Promise Keeper Genesis 21:1-7

I have a good friend who told me a story a while back that has stuck with me. This friend is my friend Scott. He's actually been here a few times. Some of you maybe have met him. And the story he told is a story of a broken promise.

He had this older friend who invited him on a fishing trip when he was younger. His friend romanticized this trip. He told them, I'm going to take you on a week-long vacation to a lake in Canada where the fish are biting, the water is clear, the birds are chirping and everything is perfect.

One year went by and the trip did not happen. Then he promised again and the trip did not happen. Then this went on for many years of promising that he would take him and it never happened. He finally offered one last time when he saw Scott on his wedding day.

He told him as he passed him in the line, as everyone greeted him, you could take along with me and my friends as we go on this trip that's coming up soon. Do you know when that trip was going to be? The week following his wedding, that week, when you're supposed to go on a honeymoon.

As you might expect, Scott turned it down so that he could spend the week with his bride, Jennifer. And as you might imagine, Scott feels the disappointment to this day. I actually talked to Scott this week and he said, I hope your congregation feels the pain that I still feel.

This is all too common in our world. People make promises and they break them. One major theme we have seen in Genesis is that God has made many promises to Abraham. And one major promise that God made to Abraham was that he would have offspring as many as the stars in the heavens.

The Lord told them that this offspring would come from him and his wife, Sarah. Abraham and Sarah have had to wait and wait and wait for this promise. Even past the age when a married couple could naturally have a child.

Is the Lord going to fail to keep his promise like Scott's friend failed to keep his promise? What we are going to see today is that the Lord is much different from sinful humans. He always keeps his promises.

And the time has finally come for this promised child to be born. And we will see this in Genesis 21 as we continue our sermon series through Genesis. We'll be looking at verses 1 through 7. And so I encourage you to turn there with me.

And if you don't have a Bible with you, we do have the Red Bibles in the pews and it's on page 18. This sermon is titled Promise Keeper. Promise Keeper. And our proposition, our big idea is the Lord displays his glory in everything that he does.

The Lord displays his glory in everything that he does. And there's three ways that we will see in this text that his glory is displayed. The first way is by delivering on his promise with precision. By delivering on his promise with precision.

And we'll see this in verses 1 and 2. But before we look at this, I want to give you a little bit of a recap about last week's sermon for those of you who weren't here. Last week we saw the bizarre story involving Abraham, Sarah, and King Abimelech.

Who was the king of Gerar which was in southern Canaan. And after viewing the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham and Sarah left that area to go to this region in southern Canaan. And while they were there, Abraham did something very foolish that he had already done before.

He told the king of Gerar that Sarah was his sister and not his wife. He told the same thing many years ago to Pharaoh when they were in Egypt. In both occasions, Abraham did this to protect himself. In these times and in this region, it was common for foreigners to steal wives and kill their husbands.

So this is why Abraham resorted to this lie. But of course, we know the Lord was not going to bless this plan. The Lord promised long ago that offspring would come through Abraham and Sarah. And it would come no other way than this.

And if this king got Sarah pregnant, this great promise would have been thwarted. What the Lord did is he kept this king from having sexual relations with Sarah. He told King Abimelech that if you do not return Abraham's wife, you are a dead man.

And so what King Abimelech did is he responded by returning Sarah to Abraham, and God's plan of the promised offspring coming through Abraham and Sarah was still intact. The application for us was that the Lord bears with us when we have repetitive sins, just as the Lord stood by Abraham through this repeated sin.

The second application was that God is sovereign over the actions of believers and unbelievers, that the Lord is over these actions, as we saw the Lord keep Abimelech from sinning and uses the same king to rebuke Abraham of this foolish sin that he did.

And when we talk about the Lord's sovereignty, as we talked about last week, this ought to bring us great comfort, knowing that our great and good Lord is governing all the details of our lives. So last week's text was a near disaster averted as this offspring promise that the Lord made to Abraham long ago was put in jeopardy.

Today we are finally going to see this promise fulfilled. And let us begin by reading verse 1 of Genesis 21. The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised. So right at the beginning of this verse, the author mentions that the Lord visits Sarah.

When you see the word visit in connection with God, what this means is that the Lord is acting in a special way with humans. Sometimes the return of Christ is known as the Lord's visitation, or the Lord visiting the earth.

And that gives the idea that the Lord is going to visit his people by gathering them and visit the wicked by bringing judgment upon them. In this verse, the word visit has only the meaning of blessing.

And what we see emphasized in verse 1 is that the time had finally arrived for Sarah to give birth to this promised child. The author is stressing that the Lord is fulfilling this long-awaited promise.

The Lord first made this promise to Abraham 25 years earlier, way back in Genesis 12, 7. There the Lord told Abraham that he would give him offspring, and that they would receive the land of Canaan, which of course is modern-day Israel.

Modern-day Israel covers part of this big promised land that the Lord promised to this offspring. And if you think about this, Abraham and Sarah had to wait 25 years to finally see this promise come to pass.

That's a long time. I'm only 31. So think about that. I would be six when this promise was made, if it finally was fulfilled. And when you wait for something that is in the future, the time goes by very slow.

