Abram & Sarai: A Promised Messiah

This is our second week studying Abraham and Sarah's walk with God, and you had six chapters this week, which was a lot of reading. And I hope you did okay managing the parts that we skipped over, because we're saving for next week the story of Lot and his wife, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, Hagar and Ishmael more in depth. So it was a little dicey this week, but I'm sure you did good. This week's lesson is titled, God's Design for a Promised Messiah. And we're going to begin to see with the most clarity yet, God's unfolding plan, what his plan is going to look like. And in many ways, Abraham and Sarah and the birth and the life of Isaac play out a dramatization for us that very much parallels the promised son, Isaac, with the promised Messiah, Jesus. And that's the point of our lesson. That's what we're going to be watching for. We've enjoyed lots of biblical types already as we've gone through, but maybe this is a good time to stop and talk about what is a type. We get our English word type from the Latin tupos, which means an impression or a symbol. Now some of you, as I look around here, I know that you come from a generation where you didn't take keyboarding in high school. You took a typing class on a typewriter, right? Some of you had jobs where you used a real typewriter. Are they all antiques now? My mother still types me letters on a typewriter. If you still have a job with a typewriter, maybe you should look for another job. Maybe you should come into this century. But anyway, in the language of typewriters, the type is that little image that is on the end of this long arm. You would strike A, and this arm would go forward. And a reverse image of an A would strike the ribbon onto the paper and leave an impression upon the paper. The type would leave an impression. And so you would type another letter, and pretty soon you would have a word and then a sentence and a paragraph, and you'd get the point. But in biblical interpretation, we also have what we call a type. And it also strikes upon our comprehension to leave an impression for us. And in biblical types, it leaves an impression upon us of something that we want to be looking for in the future to see the reality that is to be fulfilled. So in this lesson, we call Isaac a type of Jesus Christ. And what we're saying is that many elements of Isaac's life are intended to leave an impression upon our minds of God's unfolding story through the Messiah, something yet to come. And we always want to watch for types in the Old Testament. Because to read the Old Testament and miss Jesus is to miss the intended meaning of the Old Testament. Do you remember we said we had these two chapters of God's perfect creation followed by the entire rest of the Bible to tell how he was going to recreate that, how he was going to redeem that back? It is like an unfolding roadmap. Even Jesus said that the Old Testament was about him. John wrote it for us in the fifth chapter, John 5, 39.

So Jesus said, the Old Testament scriptures are about me. You should see me when you read the Old Testament. Well, last week, we spent quite a little time in our Abraham and Sarah part one doing personal application. And I love to do that. What does it say to me? This week, not so much. And I just want to warn you that I'm not going to, for my part, draw on a lot of personal application. You're welcome to. But for my part, I want to not rush into application that we miss the wonder of God's plan. So really, today is just a celebration of God's love and his plan for us. I told you last week, I'm in Isaiah. I found a verse that ties in so nicely, Isaiah 25, 1.

And so this is what we're celebrating, God's plans formed of old. Now, when we read some of the things in our six chapters today, some of it's difficult to understand. The covenant of circumcision, God telling Abraham to murder his son. These are difficult things to understand. And so we want to press through the weirdness to get to the wonder of it. And so that's what we hope to do. I'm going to go through in the four sections just like your study guide. So Genesis chapter 17, we called the covenant renewed. And we left off last week in Genesis 16 with the birth of Ishmael through the slave servant Hagar. When Abraham was 86 years old. And like I said, we'll study Hagar next week. But this chapter 17 just casually picks up 13 years later. In verse 1, it says when Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him,

