He Who Remembers With Love

Genesis 21:1 ESV

1 The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised.

As I have told you on several occasions, I am what many consider to be an “old soul”. What that means is that many of the things that I enjoy come from a time that was “before my time”.

Some of my favorite movies star John Wayne. Much of the music that I enjoy is close to one hundred years old, or is newer, but is made to sound like it is one hundred years old. And I know that the last time that I mentioned being an “old soul” to you in a sermon, I told you about how I like some older tv shows, like “Green Acres” and “Petticoat Junction”.

But one of the older tv shows that I enjoy watching and am going to mention now may not be as well-known to some of us. The show that I am referring to was called “The Patty Duke Show”, which ran from 1963-1966.

The fifteenth episode of the first season of the Patty Duke Show is entitled “The Christmas Present”. In this episode, Patty’s cousin, Cathy sits patiently at the front door of Patty’s Brooklyn home on Christmas Eve, waiting for her father to come through the door.

Cathy’s father was a reporter for a news agency that would assign him to different places all over the world, but every year, no matter where he may find himself in the world, he was always able to make it back to Brooklyn the night before Christmas.

Well, it happened to be that in this particular episode, it had been reported that Cathy’s father, while on assignment, had been detained somewhere in the Middle East. But though this was the case, Cathy said, “He always comes home on Christmas Eve, and this year will be no different”.

Well, Cathy was the only one in the house who had this sentiment, everyone else came to expect what they thought was the inevitable, that Cathy’s father wasn’t going to be home for Christmas this year. Then at one minute to midnight, guess who came walking through the front door? Even in the hardest circumstance, Cathy’s father was able and faithful to keep his word.

Now that, I would say, is evidence of a remarkable faith, faith that a fallible man would keep his word, especially in light of the fact that he had always kept his word in the past.

Now, it is always good for us to keep our word so long as it is possible for us to keep our word. And that is the key, it is good to keep your word “so long as it is possible” to keep your word. We may have good intentions and want to keep our word on every occasion, but sometimes we just can’t. For example, I might give you my word that I will meet you somewhere, but I crash my car on the way there, and so I can’t keep my word.

But though we as finite beings don’t always keep our word, either because we don’t want to keep it, or because we are not able to keep it, the polar opposite is true concerning our infinite, eternal God.

Whenever He wills to do something, whenever He ordains something, whenever He promises to do something, His mind doesn’t change; so, as He wanted to fulfill what He promised to fulfill when He promised it, so does He continue to desire to bring it to pass. Furthermore, unlike us, God is always able to bring to pass what He has promised. And because He is always faithful, He then always brings to pass what He has promised to bring to pass. He is willing, He is able, and He always comes through.

As we now begin our series of sermons in the month of November, we will work our way through seven verses which speak of God fulfilling a remarkable promise that He had made in spite of what appeared to be a biological impossibility and the thanksgiving that was expressed because of the fact that God had performed what He promised He would perform.

In the twelfth chapter of the book of Genesis, it is recorded that God called a man named Abram to leave his homeland and journey to a new land that He would reveal to him, with the promise to make Abram into a great nation.

So, at seventy-five years old, Abram set out from his home as God had told him, leaving everything that he knew, determining to obediently go to the land that God would show him.

Fifteen years later, when Abram was ninety years old, God changed Abram’s name to Abraham and told him that he would be the father of a multitude of nations. Nine years after that, when Abraham was ninety-nine years old, God said that Abraham’s wife Sarah, who at that time was eighty-nine years old, would be the one who would bear a son for Abraham through whom the nations would be blessed.

Abraham responded to this declaration of God the way that I think most everyone would respond when it says that he laughed when he heard this. He essentially said, “If Sarah conceives today I will be one hundred years old when the child is born and she will be ninety years old!” And when Sarah herself heard this, she too laughed in disbelief.

But regardless of how Abraham and his wife reacted to the declaration of the sure promise of God, God was faithful to bring about what He had promised to bring about, and at that, Abraham and Sarah’s laughter of disbelief was changed to laughter of joy.

As we look to our reading for today and we see the fulfillment of the promise of God, I want us to start by looking at the first two words of our reading; two words, one name: “The Lord”.