I remember when Brianna and I were getting married, and we were engaged in December, and we got married in June. It was about a six-month period, and it just seemed like the time crawled by between when we got engaged and when the wedding day finally came.

And I know you have experienced things like that in your life, when you're looking forward to something, and the days just feel like they're going by so slow because you want it to come so bad. Abraham and Sarah had to wait 25 years, and what they found is that waiting on the Lord is worth the wait, because the Lord is good to those who wait for him.

Lamentations 3 .25 says that the Lord is good to those who wait on him, to the one who seeks him. So if you are waiting for something in your life, and it is a holy ambition, I'm not talking about like a Ferrari or a third home on the lake.

I'm talking about a holy ambition. Just know that the Lord is good to you as you wait on him. You can trust him. Those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. The Lord gives you what you need at the appointed time.

If you don't have something that is a holy ambition, it's because you don't need it right now. He will give you what you need at the appointed time. And if you think about it, all believers in Christ are waiting.

Every one of us is waiting to meet Jesus face to face. And that is something that we should all long for. And that's why it is so important not to be distracted by the world and lose sight of the ultimate goal of being in God's presence forever.

Now, verse 2 gives us an overview of the 40 weeks of Sarah's pregnancy. So let's look at verse 2 together. And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him.

This verse says that the Lord caused Sarah to miraculously conceive. Sarah would have been 91 years old at this time, and Abraham would have been 100. And what we need to take note of here is that this is not a virgin birth, but it is a supernatural one.

Any birth is truly an act of God, even if it's within the age range that God has designed. Psalm 127 .3 says that children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb, a reward. So every child is a wonderful blessing.

And we experienced the blessing of children this past week at VBS, that they truly are a gift from God. And the Lord is the one who gives life. The Lord typically follows the pattern of nature that he set up.

Women have a window of about two decades in their younger years to have the ability to bear a child. And once that time passes, as you all know, naturally a woman cannot have a child again. But in this case with Abraham and Sarah, the Lord is stretching the laws of nature to do his supernatural work.

It's not a virgin birth, but it is a supernatural one. He still uses Abraham and Sarah to bring about this child. And the Lord caused a woman who was 91 years old to get pregnant. Sarah gave birth to this child and God's promise was finally fulfilled.

And not only did the Lord deliver on this, on his promise that Abraham and Sarah would have a child, but he also delivered on the timing of when this child was going to be born. In Genesis 1721, the Lord told Abraham that they would bear a son and that they were to name him Isaac.

And he said, this time next year is when the son is going to arrive. And he also said the same thing in 1814. The Lord told Abraham again that at this time next year, you will have a son. The author Moses makes it clear here that the Lord not only delivered on the promise of this child, but also the timing.

A couple months back, we talked about how false prophets who make predictions of the future are intentionally vague because they know that they don't know the future. They're just trying to fool people.

And the most famous one culturally is a man by the name of Nostradamus. So people in culture just know this name. He was a French mathematician from the 16th century who was involved with astrology. And of course, astrology believes that the stars can tell you the future.

And he made predictions about major future world events that some people say were fulfilled. Like the World Wars, World War I, World War II, the assassination of John F. Kennedy and others. But when people closely examine his predictions, one thing that they all have in common is that they're all very vague.

You could fit an elephant inside it because it's not very specific. It's very broad. The Lord is not vague in his predictions. He's very precise. When he says something's going to come to pass, it comes to pass exactly the way that he said.

Back in Genesis 16, Abraham thought that the child would come through Hagar because they had passed the age when you could bear a child. And it made earthly sense. Hagar was the younger woman. So they figured, okay, well, maybe God's plan is that I'll marry this other woman, Hagar, the servant woman here, and then she'll have a child.

And the Lord said, no, that's not my promise. Hagar was not the woman who this promise was going to happen through. The Lord said this child would come through Sarah. And it came through her. He said it would happen at a specific time of year.

And it had it. And it happened at that specific time in the year. And the Lord is able to do this because he knows the future exhaustively. He knows every detail about the future. He knows what you're going to have for lunch today.

Wait, we're all going to have lunch, right? Because we know what we're going to have for lunch today, too. Because it's a potluck. But you know what I mean? He knows all the details of your future. The tiniest details.

And it's important to think about this in our own lives. The Lord knew the precise day, time, and hour when you were going to be born. He knows the day, time, and hour when you will die. And this shows us how great God is.

The precision of God in foretelling future events is intended to show us how great he is. It's intended to bring glory to himself. And as we think about the greatness of God in foretelling these future events, it ought to lead us to worship him.

Do you praise the Lord for his precision in keeping his promises? He says something in ancient times, and then it comes to pass. And there's still things that we're waiting for. Of course, there's still things that we're waiting to come to pass that we're longing for.

And we've seen the Lord act in history, and he's going to do it to us, too. And so we must praise him. So what we saw in this first point is that the Lord displays his glory in everything that he does.

And the first way how his glory is displayed is by delivering on his promise with precision. The second way how his glory is displayed in this text is by letting his people bounce back from sin. By letting his people bounce back from sin.