Then Abram fell on his face and God said,

And we'll stop right there because this is a real epoch in Abraham's life. When God himself bends down, comes down to address Abraham. It's kind of like Moses at the burning bush or Jacob at Peniel or Saul on the road to Damascus. It's a big deal. And God was reaching down by his grace and calling out a man, not only to walk hand in hand with him, how God said, walk before me and be blameless. But he was reminding him that he has a chief role to play in God's story of redemption. And God expressed himself here in this passage for the first time that we have recorded with the new name. Of course, in English, we don't get that translation. But God said, I am El Shaddai. And this is different than Elohim that we had in Genesis 1. It's different than Jehovah, the covenant God that we've had. This is God's way of saying, so I'll take El Shaddai and just expand it. And it would be, I am the all-powerful, all-sufficient God who can do anything and meet any need. That is how he presented himself to Abraham this time for the first time. Gives you goosebumps, right? And to me, it seems to be an extension of the covenant that we studied last week in chapter 15. When the animals were on the two parts, you know, the divided, the dead animals were on each side. God alone spoke. God alone walked between the animals. And he's really revealing himself now, saying, I alone am all-powerful. I alone am all-sufficient. God alone will reconcile mankind to himself. But he's going to enlist Abraham and Sarah, now with new identities, new names, to be included in this plan to bring forth a people, which in the natural realm is the Hebrew nation. So Abraham's name is changed to Abraham, father of a multitude. And from our side of history, we look at that and we see, well, from his physical descendants, he certainly was the father of a multitude. Not only was he the father of the Jews, but he was the father of the Arabs through Ishmael. He was also the father of a huge other part of the Arab world through the sons of Keturah, his next wife after Sarah dies. So from the physical, Abraham is a father of a multitude, but his spiritual descendants are all who trust Christ. The Apostle Paul said this to the Galatians in chapter 3, just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness, know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. So this informs us that there's a near reality in the natural descendants and there's a spiritual reality, if I can just quote from Revelation, a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, from all tribes and people and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, crying out with a loud voice, salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. Those are the descendants of Abraham. Anyone who has faith in Christ and ends up in this heavenly picture, this great multitude, they are the sons of Abraham. So as we go on in this chapter, verses 6 through 9 went on to explain that once more, all the promises that God intended to fulfill for Abraham, all of those I will statements that you listed in your study guide and it was a reaffirmation. You probably felt like I've heard this before, right? A reaffirmation of the covenant that we had already studied with an important addition in verse 10. So let's read verse 10, that God said,

who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised, every male throughout your generations. And like I said, sometimes we need to press through the weirdness to get to the wonder of it. But sometimes when I try and put things in words, I don't hit the marker of the wonder, and it just stays weird. So I'm merely going to read Warren Wearsby for you, and that solves the problem. He said, since God's covenant involved Abraham's seed, it was fitting that the mark of the covenant be on the male organ of generation. Since all people are conceived in sin, the special mark would remind them that they were accepted by God because of his gracious covenant. It was God who chose the Jews, not the Jews who chose God. And he chose them to be a holy people. Unfortunately, the Jewish people eventually made this ritual a means of salvation. Circumcision became a guarantee that you were accepted by God. And then he says in parentheses, some people today place the same false confidence in baptism or in communion. They did not realize that circumcision stood for something much deeper, the person's relationship to God. God wants us to circumcise our hearts and be totally devoted to him in love and obedience. So that's the wonder of it there. But then God goes on to talk to Sarai, and in verse 15, or talk about Sarai, he says,

Now, for 13 years, between chapter 16 and 17, nothing, at least we don't have a record of God speaking to them. So for 13 years, Abraham probably thought that they were okay on the track that they were going on, that Ishmael was going to be their heir. And now after this long silence, God reminds him of God's original design to choose a family through which to unfold his plan of redemption. Not a surrogate womb, but a one-flesh union between a man and his wife, because that's God's design from the beginning of creation. So Abraham listens to this, and he's overwhelmed. He must be overwhelmed about this, and it says he laughed, and I hear this nervous laugh. Have you ever had somebody tell you something, you kind of go, ha ha ha, and your mind is going, like, what am I going to say? And you just, it's a stall tactic, right? That's what I hear, because Abraham's thinking, I mean, maybe he's having a really hard time right now turning his thoughts away from Ishmael. He had to love the boy. Maybe Ishmael was a mini-me, maybe he looked like Abraham. I mean, we put him in a category from our side of history, but think about the moment. He's got to turn a corner from his son. Maybe he had a hard time thinking about this conception that God said was going to happen, because it's never happened before, you know, and maybe he thought, this is a lot of trouble to go through because I've got one perfectly good son lying around. Can we not use him? And he even says to God, he says, oh, that Ishmael may live before you. And God said, no, but Sarah, your wife, shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring. And so in spiritual terms, Ishmael becomes a symbol, a type, if you will, for us of man's plan, man's work, man's design, and Isaac will become the child of promise, the child of grace, which is a type of God's plan and God's design. And to Abraham's credit, one thing that he had learned in life was to respect God's plan, and he got right to work. And it says he circumcised every male in his household that very day, as God had said to him. In Genesis 18, our section that we called the promise made. Now, since Abraham circumcised everyone in his household when he was 99, and we know that Isaac was born when he was 100, certainly not much time passed between these two chapters. And we get a little peek into Abraham's home, and the first verse starts with the Lord appearing to him as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. And if we summarize the scene, three men come and stand before him, and when Abraham saw them, he said, "'Why don't you stop and rest under the tree?' And he goes into the tent and he tells Sarah, "'Quick, make some bread.' And he gets a young man and has them bring curds and milk and a calf that he prepared. And then the Lord speaks now to Abraham again in his home, at his home, and the Lord said,

And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him." Have you ever done that? I've never done that, but maybe someone in here has listened on a conversation. You know, you kind of just scooted a little bit closer. You can tell me if you've ever done that. That's what she was doing. Now, Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, "'After I'm worn out and my Lord is old, shall I have this pleasure?' And the Lord said to Abraham, "'Why did Sarah laugh and say, shall I indeed bear a child now that I'm old?' If this phrase isn't underlined in your Bible, get your little pencil out.

