many"). For all the years when he had no child, Abram must have found it sad and ironic that his name meant "exalted father". But now he is a father of one, and although it was not the Lord's will for him to obtain a son in this manner, the Lord isn't going to cut off Ishmael's line. It's not the fault of Ishmael, or of his mother Hagar, that they were used in an ill-advised plot. The Lord is still going to fulfill His promise of the son He intended to give Abram by miraculous means, so now He calls Abram "father of many". Abram will be the father of two sons and, through their offspring, will be the father of many peoples and nations.
No comments:
Post a Comment