Abram's Concern of Having No Children Part 2 — Chuck Smith

Welcome to the Word for Today, the broadcast ministry of Pastor Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, California. Pastor Chuck is currently leading us on a verse-by-verse study through the entire Bible.

And on today's edition of the Word for Today, we'll be continuing our look at Abram's concern of having no children as we pick up in Genesis 15, verse 13. So let's follow along as Pastor Chuck Smith begins today's lesson.

God's Promise of Deliverance After Four Hundred Years

Then the Lord said to Abram, Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years. And also the nation whom they serve I will judge afterward, they shall come out with great possessions.

Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace. You won't have this great period of great darkness and all in your life, but your descendants. And of course, we know that it wasn't long after Abram that Joseph was sold by his brothers, and then he brought the family down into Egypt, the seventy souls, and how that during that sojourn, a total of four hundred and thirty years, of which four hundred years was affliction, they multiplied and became a nation in Egypt before God brought them out with a heavy hand into the land.

So you will be buried at a good old age. But in the fourth generation they shall return here. Now here's an interesting thing. How long is a biblical generation? Well here it happened to be a hundred years.

In the fourth generation, and we know they're going to be there for four hundred years. Now, if you'll go to the genealogical records, you'll find that Levi was in Egypt, one of the sons of Jacob, and that Moses is the fourth generation from Levi.

So just as the Lord said to Abram, though it was four hundred years, it was only four generations from Levi to Moses. They shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. Now, it came to pass when the sun went down and it was dark, behold there was a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between the pieces.

And on the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram saying, to your descendants I have given this land from the river of Egypt, or to your seed I have given this land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.

The Kenizzites, the Kemenites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Riphim, Amorites, Canaanites, Gergashites, and the Jebusites. Now Sarah, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. Abram was eighty-five years old, she was seventy-five.

Sarai, Hagar, and the Consequences of a Lapse of Faith

She had an Egyptian maidservant. Remember, Abram went down to Egypt, shouldn't have done that, that was a lapse of faith. He didn't have confidence that God could sustain him in the land of promise. And so he went down to Egypt, but oh, he came back stained, marked.

One of the things that they picked up in Egypt was a handmaiden for Sarah, Hagar. So Sarah said to Abram, inasmuch as the Lord has restrained me from bearing children, please go into my maid, perhaps I shall obtain children by her.

And Abram heeded the voice of Sarah. And he took Hagar, her maid, the Egyptian, to be his wife. And he went into Hagar, and she conceived, and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress became despised in her eyes.

She, it somehow did something to Hagar, there was something that transpired within her that she began to despise Sarah. She began to look upon her with scorn. Perhaps there was the question that may be the cause of Sarah's miscarriage.

Maybe it was an impotency on the part of Abram that they could not have children. Maybe that was the suggestion. But now here is proof that it was not Abram's fault, but it was Sarah's fault, if fault could be used there, that he was prolific.

She was the one unable to conceive. Whatever it was, Hagar began to look upon her with in a disdainful way. And she was despised by Hagar. Then Sarah said to Abram, my wrong be upon you. Now come on, Sarah, you're the one that told him to do it.

But now she's blaming him. Why did you do that? My wrong be upon you. And she's now throwing the blame on Abram for what happened. I gave my maid into your embrace. And when she saw that she had conceived, I became despised in her eyes, and the Lord judged between you and me.

So Abram said to Sarah, she's your maid, she's in your hands, you do what you want. And when Sarah dealt harshly with her, she fled from her presence. Now the angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water.

The Angel of the Lord and Hagar's Encounter in the Wilderness

Now this is the first mention in the Old Testament of the angel of the Lord. And we will find the angel of the Lord appearing many times in the Old Testament, and many Bible scholars do believe that this reference, angel of the Lord, is a reference to a theophany.

Actually, the angel of the Lord is none other than Jesus Christ appearing in a form to man. So whenever we come across the angel of the Lord, know that many scholars hold this to be none other than Jesus Christ, one of the theophanies.