Well, now this was Sarah's turn to laugh. How was she feeling about her plan of 13 years being rejected by the Lord? How was she feeling about conceiving a child? It's never happened before. And, you know, I can imagine, I still have dreams about getting pregnant. Does anybody else laugh? You know, how was she feeling about raising a son? It's laughable. And we have the theme of laughter going, which we will continue next week. But for right now, let's talk about some of the types that we see of Isaac being a type of Jesus Christ. First of all, we have this long-awaited promise of a son that took a long time, 25 years from the first time God called Abram until now when the son is finally ready to arrive. And we get an idea that perhaps the long-awaited Messiah, perhaps the promise of the Messiah will take a long time. And do not we sing at Christmas time, come thou long-expected Jesus. It was a long time. So we have a similarity there. We know that this will be a supernatural birth, realizing that Abraham is old, as Hebrews says, as good as dead. And I love that phrase, the way of women had ceased with Sarah. It strikes an impression on us that this will be a miraculous birth, a supernatural birth. And also the Messiah will come in a miraculous and supernatural way, born of a virgin. So we have these impressions. The type has left an impression upon our mind of something that we can be looking for in the future. Abram and Sarah are not only going to be used by God to give life to this family, but like we've said, they're a type. They're playing out a drama that strikes an impression on us for God's entire plan of redemption. For anybody who wants to listen and pay attention, because we've said a few times, God doesn't keep secrets from people who seek him. There are things for us to discover. Well, the third section is Genesis 20 to 21. The son is born. And I just want to kind of recall in chapter 21 that it says in the first verse,

So everything just kind of ticks along just the way God said it was going to, and we just have this resolution to everything that God has prophesied. But now we want to get to Genesis 22, because there's much more wonder for us to discover here, because the type really hits the ink and the paper, and we begin to see pictures and images that are going to serve us well. And as I read some of these verses, I want us to put on a different kind of a lens that we see the account of Abraham and Isaac more as a dramatization of the father God and the son of God, okay? So verse one, we're in chapter 22, verse one. After these things, God tested Abraham, and he said to him, Abraham, and he said, here I am. And he said,

And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went, both of them, together." Now, do you see the words that are forming our type? They're typing out words, they're forming pictures. Let's lift some of these phrases. Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love. And John 3.16 tells us, "'For God so loved the world that he gave his only son.'" We see Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and he laid it on his son, Isaac. And so we see the picture of Isaac carrying the wood to Mount Moriah for the sacrifice, which is a parallel for us of Jesus carrying the wooden cross up to Golgotha. And many Bible scholars believe that Mount Moriah is Golgotha. They are the same physical geographic location. We even have this phrase, "'On the third day,'" which strikes an impression upon us that this process takes three days to take care of. And in verse seven, "'And Isaac said, "'Behold, the fire and the wood, "'but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?' "'And Abraham said, "'God will provide for himself the lamb "'for a burnt offering, my son.'" More types, more pictures forming. Isaac is saying, where is the lamb? Where is the lamb for the sacrifice? John the Baptist answers that for us. He says, the next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and he said, behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. On this side of history, Isaac is saying, where's the lamb? And over here, John is saying, behold, the lamb of God. This is how he greeted Jesus. Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. We have our question and we have our answer. Remember back up in verse two, God told Abraham, again, take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love. And at Jesus's baptism, Matthew was recording. And he recorded for us what that picture looked like when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. Matthew said, he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove coming to rest on him and a voice from heaven saying, this is my beloved son, whom I am well pleased. So we have these images. So Abraham and Isaac played out a drama that really should touch our hearts with the extravagant lengths that God has gone to to offer up his own beloved son as a sacrifice to cover our sin that we suffer from because of Genesis chapter three. We're all in the same place. So in order for us to be affected by that love, that generosity, that sacrifice, we have to believe that God did it. We have to believe that that sacrifice is sufficient for our forgiveness of our sins. And we have to receive that death of Jesus Christ, which is similar to Isaac's almost death, that we can be freed from the curse of death in our own lives. The penalty goes to him. He carries the wood. He's the one that's bound. He takes the wound. He pays the price that we may go free. And that's exactly what happened in real time in the story of Isaac. Isaac is gonna go free because that would have been out of character for God to have Abraham actually go through and physically murder his son, even though God the Father does actually go through and murder his own son, allow the murder of his own son. Are those difficult words? You know, we have a new-ish worship chorus that has that phrase, murdered for us on a cross. And the first couple times I sang it, I'm like, can we just have good Bible words going on here? Like, can we, Jesus loves me kind of stuff. Does it not, do you not find that a little shocking? Murdered for me on a cross? It took me just a little while to get past that. But this picture shows us the reality of what Abraham almost did to Isaac. God allowed to be done to his own son. So it should warm our hearts with, oh, what you have done for me. Well, Abraham built his altar, and here's how it went in the text. In verse 10,

