Abraham divided
Most of the time, I start with scripture verses and then explain them underneath. But this time I thought I'd try something different, as the whole story is chapters long and the juicy bits are scattered throughout. So this week I'm trying to tell the story with the juicy verses layered in like a giant tasty sandwich.
Abram became Abraham through a series of trials. He followed God's promise by leaving family and friends and his culture to move to a foreign land. This was probably a huge sacrifice for him, as this was the time before the internet, so it wasn't like he could Skype his family or text them. There wasn't even a postal service. It was a scary, all or nothing decision.
Relocating to a foreign land was easy compared to the second part of God's promise: God promised Abraham tons of descendants. He was told that the whole land he was living in would be filled with his descendants. When Abram went on his journey, he was already 75 years old, so it probably started out looking like that promise would never work out.
Really though, imagine being 75 years old and being told your descendants would fill the land. Your wife is 65. Most people have long since had kids and grandkids by that age. How seriously are you going to take a promise like that? The grander God's promise, the more absurd it seems, and the more we doubt whether maybe it's just our emotions, or wishful thinking.
You always hear about how Abraham believed God's promises and was considered righteous, but the middle part of the story where he struggles is my favourite part. He's human and he's sat on this promise for somewhere between 1-10 years. He's not getting any younger, nor is his wife. He's struggling with this.
Midlife crisis is probably not the right term for this phase of Abram's life, but something like that is going on. He's running out of time. He's started making other arrangements for his legacy. A bitter root of doubt has begun to sprout regarding God's promise, because he just doesn't see how it's going to happen.
Everyone goes through something like this, and I think that's the really human part of Abram's bitter response to God. "What can you give me? You've given me no children. Look at my desperate situation." Is that a peaceful statement of trust, or is it painful doubt? His heart has grown sick because his hope has been deferred for too long. He's already planning for the worst, despite being promised the best.
Nobody but God knew what would happen next. It was Abram's hopeless negativity versus God's truth. God could have yelled at Abram for not believing him, and condemned him for being weak and faithless, but he didn't. He simply restated his promise. "It will happen, Abram. It's not wishful thinking and you didn't get the details wrong."
I love the grace of this. We always hear people saying how we have to have faith in order for things to happen, like we need to carry the burden ourselves. God could have walked away and been like "fine then, no kids for you," but instead he held firm to his promise and simply corrected Abram, and that was all Abram needed to trust him.
How many of us do this? A promise takes forever to come to fruition and we start coming up with plan B in case it doesn't work out. "Did God really say X? Maybe he meant Y." "Maybe I did something wrong and missed it." "Maybe I should just stay put and get on with my life." Imagine waiting on a promise for eleven years as the doors all seem to slowly close on the path to its fulfilment.
Abram's wife develops a plan B for him. She's hopeless like Abram used to be, and her plan reflects it. "God has kept me from having children." Does that sound like someone who is on board with the promise Abram was given? So she comes up with a plan she thinks will make her husband happy "Maybe God doesn't want us to have kids together. Maybe he wants you to have them without me. We need to start being realistic here or you're going to run out of time."
This is where I pause to do a bit of cultural explaining. Slavery is not cool, but in Abram's days it was a fact of life. There was no social support system and people would sell their daughters and sons to stay alive. People would get into debt and be unable to pay. They would take prisoners of war, and wouldn't have jails to keep them in. So you ended up with extra people and slavery was how you sorted them out.
Marriage was a more fluid thing then than today. You couldn't really divorce someone, and women couldn't really find careers of their own, so what happened was the man would take a younger wife when his first wife wouldn't bear him any more kids. Nowadays, we have the midlife crisis divorce, but in Abram's day it wasn't uncommon for a wealthy man to accumulate more women to keep the party rolling.
So Abram is probably upset that his wife won't bear any kids. And his wife is probably feeling the pressure and trying to help. So she tells him to run off with the nice young secretary, essentially. And Abram, doing a bit of "prophesy lawyering" probably figures "Well, a child by a second marriage is still my offspring, technically."
