Sermon Tone Analysis

Between Genesis 16 and Genesis 17, thirteen years have passed.

Abram was 86 years old when last we read about him; today as we read about Abram, he’s 99 years old.

As we’ve seen already in this study through the life of Abram, God is in no hurry.

I argue this is cause for assurance, though some would argue this is cause for annoyance.

If we’re honest, we want what God has promised right now.

This whole waiting for 13 years thing is a little ridiculous.

It’s actually been a much longer wait for Abram and Sarai than that, though.

Abram was 75 when the LORD called him to leave his home country and journey to the land God would show him.

75 years old when the LORD promised him offspring and land and blessing.

It’s been 24 years at this point, and the waiting is not over.

Have you ever had to wait 13 years, or 24 years for something?

I know some of you have waited even longer.

Some of you have looked forward to retirement since your first day on the job; the thought of retirement is what gets you out of bed in the morning.

You just keep waiting until you can retire.

You’ve prayed for your spouse or your child or friend to come to faith in Christ for years and years, decade after decade.

And you’re still praying for that, still waiting.

If you’re a Royals fan, you waited 30 years for another World Series win.

And you’ll probably wait another 30 years.

1985, 2015.

2045 could be their year.

Just keep waiting.

I have a friend who has lived with an agonizing auto-immune disease for nearly 50 years, no doubt praying for relief and healing all the while waiting.

The Bible introduces us to a man who as born blind.

Who knows how old he was when he met Jesus, but you know he had been waiting and waiting and waiting for God to act on his behalf.

But this is true: sovereignly (and possibly frustratingly) God is never in a hurry.

Understanding this will aid us in our walk as His people.

A good chunk of the Christian life is very, very ordinary.

“Great swatches of covenant life consist of oil changes and grocery stores, doing business inventory, standing at copy machines, getting allergy shots, and pulling casseroles out of the oven.” - Dale Ralph Davis

If we can’t be content with routine days, we will run into problems; much of the Christian life is very, very ordinary.

That’s not really one of the points of this sermon or of Genesis 17; that is kind of the point of the time in between Genesis 16 and Genesis 17—it was apparently 13 years of ordinary life.

Not much divine “razzle-dazzle.”

No big moments in Abram’s life.

Nothing at all recorded for us about that time.

It was just very, very ordinary.

And then, the un-ordinary or extraordinary happens.

Again.

At this point in Abram’s life, according to the book of Hebrews, Abram was as good as dead.

And yet God had not written him off, nor had God forgotten Abram.

The long wait just serves to prove that the God of the covenant, the God of the promise, really was God Almighty—here, El Shaddai.

El Shaddai, God Almighty, was and is able to do what He has promised, even against all odds, even where good-as-dead-Abram is concerned.

J. Alec Motyer writes this about El Shaddai:

“It was the claim of El Shaddai to be powerful where man was weakest, and He exerts this claim supremely by promising to an obscure and numerically tiny family that they should one day possess and populate a land which, in their day, was inhabited and owned by people immeasurably their superiors in number and power.”

No way could Abram take the land for himself.

But El Shaddai is more than capable.

God’s self-revelation is always significant.

The LORD God has revealed Himself to Abram before.

The LORD has spoken to him, has made promises to him, has sworn to bless him.

The LORD has kept Abram and protected Abram and delivered Abram’s enemies into his hand.

Here the LORD reveals Himself as God Almighty / El Shaddai, and shares His end of the covenant.

(As an aside: this is the chapter preachers long for, because we can finally call them “Abraham” and “Sarah”; God finally changes their names.

We know them as “Abraham” and “Sarah” so it takes a lot of work to call them “Abram” and “Sarai.”

It’s going to take me a few weeks to adjust; forgive me if I call them “Abram and Sarai” for a little bit).

The major promise, it seems, at the heart of the covenant is that the land of Canaan will belong to them.

This promise is usually taken as merely the promise of some real estate for Abram and his descendants.

In Genesis 12:7, the promise of land was to Abram’s offspring.

Here in Genesis 17:8, it’s to Abraham and Abraham’s descendants after him.

Even still, Genesis 17:8 is usually taken to mean something like the land will be Abraham’s in the sense that it will eventually belong to his descendants.

However, the same phrasing in used in verse 7: to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.

No one would say that the LORD will be Abraham’s God in the same sense that the LORD will simply be the God of Abraham’s descendants.

No! We understand the LORD as promising to be God to Abraham individually and to his offspring after him.

So, because we can’t just arbitrarily change the rules of what a phrase means, verse 8 means that the land is promised to Abraham personally.

But this gets a little sticky.

Abraham had already been told that he would die without seeing his offspring inherit the land (Genesis 15:13-15).

So, how is Abraham going to enjoy the land if he’s…well…dead?

Pretty simple: he’ll enjoy it after his death (there is an implicit argument here for the resurrection of the dead).

If the land is promised, not just to Abraham’s offspring, but to Abraham personally, but he’s told he’s going to die before his descendants inherit the land, then wouldn’t Abraham have to assume that he would be brought back to life to enjoy the land?

Wouldn’t his faith lead him to assume a resurrection from the dead?

The focus of the promise is on the land of Canaan, just a small sliver of land in the Middle East—but this is a chunk of land that’s going to be part of a New Heavens and a New Earth.

THAT is when Abraham will enjoy his inheritance.

You see, for Abraham and for his children in the faith, not even death can ruin our inheritance.

That’s pretty good.

What really stands out, though, far more than anything about the land, is the incredible phrase found in verse 7 and verse 8.

Gen 17:7 “I will establish my covenant…to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.”

Gen 17:8 “and I will be their God.”

“What did God say to Abraham?

I will be your God.

Donald Macleod writes:

What does that mean?

It means that God is saying to Abraham, ‘I will be for you.

I will exist for you.

I will exercise my God-ness for you.

I will be committed to you.’

There is no way that can be improved upon!

There is no more glorious promise: not in Romans, not in Hebrews, not in Revelation, not in the gospel of John, not in the Upper Room.

Nowhere! these words of the Abrahamic covenant have never been excelled and never will.”

This is what God says.

This is His end of the covenant: “As for me…I will be your God.”

The LORD is Our God

There’s an analogy in the traditional wedding ceremony.

When the man promises to be his wife’s loving and faithful husband, the rest of the vow explains what that phrase means: “for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse, in sickness and health...”

The husband is promising “I will be with you and for you in all circumstances and be all that a husband ought to be.”

So, when the LORD Yahweh, God Almighty says, “I will be God to you,” He is pledging to be all that God should and could and would be to His people.

Once God says this to you, He establishes “a caring, protecting relationship which is as permanent as the living God who makes it.”

(R.T. France).

This is a relationship that no time can exhaust, no circumstance can change, no disaster destroy, no catastrophe can crush, that no human abandonment can alter.

When the LORD Almighty says, “I will be God to you,” you have the world!

It’s not land or stuff or other material blessing that really matters here.

It’s not even offspring.

Neither is the essence of the covenant eternal life.

So many people boil it all down to heaven.

“I get to go to heaven when I die!”