He found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to shore. Actually, she was heading back to Egypt. And she had stopped at this spring of water. And he said, Hagar, Sarah's maid, where have you come from and where are you going?

And she said, I'm fleeing from the presence of my mistress Sarah. So the angel of the Lord said to her, return to your mistress and submit yourself under her hand. Then the angel of the Lord said unto her, I will multiply your descendants exceedingly so that they shall not be counted for multitude.

And the angel of the Lord said unto her, behold, you are with child and you shall bear a son and you shall call his name Ishmael because the Lord has heard your affliction. Ishmael means God hears. The Lord has heard your affliction.

He shall be a wild man. His hand shall be against every man and every man's hand against him. And he shall dwell in the presence of his brethren. The Arab people today are the descendants of Ishmael. God's promise that he would cause her descendants to multiply and not be able to be counted for multitude, but they were going to be a wild man and his hand will be against every man.

New Creation in Christ and the Unity of Believers

Today, much of the crisis that exists at the present time centers around the Arab people. So there are characteristics, ethnic characteristics that we are not really putting down a particular ethnic group or elevating another or saying we're superior.

Not at all. We're just recognizing certain characteristics and traits. But you know, when we come to Jesus, all of that's erased because now we have a whole new origin for our existence. If any man's in Christ, he is a new creature, new creation.

He is neither Jew, Arab, Greek, whatever. He's now relates himself back to Christ and he's a Christian. That's a whole new race of people. And they also have their own ethnic characteristics. Oh, what love they have for each other.

What a caring, what a concern they have for each other. What a sweetness and what a peace marks their lives. What beautiful ethnic characteristics belong to Christians. Thank God we can make a break with that past when we are in Christ.

God Sees Hagar and Hears Her Cry

Then she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her. You are the God who sees. For she said, have I also here seen him who sees me? So there she caught a glimpse of God, the one who sees her. You are the God who sees.

He saw the desperateness of her heart. Here she's carrying the child of Abram. She doesn't know what to do. Sarah's really given her a bad time and she's fled, heading back towards Egypt. But that's a long nigger desert to go through and perilous.

She's sitting there by the spring and the Lord comes and says, now, look, turn around and go back. You're going to have a son. Call him Ishmael. The Lord hears for the Lord has heard your cry. And so the Lord not only hears, he sees.

And so she called him the God who sees. Therefore, the well was called Beer Lahai Roy, which means the well of the God who sees Lahai Roy, Lahai Roy. Observe it is between Kadesh and Bered. So Hagar bore Abram a son.

Abram named his son whom Hagar bore Ishmael. He honored the name that was given by the angel. God hears. And he was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram. When Abram was ninety nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, I am almighty God.

God's Call to Walk Blamelessly Before Him

Walk before me and be perfect or blameless. The last time God spoke to Abram was when he was 86 years old. So there has been now a intervening time of 13 years. He waits now until he is ninety nine years old before he speaks again.

And God is speaking to Abram again to inform him that Ishmael is not the child that God promised to give him, that God was to give him a son through Sarai. Now, in Romans, the fourth chapter, as it talks to us of Abram's faith, it declares, first of all, that he considered not his own body now dead, being a hundred years old, nor yet the deadness of Sarah's womb.

The indication is that he had become impotent, his own body now dead. The deadness of Sarah's womb is the statement of the fact that she had gone beyond the age of a woman bearing children. She had gone through the menopause period.

God waited until Abram couldn't do anything about the promise himself anymore. And so he allowed Abram now to get to the place where it was impossible for Abram to do anything concerning the fulfillment of the promise himself.

It's going to take an absolute miracle of God for the promise to be fulfilled. He allowed him to get to the place of human impossibility. Now, God often as he works with us does this very thing. He allows us to come to the end of ourselves, to the end of our resources, our ideas.

He lets us get to that place of hopelessness before he works. Because God, when he works, wants the glory for what he has done. And when God works in your life, he doesn't want you boasting that you have done this marvelous work.

God Receives the Glory for His Works

Paul said, What do you have but what you have received? If you have received it, then why do you boast of it as though you had not received it? And we're so prone to take credit for God's work. We cry out unto God and we ask God for help and God helps us and then we go out and tell what we did.