So, impatient and frustrated, he engaged with plan B to try to help things along a little, and they ended up with Ishmael. Problem solved, right?
Years have passed. Abram has moved on. His boy Ishmael is approaching adulthood at 13 years old, ready to start taking over the family legacy. But then God stops by again. He changes Abram and his wife's names and delivers the promise again. Only he gives a timeframe in the future, not thirteen years in the past!
You can only imagine how Abraham's world is shaken. For thirteen years he's thought he had passed this milestone in his life. The wait was over and he had his son, who would receive his full inheritance. But now he's being told that Sarah, who he gave up on, really is the one will deliver the promised son!
It's mind blowing. And ridiculous as they're both approaching 100. He already spent years waiting for God's promise and thought he'd found a quick fix long ago, but no. He has to wait another year now! He starts laughing at the absurdity of it all. He's like "enough! let's just end this. Ishmael's good enough."
But God's plan is the best plan. And while he'll sometimes bless plan B too, his best plan is the one he's attached his promise to. And now that it's almost time, he's established a clear timeframe. Abraham is back to having to have faith, and Sarah is suddenly back in the game again.
Sarah overhears the conversation Abraham is having with God and starts laughing herself. Her biological clock has long since run down. There was like zero chance of her having a kid and yet God was saying it would happen within the next year. Ridiculous! There are so many problems with God's plan! She dismisses God's promise as being too ridiculous.
Within three months she would be pregnant. A post-menopausal woman, aged 90, conceives at a speed that would make a woman a third her age envious.
I love how the Bible puts this: "the Lord was gracious to Sarah." She didn't believe his promise, and was sort of dismissive with him. People say you have to hold onto promises for them to happen, but God was gracious and gave it to her anyway. Sarah, who went and got another woman for her husband and talked him out of waiting, was still God's first choice for carrying out his plan. How does she deserve that? She doesn't. It's grace.
The modern nation of Israel and Jewish people are the result of that act of grace on God's part. Jesus descended from that specific couple that God wanted to bless. Imagine the world we would live in if Abraham was able to talk God out of following through with what he wanted, or if Sarah's dismissal was enough to break the deal.
We might look back on Abraham's story and be like, "why not take things into your own hands, if God will deliver his promise whether you wait for it or not?" Because when you deviate from his perfect plan, it can introduce trouble. In Abraham's case, it caused strife in his household. When Isaac was born, Sarah demanded that he remove Hagar and Ishmael from the picture. His beloved son Ishmael nearly died in the wilderness and his descendants became enemies of Isaac's descendants.
Just as Jesus descended from Isaac, Muhammad descended from Ishmael. Think of the suffering that might have been spared the world, if Islam had never come into being, if Muhammad had never been born because Ishmael had never been born. To this day, in Israel, the descendants of Isaac are plagued by the descendants of Ishmael. All because Sarah was trying to help her husband who was sick of waiting around to see what God would do.
So we might ask ourselves, why doesn't God thwart our plan B when we try to carry it out? Why didn't he prevent Sarah from buying Hagar, or Hagar from conceiving when Abraham had sex with her? Why didn't he refuse to bless Ishmael, or prevent him from having kids?
Sometimes he does, like in the case of Jonah, where running away just brought him to where God wanted him anyway. But other times, I think God finds a way to make use of the extra plot lines we introduce into his world. In these verses, as the beloved son, Joseph, of Abraham's beloved son, Isaac, was captured and about to be killed by his jealous brothers, the slave-trading descendants of Ishmael rolled through and brought him to where he needed to be instead.
So the moral of the story is that we should take God's promises very seriously. If he tells us something is the best course of action, we should take it seriously. Second best can still be pretty good, but it's not the first choice for a reason. But ultimately, no matter how we choose, God wants to bless us. He loves us and wants to see us succeed at what we are called to do.
Abram became Abraham through a series of trials. He followed God's promise by leaving family and friends and his culture to move to a foreign land. This was probably a huge sacrifice for him, as this was the time before the internet, so it wasn't like he could Skype his family or text them. There wasn't even a postal service. It was a scary, all or nothing decision.
