FATHER ABRAHAM (pt. 8)

Waiting changes people... It is how we live within “the wait” that matters.

God doesn’t need a perfect track record from us to keep a perfect promise to us.

God remembers His word when we have forgotten our ways.

Through submission, our holy, just God redeems our history through his grace.

Growing in holiness and grace isn’t pretending you never messed up your name; it is allowing God to rename your mistakes so we can see them as His monuments of grace.

What is an area of your life where you’ve been managing a “messy shortcut?”

Are your prayers filled with the sigh of: “God, I have to fix this”, or the expectant joy of: “God, I can’t wait to see how You handle this?”

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

You're listening to the New Beginnings Church podcast from Delaware Ali. To learn more about New Beginnings Church, visit us online at Delaware NewBeginnings.com. Today's message is from Pastor David Port.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

We are walking through the life of Abraham, at least for the most part. I think we're hitting about 70% of his life. And it's been a fun journey. Next week we're going to conclude it. But our theme, if you haven't memorized it yet, is this faith isn't a straight line of perfect performance. Right? It's a messy journey of relying entirely on God's grace. And we're seeing this through the life of Abraham because we know that we see Father Abraham, right? We we sing that as kids, and our kids know it, and it's about the faith of Abraham, but what we know is that there was some mess in Abraham's life. And so it's understanding that even in the Old Testament, God's grace is there, just like it is with us today. Life is a waiting room. Anybody ever think of it that way? Life is a waiting room. Isn't it? Aren't we always waiting on something? We're waiting on things. We want things instant. We want instant gratification. We have this issue in our lives that we want things right away. We have become so used to clicking on a button that we expect it to show up at our door either that day or the next day. Amen. Amazon shoppers. We can get that stuff, Sam's, you can get it as long as you're within time frame. You can have it at your door. Sitting in a waiting room, though, can be exhausting. Amen. Sitting in a waiting room can be exhausting. I remember like when my kids were going to be born. Sitting in the waiting room. Just waiting, just waiting to go back, just waiting to not like I was in pain, but but waiting for our children to come. I mean, uh, as a child, I couldn't wait to move out. As an adult, no, we're you know, right? We we waited on our kid's birth, we're waiting to get into college, we're we're waiting on life just just to make it in life. Anybody else still waiting to make it in life? I I'm still waiting to make it in life. We're waiting on this, we're waiting on this, uh, on that, and it can be so exhausting because, as still as it seems that waiting is, it actually is an action that that causes exhaustion and stress. Everything is we gotta wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. We just drive through town. You gotta wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Unless we aren't ready for it, then it shows up. Then it shows up if we're not waiting for it. Life is a waiting room. Life is a waiting room, at least to me. In the waiting, there is the growing, there is the wandering, and there's also the making of a mess. Friends, waiting changes people. Our waiting changes people. It changes us in patience, it changes us in love, it changes us in the way we decide. It is how we live within the weight that matters. How we live within the weight that matters. Sitting in a waiting room for an hour can test our patience, right? We we I think most of us have lived the story that you're to your appointment on time and they're an hour late and you don't get a refund. But if you're an hour late, you pay for your appointment and have to go home. It's kind of annoying, it's a it's kind of tragic, really, but sitting in a waiting room can test us. Now imagine waiting 25 years for a promise. Waiting 25 years can test patience, it can test how we live. Maybe we start cutting corners, maybe we start making deals in the back room to get things moving along. Maybe we just simply take control of the process and go, I can do this myself. This is exactly where we find Abraham and Sarah in this point in their story. They are, if you will, in the delivery room of, we are in the delivery room of a couple who have spent the last 25 years waiting for this son, this promise. And in the process, they made a mess of their waiting room. And we've talked about their messes over the last six, seven weeks. But the good news is this God doesn't need a perfect track record from us to keep a perfect promise to us. Thank God for that grace. Amen. We don't have to be perfect because Jesus has been perfect for us. So today, I think we're gonna witness the messy history of Abraham be completely restored by his faithful God. So if you want to join me, Genesis chapter 21. Uh we're gonna go through verses 1 through 7 this morning. Uh, and let's just read and see how God has taken the messy history of Abraham and completely restoring it because of his promise. Let's read the first two verses here first. Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised, and Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age at the very time God had promised him. Talk about redundancy. Did you catch it? Did you catch the repetition here? Three times in two verses. Three times in two verses, we hear about God's promise. Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said. The Lord did for Sarah what he had promised, and she bore a son to Abraham in his old age at the very time God had promised. Throughout his his story, how many times? It's every week we hear God reiterate his promise to them, right? And once again, even after the promise is fulfilled, God is reminding them, I did that. This is the promise that I have given. I have not I have not left you. I fulfilled it. And when we hear repetition within scripture, that should cue us to go, this is important. This is an important piece that the author wants us to read and to understand. And in this, it's that God's God fulfills. And in the wait, God is there. God remembers his word even when we have forgotten our ways. God remembers his word, his promise, even when we have forgotten our ways. The fulfillment of God's promise isn't tethered to what Abraham and Sarah did, but to God's, this church word here, immutable character. If you've grown up in church, you've maybe you've heard that before. And that's just a fancy church way of saying God's unchanging behavior, that God never changes. He is perfectly consistent through the old and the new scriptures. He was, he is, and he forever will be consistent throughout time. God is reliable in an unreliable world. And that's why we feel that sometimes God isn't consistent. Because we are so used to the unreliability of the world, of broken promises, of changed contracts, that what? That it just seems impossible that God could be just as reliable as what we believe he could be. So in the past 20 years of Abraham's life, between Genesis 12 and 21, that we've been going through, Abraham gave Sarah away to a foreign king. Now, this week, if you do the readings on the back of your bolt, and you'll see that he not only did that once, but he did it twice. The chapter before he did it again, and that was after Sodom and Gomorrah and everything that happened there. So he gave his wife away to foreign kings. Sarah exploited Hagar. Abraham took God's promise into his own hands. They both laughed at the news that Sarah wasn't gonna give child, have child in her old age. Yet God shows his faithfulness, God shows his reliability in an unreliable world. How many chances do you give someone? How many chances do you give someone who has been unfaithful to you before you part ways? Now, unfaithfulness can be in different ways, shapes, and sizes. How many times does somebody hurt you before you go, I've had enough? When we sin, we're unfaithful. When we sin, we break our relationship with God, we break our covenant with God. We cheat on him. And yet God never leaves. God holds on to his end of the covenant, holds on to his end of the bargain, if you will. God remembers his promise even when we have forgotten our ways. But God doesn't just show up to fulfill his promise. He invites us to participate. This is what it means to believe in Jesus, to participate in this redemption act. He invites us to participate in the reality of his faithfulness to bring us out of the mess of the waiting room and into a life of redemption. Which consists of obedience and submission. Abraham, we're gonna see here, Abraham participates in this through his submission, through his obedience to God's will, what God had asked him to do. Verses 3 through 5. Abraham gave sorry, Abraham gave the name Isaac to the son Sarah bore him. This is what God asked him to do. And when his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised it as God commanded him. This is what God asked him to do. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. Abraham submits. Submits to God first, submits to the covenant that was given by God, submits and participates in the promise that God has done. He gives the name Isaac. Do we know what the name Isaac means? He laughs. It means he laughs. What a redemptive reminder, not this herful reminder, but what a redemptive reminder, a reminder of God's grace of laughing. Because Sarah and Abraham both laughed. And then he circumcises as God commanded. This is what he said in Genesis 17. Circumcise at eight days old. This is when God promised this outcome that you're gonna have a son, and that this is this is what we're gonna do. This is what you're gonna do. Remember, circumcision is a sign of covenant holiness. Covenant holiness. God fulfilled his promise, and Abraham is fulfilling his duties, if you will, his part by obedience. I don't know about you, but I don't like that word. So something about growing up and do what I say. Amen. But obedience is this beautiful thing. We see it in this human way of going, someone's trying to tell me what to do. And God goes, No, obedience is this. If you do what I ask you to do, you're gonna be in closer relationship with me. Because when you disobey me, you're walking yourself away from me and stay as saying instead of staying close to me. And Abraham is getting this. And so this is as if Abraham is saying, We tried it our way and we created all kinds of heartaches and heartbreaks. We now commit to God's way through submission. Our holy and just God redeems our history through grace. He redeems our history. Everything we've done. We sing that. The worst of the people, if they come to Jesus, will be saved. He redeems our history, everything, not just a piece or a part of it. History. Some of us hold on to grudges. I've held on to grudges. God doesn't hold on to grudges. He clears the slate. He clears a name. What's in the name? A name used to mean something. In scripture, people promised things, they would say, Yes, I do this on the name of my family, because if they didn't hold their end of the that that that promise or that covenant with someone else, it wasn't that person that was reliable. It was the entire family. And the entire family's name, the entire family's name, how however somebody acts is seen, is is is heard, is understood, is known. I'm thankful we don't do that. Because I I would have run my parents' name through the dirt a long time ago. Amen, guys? We've all made decisions. You two ladies, I'm not leaving you off the hooks. But what's in the name? We place names on monuments, and what do we do with those monuments? Why do we have monuments? To remember, to teach, to move forward. I think of the Vietnam Wall. Names on the Vietnam Wall. I think of the 9-11 monuments, all the names. Think of the names on schools and hospitals, monuments, remembrance, teachings, moving forward, not forgetting the past, but learning from the past, building on the past. What else does our name go on? What's the very last thing our name goes on? Our gravestone. Isaac's name is a monument of God's grace. It's a monument of God's grace. It's a monument, just the name in itself is the monument of the history redeemed. Because Isaac means he laughed. And God takes that name and redeems it. Growing in holiness, growing in grace through the power of the Holy Spirit isn't pretending that we never messed up our own names. It is allowing God to rename our mistakes so we can see them as monuments of his grace. You get that? So whatever you did over here, because God says you are clean, because God says you are saved, because through