We're like Saul, who Jonathan was out wiping out the Philistines and he was blowing the trumpet in Israel, so all of Israel heard that Saul had done it. And when we relate the stories of the victories and of the goodness, we often just put ourselves in, Well, I really decided that I was going to trust God completely and even at that we try and make it my trust and my faith and God honored my consecration or whatever.

And so God lets you get into those totally impossible conditions where you throw up your hands and say, That's it, I've had it. And we become totally desperate and then God works and there's no way that we can boast.

And there's no way now that Abraham can get in the way of God by trying to intervene and to help God out. He's beyond that point now. He's 99 years old. His body is now dead as far as the possibility of procreation and now God does his miracle for which only God can receive credit and receive glory.

El Shaddai and the Believer's Walk With God

And so he appeared to Abraham and said unto him, I am the almighty God. The word almighty is El Shaddai. The word Shaddai is breast in Hebrew and it is the place of life and nourishment for the babe. And so God is saying to him, I am the place of your life and of your nourishment.

It all comes from me. You're dependent upon me for life, for nourishment. I am God almighty. I am the El Shaddai and you've got to look to me for life. Walk before me. Now we read earlier that Enoch walked with God.

In Deuteronomy God said to Israel, walk after me. In Colossians 2 .6 Paul said, as we have received Christ Jesus as the Lord, so walk ye in him. And so four different prepositions used as the walk with God.

Walking before God is walking in his presence, conscious that God is watching me, looking out over me, caring for me, and I'm walking before him as I walk in the presence of God, an awareness of that God is watching over me.

Walking after God is the position of the servant, walking after his master. When God said to Israel, walk after me, he is actually calling upon them to serve him. Walking with God as did Enoch and Noah indicates that fellowship that one has as we walk with God, that beautiful communion and fellowship, but walking in him signifies that complete oneness and union that is ours with God.

Christ in me, the hope of glory, walking in Christ Jesus. Walk before me how? Blameless or perfect. Walk before me perfect. God's ideal requirement for man is perfection, and you wouldn't really expect anything less from God.

I'm not surprised that God would require me to be perfect. In fact, I would be shocked if God said, well, go ahead and be slipshod and cruddy, you know, be as you want. That would not be in keeping with the nature of God.

God would not require anything less than perfection. And always know that God's ideal requirement for you is perfection. Walk before me blameless. When Jesus finished the Sermon on the Mount, he again required the same thing.

Sin, Human Imperfection, and Righteousness Through Faith

He said, be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect. Now, when you tell me, well, God requires me to be perfect, I say, thank you, but I'm sorry, I can't. I would love to. I've tried to.

But I am far from perfect. How I would love to be perfect. How I would love to fulfill God's divine ideal. But I can't. Now, the word sin has as its root meaning missing the mark. And the Bible said all have sinned.

Now, a lot of people get upset when you say, well, you're a sinner, man. Well, just a minute now, you know, I'm not too bad. I, you know, do what I can and I help little ladies across the street. But just a minute.

Missing the mark. What's the mark? Perfection. Have you missed that mark? No one's perfect. Now, because man could not fulfill God's divine requirement, God sent his only begotten Son, who took our sins, our missing of the mark.

And he died in our place. So that God's actual requirement for me now, who am not perfect and could not be perfect, God's actual requirement for me now is that I believe in his Son, who he sent. They said to Jesus, what must we do to do the work of God?

He said, this is the work of God. Just believe on him whom he sent. And so God's actual requirement for me now is that I believe in Jesus Christ. And by my believing in Jesus Christ, God accounts me righteous.

So I am God Almighty. Walk before me blameless. The power of walking before him blameless comes to us through Jesus Christ.

And walking in him. We'll return with more of our verse-by-verse study through the book of Genesis in our next lesson as we learn more about Abram, Abraham and the Almighty God. And we do hope you'll make plans to join us.

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That's right here on the next edition of The Word for Today. Now, once again, here's Pastor Chuck Smith.

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