Relocating to a foreign land was easy compared to the second part of God's promise: God promised Abraham tons of descendants. He was told that the whole land he was living in would be filled with his descendants. When Abram went on his journey, he was already 75 years old, so it probably started out looking like that promise would never work out.
The promise
The Lord said to Abram after Lot had parted from him, “Look around from where you are, to the north and south, to the east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted. (Genesis 13:14-16)
Really though, imagine being 75 years old and being told your descendants would fill the land. Your wife is 65. Most people have long since had kids and grandkids by that age. How seriously are you going to take a promise like that? The grander God's promise, the more absurd it seems, and the more we doubt whether maybe it's just our emotions, or wishful thinking.
Hope deferred makes the heart sick
After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision:
“Do not be afraid, Abram.
I am your shield,
your very great reward.”
But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.” (Genesis 15:1-3)
You always hear about how Abraham believed God's promises and was considered righteous, but the middle part of the story where he struggles is my favourite part. He's human and he's sat on this promise for somewhere between 1-10 years. He's not getting any younger, nor is his wife. He's struggling with this.
Midlife crisis is probably not the right term for this phase of Abram's life, but something like that is going on. He's running out of time. He's started making other arrangements for his legacy. A bitter root of doubt has begun to sprout regarding God's promise, because he just doesn't see how it's going to happen.
Everyone goes through something like this, and I think that's the really human part of Abram's bitter response to God. "What can you give me? You've given me no children. Look at my desperate situation." Is that a peaceful statement of trust, or is it painful doubt? His heart has grown sick because his hope has been deferred for too long. He's already planning for the worst, despite being promised the best.
Correction
Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:4-6)
Nobody but God knew what would happen next. It was Abram's hopeless negativity versus God's truth. God could have yelled at Abram for not believing him, and condemned him for being weak and faithless, but he didn't. He simply restated his promise. "It will happen, Abram. It's not wishful thinking and you didn't get the details wrong."
I love the grace of this. We always hear people saying how we have to have faith in order for things to happen, like we need to carry the burden ourselves. God could have walked away and been like "fine then, no kids for you," but instead he held firm to his promise and simply corrected Abram, and that was all Abram needed to trust him.
Ishmael
Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.”
Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.
When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. (Genesis 16:1-4)
How many of us do this? A promise takes forever to come to fruition and we start coming up with plan B in case it doesn't work out. "Did God really say X? Maybe he meant Y." "Maybe I did something wrong and missed it." "Maybe I should just stay put and get on with my life." Imagine waiting on a promise for eleven years as the doors all seem to slowly close on the path to its fulfilment.
Abram's wife develops a plan B for him. She's hopeless like Abram used to be, and her plan reflects it. "God has kept me from having children." Does that sound like someone who is on board with the promise Abram was given? So she comes up with a plan she thinks will make her husband happy "Maybe God doesn't want us to have kids together. Maybe he wants you to have them without me. We need to start being realistic here or you're going to run out of time."
This is where I pause to do a bit of cultural explaining. Slavery is not cool, but in Abram's days it was a fact of life. There was no social support system and people would sell their daughters and sons to stay alive. People would get into debt and be unable to pay. They would take prisoners of war, and wouldn't have jails to keep them in. So you ended up with extra people and slavery was how you sorted them out.
Marriage was a more fluid thing then than today. You couldn't really divorce someone, and women couldn't really find careers of their own, so what happened was the man would take a younger wife when his first wife wouldn't bear him any more kids. Nowadays, we have the midlife crisis divorce, but in Abram's day it wasn't uncommon for a wealthy man to accumulate more women to keep the party rolling.
So Abram is probably upset that his wife won't bear any kids. And his wife is probably feeling the pressure and trying to help. So she tells him to run off with the nice young secretary, essentially. And Abram, doing a bit of "prophesy lawyering" probably figures "Well, a child by a second marriage is still my offspring, technically."
So, impatient and frustrated, he engaged with plan B to try to help things along a little, and they ended up with Ishmael. Problem solved, right?
Thirteen years later...
God also said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.”
Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” And Abraham said to God, “If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!”