And this to me is one of the most important types that we see in God's story of redemption is that all is of God. The Lord himself will provide. The Lord will provide. Can I just read you a little excerpt from a blog post that I read this week? It was written by Tim Chaffee of Answers in Genesis because I think it relates so much, puts in another amount of words what we're talking about. He says, man-made religions teach that a man can earn salvation through various practices and good works. The Bible explains that man is sinful, deserving of God's judgment, and that no amount of good works could ever remove our guilt. God himself solves our problem by becoming a man and taking our punishment upon himself. Man-made religions are about what man can do for his God, but the Bible is about what God has already done for man. That's why I didn't want to give too much application here, although is this not the most application we could ever have in our life, but the wonder of what God has already done for man, the wonder of this story of redemption that we have so far in the Bible. And I feel like there's a great infiltration into our Christian churches that would turn that on its heels rather than the Lord will provide what the Lord can do, teaching us to look for what I can do, what I can do for you, what I can do for people who are impoverished, which is great, you know that, right? But the focus of that is backwards. It is what God can do for people who suffer from guilt, and we do suffer from guilt. We understand that now because of Genesis 3. We suffer from guilt because we're guilty. We feel guilty because we are guilty. And so the pressure around us is for all the voices that are saying people feel guilty, so back off these boundaries and these borders because it's making them feel more guilty. So back off, open up, liberate them from these rules of righteousness and that sort of thing. No, people need to release their guilt by hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ that God himself has provided a way for man to be covered, released from the burden of guilt, and to be able to admit and say, I am a sinner. I have sinned, but look what God has done for me. He has provided a way. I know what to do with my guilt. I need to cover it with the blood of Jesus and ask forgiveness of sins. So the one little piece of other application I do wanna bring is I wanna go back to that phrase I told you you had to underline. Genesis 18 verse 14, is anything too hard for the Lord? And I just wanna bring an encouragement for us with that phrase because God has brought it up twice in this week in our church body. Do you remember in our study of Mark chapter 10, Jesus was talking to the rich young ruler and talking about this same image, the same idea of salvation. And Jesus said to him, with man, it is impossible, but not with God, for all things are possible with God. Mark 10, 27, also should be underlined in your Bible. So Jesus says to the rich young ruler, for all things are possible with God. God says to Sarah, is anything too hard for the Lord? And the immediate context with Sarah is her conceiving a child. That's the immediate context. But do we not get a picture of God's character in these New Testament and Old Testament phrases? And if we know God's character, can we not lift that up and apply that into our prayers and say, okay, you said it to Sarah, you said it to the rich young ruler, I'm claiming that too. Is anything too hard for the Lord? And as we pray to remind God in our prayers, is anything too hard for you? No, nothing is too hard for you. You are El Shaddai. You are the all-powerful, all-knowing God who can do anything and everything. And I would just want to exhort us to layer this over our prayer life. Because God will bring forth his plan in his time and his way. But for us to walk in agreement with him and say, nothing's too hard for you. Nothing is too difficult for you. That's my little exhortation before you guys discuss. Father, thank you for these chapters. Thank you that you've given us the richness of your unfolding plan. Plans formed from old that we can be so sure of our salvation. So sure that the Bible is your revelation of your love and your character. And Lord, that is just like, just a blanket around us today, Lord God, that surety. So we thank you. And God, we thank you that you took the wound. And you allowed your own beloved son to be sacrificed. So that we could be freed from our guilt. So that we could be freed from the burden of sins that we have, Lord. Lord, we just rejoice. We thank you. I pray that my sisters would just have a great time in discussing this morning. Be with us in Jesus' name, amen.