the blood of Jesus you know that your slate's wiped clean, you can say to people, This is who I was, and this is a monument of grace, it is no longer a disgrace. Because God is greater than that. And that's what God does with the name of Isaac. When we stop trying to manufacture God's plans and his blessings for us and simply receive what God has done in our lives and is doing in our lives, the tone of our lives, the decisions of our lives can completely shift. Just like what we're gonna read here with Sarah's response, verses six and seven. Sarah said, Listen, this is so amazing. God has brought me laughter. Remember where she was just a couple chapters ago? Really? He has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me. Not at me, but with me. And she added, Who would have said to Abraham and that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age. I imagine Sarah laughing as she said this. I imagine her having this warm heart, you know, just this excitement. And you can say that her laugh has changed now. It's changed from what? Doubt, bitterness, even cynicism to joy. A joy-filled laughter. A joy-filled laughter of a woman who has been overwhelmed by the grace of God, so much so that the name Isaac is something beautiful and not a discipline. She understands the sheer impossibility of this situation. In human understanding, who would have said to Abraham, who would have ever thought that Abraham would become a father at a hundred years old? And she recognizes the situation within the arms of a holy, faithful God. And yet I have borne him a son at his old age. It's July. Can we go back to Christmas a minute? Maybe I'll cool you off for a day. Does this story remind you of anything? Might this story not remind you of Luke chapter 1? Zechariah and Elizabeth, an older couple, unable to have children? And an angel comes and he says, Zachariah, you're gonna have a son. And he says, Well, how can I be sure of this? Remember what happens? He was struck mute. But once John, John the Baptist, is born, his speech returned, and out of his mouth bursts a song of praise. And it connects to our very story today. That's why I want you to hear this praise of joy from Luke chapter 1. I don't have it on the screen, so just listen. Uh to it's 167 to 79. Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he said through his holy prophets of long ago. Salvation from our enemies and from the land of all who hate us, to show mercy to our ancestors, and to remember his holy covenant, the oath he swore to our father Abraham, to rescue us from the hand of our enemies and to enable us to serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. The Old Testament and the New Testament connect in so many ways. The grace of God is throughout all of Scripture, and we're reminded that in the same way before Christ, that right thousands of years before Christ, that right before the time of Christ, another miracle happens. And this just happens to be his cousin, who will prepare the way for him. Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Abraham and Sarah are older, they have wrinkles, they have scars, probably physically, emotionally, mentally, like most of us do. They're human beings. They are still there there's still family complications ahead for them even after this miracle. Uh again, in your readings, you you will go on in this chapter where you see that they're gonna uh deal with the relationship that they have with Hagar and Ishmael, and so they have difficulties ahead of them yet. And there's another test on the horizon, which we're gonna uh talk about next week with Isaac. But we can't miss that at this very moment they are at a cradle, laughing in joy, in appreciation, in love, not in unbelief or because they did something right, but because God kept his promise. He didn't cancel his blessing, and God has every right to cancel a blessing once it's broken. He could have canceled the whole covenant because the other covenant was broken, part was broken. He didn't cancel it, but instead he took their mess and he created life. God took their laughing response and places the name Isaac as the name of not only their son, but the miracle and the showing the monument of a promise fulfilled, a monument of grace. When all of our human possibilities run completely dry and we begin doubting, God is prepared to do his work of grace and redemption. I want you to. If you can, or if you may. What is an area of your life where you've been managing a messy shortcut? We we've seen this throughout Abraham's life, that in the waiting, in the response of waiting, in the in his life of waiting, he created some messy shortcuts. Where have you created some messy shortcuts? Whether that's in personal life, relational life, maybe even your spiritual life. What's an area? What's an area? Just filter one thing out this week and give it to God. Uh and or you can ask this question, and this is a little bit harder one. Are your prayers, the your prayer life, the prayers that you speak to God, the conversations you have with God, are they filled with a sigh of not again, God, I gotta fix this. Or the expectant joy of God, I can't wait to see how you handle this. Your life changes if you allow it in the waiting. Being perfected in grace, being perfected in holy living is restoration of living in the image of God, which brings us pure and holy, unadulterated joy. Sarah figured that out. Took time, just like it takes time for us. But we remember that God doesn't need a perfect track record. He doesn't need a perfect track record from us to keep a perfect promise to us. I promise I will never leave you, I will never forsake you. All who believe will be saved. We should stop believing in the lie that our mess disqualifies us from God's grace. It's because of our mess that we need God's grace, and God will continue to work his holy purposes in our lives, even when we continue to trip over our own mess, like our dog toys in the middle of the living room at my house. That's kind of how our life is sometimes. Jesus came to clean up the messy waiting room of this world in preparing for the world to come. That all who believe in Jesus will be saved and live with him eternally.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

Thanks for listening to the New Beginnings Church podcast. For all our messages, sermon notes, and the latest updates, visit Delaware NewBeginnings.com. We'll see you next week.