Then God said, “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him. And as for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him; I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers. He will be the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation. But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this time next year.” (Genesis 17:15-21)
Years have passed. Abram has moved on. His boy Ishmael is approaching adulthood at 13 years old, ready to start taking over the family legacy. But then God stops by again. He changes Abram and his wife's names and delivers the promise again. Only he gives a timeframe in the future, not thirteen years in the past!
You can only imagine how Abraham's world is shaken. For thirteen years he's thought he had passed this milestone in his life. The wait was over and he had his son, who would receive his full inheritance. But now he's being told that Sarah, who he gave up on, really is the one will deliver the promised son!
It's mind blowing. And ridiculous as they're both approaching 100. He already spent years waiting for God's promise and thought he'd found a quick fix long ago, but no. He has to wait another year now! He starts laughing at the absurdity of it all. He's like "enough! let's just end this. Ishmael's good enough."
But God's plan is the best plan. And while he'll sometimes bless plan B too, his best plan is the one he's attached his promise to. And now that it's almost time, he's established a clear timeframe. Abraham is back to having to have faith, and Sarah is suddenly back in the game again.
Rejection of the promise
Abraham and Sarah were already very old, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?”
Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son.” (Genesis 18:11-14)
Sarah overhears the conversation Abraham is having with God and starts laughing herself. Her biological clock has long since run down. There was like zero chance of her having a kid and yet God was saying it would happen within the next year. Ridiculous! There are so many problems with God's plan! She dismisses God's promise as being too ridiculous.
Within three months she would be pregnant. A post-menopausal woman, aged 90, conceives at a speed that would make a woman a third her age envious.
Grace
Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him. (Genesis 21:1-2)
I love how the Bible puts this: "the Lord was gracious to Sarah." She didn't believe his promise, and was sort of dismissive with him. People say you have to hold onto promises for them to happen, but God was gracious and gave it to her anyway. Sarah, who went and got another woman for her husband and talked him out of waiting, was still God's first choice for carrying out his plan. How does she deserve that? She doesn't. It's grace.
The modern nation of Israel and Jewish people are the result of that act of grace on God's part. Jesus descended from that specific couple that God wanted to bless. Imagine the world we would live in if Abraham was able to talk God out of following through with what he wanted, or if Sarah's dismissal was enough to break the deal.
Aftermath
Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt. Potiphar, an Egyptian who was one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him there. (Genesis 39:1)
We might look back on Abraham's story and be like, "why not take things into your own hands, if God will deliver his promise whether you wait for it or not?" Because when you deviate from his perfect plan, it can introduce trouble. In Abraham's case, it caused strife in his household. When Isaac was born, Sarah demanded that he remove Hagar and Ishmael from the picture. His beloved son Ishmael nearly died in the wilderness and his descendants became enemies of Isaac's descendants.
Just as Jesus descended from Isaac, Muhammad descended from Ishmael. Think of the suffering that might have been spared the world, if Islam had never come into being, if Muhammad had never been born because Ishmael had never been born. To this day, in Israel, the descendants of Isaac are plagued by the descendants of Ishmael. All because Sarah was trying to help her husband who was sick of waiting around to see what God would do.
So we might ask ourselves, why doesn't God thwart our plan B when we try to carry it out? Why didn't he prevent Sarah from buying Hagar, or Hagar from conceiving when Abraham had sex with her? Why didn't he refuse to bless Ishmael, or prevent him from having kids?
Sometimes he does, like in the case of Jonah, where running away just brought him to where God wanted him anyway. But other times, I think God finds a way to make use of the extra plot lines we introduce into his world. In these verses, as the beloved son, Joseph, of Abraham's beloved son, Isaac, was captured and about to be killed by his jealous brothers, the slave-trading descendants of Ishmael rolled through and brought him to where he needed to be instead.
So the moral of the story is that we should take God's promises very seriously. If he tells us something is the best course of action, we should take it seriously. Second best can still be pretty good, but it's not the first choice for a reason. But ultimately, no matter how we choose, God wants to bless us. He loves us and wants to see us succeed at what we are called to do.
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