We see this name given for God so often in the scriptures that I’m sure that all of us, with regularity, take this name for granted. But in the scriptures, when we read the name “the Lord”, given with a large capital “L” and then with smaller capital letters “ORD”, the divine name that is communicated is “Yahweh”.

Now, the reason why this is important to know is because first, “Yahweh” is the personal and primary name of the God of heaven and earth, and also because of the meaning of the name “Yahweh”.

The most simplistic way of describing what the name “Yahweh” means is “I AM”. We remember, I’m sure, that when the Lord appeared to Moses in the burning bush and Moses asked Him Who shall he say to the people, Israel Who had sent him, God told him to say, “I AM has sent me”.

What this indicates is the aseity, or the self-existence of God. You see, everyone and everything owes its existence to God. No one and no thing exists on its own, but rather, we exist because God Himself causes us to exist. But not so with God, no one and no thing causes God to exist, He aloneis self-existent.

Thus, as we enter into our text, we see that the One Who is active in this account is none other than “Yahweh”, the self-existing One. Thus, we are immediately made aware of the fact that the One in Whom is all power is the One Who brings what follows to pass.

And what we read concerning the Lord in our text is that He “visited Sarah as He had said”. Now, the important aspect of this verb “visited” on the part of the Lord is that it indicates that God had not forgotten Sarah. In fact, many commentators and Bible scholars say that this “visiting” of the Lord to Sarah could also be described as God remembering Sarah with love.

One scriptural example of God remembering with love is, Genesis 50:24, which reads:

Genesis 50:24 ESV

24 And Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”

In this verse, we see that before Joseph had died, he told his brothers who outlived him that God would lovingly remember they and their descendants and bring them to the very land that He had sworn to the Patriarchs. God had sworn that this would be the case and in love, He would not forget this, as one day, He would do what He had promised to do.

Another scriptural example of God remembering in love is found in the book of Ruth, chapter one, verse six, which reads:

Ruth 1:6 ESV

6 Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and given them food.

In this particular narrative from the book of Ruth, there had been a long famine in the land of Israel, and when we read that the Lord had “visited” the people of Israel, it indicates that He lovingly recalled His promise to the people, and therefore, in the fullness of time, He removed the famine and there was food in the land once more.

And our text for today is no different, for God had made certain promises to Sarah through Abraham, such as Genesis 17:21 when God said to Abraham:

Genesis 17:21 ESV

21 “I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year.”

This was the promise of God, He had said that at around one year from the time in which He had spoken the words of Genesis 17:21 to Abraham that Sarah, at ninety years of age, would bear a son to Abraham, one whom they were to name “Isaac” which means “He who laughs”. This signifies that at the birth of Isaac, the laughter of disbelief that Abraham had previously displayed would be changed to laughter of great joy.

And in our reading, we see that God fulfilled His promise to Sarah through Abraham as He “visited her”, He remembered her with love.

And lastly, we read that when the Lord visited Sarah He lovingly remembered the promise that He had given to her, as “He did to Sarah as He had promised”. And thus, at ninety years old, Sarah conceived.

Now, how did this happen? How was a ninety-year-old woman able to conceive? It was able to happen, and it indeed did happen because God is able to make it happen. And because He wanted it to happen, it came to pass.

But most of all, for our comfort today, it is good that we recognize that because God promised that it would come to pass, there was never a possibility of it not coming to pass. Indeed, because God cannot lie, because He cannot change, it had to come to pass.

And thus, what does this tell us about the promises of God to us as believers? His character does not change, indeed, it cannot change, and so, what does this tell us about His promise to work all things together for the good of the believer? What does this tell us about His promise to return? His promise to give us new bodies? His promise to be glorified in the judgment of the reprobate? His promise to establish the new heavens and earth? His promise to forever dwell with us as believers in that eternal city, the New Jerusalem?

We could go on and on and on, but the answer to it all is that because God is Who He is we know that He will do what He has promised to do. Because He has willed to love us as believers with an everlasting love, He will lovingly remember us and perform His good pleasure towards us.

He is able, He is willing, and He will not change His determination in the matter under any circumstances whatsoever. And therefore, beloved, give thanksgiving and praise to our mighty God!

Amen?