And we'll see this in verses 3 through 5. And as we look at these verses, we'll look at 3 and 4 first. We are going to see the faithfulness of Abraham show up after his blunder last week, okay? Remember last week he offered, he lied and said, this is my sister when in fact it was his wife in order to protect himself.

And now we'll see him bounce back in verses 3 and 4. Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, Isaac. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old as God had commanded him.

So I've said to you on several occasions that Abraham's life is much like the wild thing roller coaster at Valleyfair. Anybody been on the wild thing roller coaster at Valleyfair? You know, it goes up and up and up and up.

And then it goes, it plunges down, you know, way down. That's what his life has been like. It's been great acts of faith and then head-scratching mistakes, horrible sins that he's committed along the way.

And last week we saw him take the plunge. And today we see him rise up again. Certainly it helped that he saw the Lord fulfill his promise through the birth of Isaac. But in Abraham's life, he has even demonstrated faith when he didn't see God do something visibly.

Remember the Lord told him to leave the land that he was from, to go to a foreign land that he had never been before. That was a great act of faith by Abraham. And he listened and he went. And in our text today, we see him rebound after last week.

In verse three, Abraham first shows his faithfulness by naming his son what the Lord told him to name him. In Genesis 17, 14, the Lord told Abraham to name his son Isaac. The reason the Lord told him to name his son this is because Abraham and Sarah laughed when he told them that they would bear a child in their old age.

They laughed in unbelief at the prospect that the Lord could do this. And so this is what the child would be named. Isaac means he laughs. But now that the birth has happened, Abraham faithfully names the child Isaac, as the Lord had told him.

And the laughter that this name signifies goes from unbelief to joy. And we'll see this in our third point. Now in verse four, Abraham shows his faithfulness in another way. He listens to the Lord's instruction to circumcise his child.

In Genesis 17, 10, the Lord told Abraham that every male must be circumcised. In verse 12 of that same chapter, Abraham was instructed to circumcise the child when he was eight days old. Abraham did precisely as the Lord had told him to do.

So Abraham showed faithfulness. And we can be encouraged because Abraham picked himself up after falling into a major sin, as we saw last week. And this sin that he committed did not happen too long before.

So we see a blunder and then an act of faith right here. And we can learn from Abraham here. We should follow Abraham only as long as he shows faithfulness. And he does it here today. Inevitably, all Christians sin.

We talked about this last week. The difference between the sin of believers and the sin of unbelievers is that believers repent of their sins. This means that they feel sorrow for their sin and turn from it.

So when you inevitably do fall into sin, we should acknowledge it before God by repenting and then turn by walking with the Lord in obedience. And because Satan would love nothing more than to keep you down and say, you know what?

You really blew it there. You might as well just give up on your walk with the Lord. He loves to do that. Don't listen to him. Pick yourself up and keep going. In 1972, there was a famous Finnish runner by the name of Lasse Viren.

And I know that Rob is beaming up with pride because he's a Finn heritage anyway. And Lasse Viren, he was running the 10 ,000 meter race in the Olympics. 10 ,000 meters is about six and a quarter miles.

And this was 25 laps around the track. And as he was running in this race, he was in lap 12 when he was tripped and he fell over. And the front pack that he was running with started to get away. You know, he picked himself up off the ground and eventually he caught up.

He kept going. He kept going. And eventually he caught up to the pack. And what's really neat about this story is that he ran with the pack the rest of the race and he won. He actually out sprinted everyone in the final laps.

And he won the gold medal in the 10 ,000 meters. And this is a great lesson to us of when you fall down, you get back up. And as a Christian, you get back up by the grace of God. He's the one who sustains you to get back up.

He wants you to get back up and he calls us to get back up. And that's what we must do. And because Lasse Viren picked himself up on that 12th lap and got up and finished the race and won the race, he ended it victorious.

His story ended well in that race. And things ended well for Abraham as well. As you look at his life, his life is one of victory and not defeat. The Bible describes him in Hebrews 11 as a man whose faith should be emulated.

And sometimes when you read Genesis, you wonder why, because it highlights some of his sins. But you know what? He, he persevered. He kept going and the full body work of his life is one of triumph and not tragedy.

And what we need to remember is that the Christian life is one of progression. But it's not a perfect progression. There will be some ups and downs. But the key is, are you trending up? Are you going in the right direction?

When you fall down, get up and follow the Lord. And that is one of the keys to continuing your upward progression in holiness. If you follow this pattern like Abraham did, picking yourself up when you fall, by the grace of God, you will be victorious as well.

The author closes this demonstration of Abraham's faithfulness by highlighting that he was 100 years old when Isaac was born. As verse 5 says here, Abraham was 100 years old when his son Isaac was born to him.

And we need to, we need to know something here. Moses, the author, he writes this. And what a good historian does is they always keep track of the details, right? Details matter to historians and the age of the parents matters in this story.

And of course, he's telling us the age just to show us how incredible this miracle is that the Lord has accomplished, that they're past the age when you can give birth. And so he's highlighting this here.

And as we admire Abraham's ability to pick himself up and follow after the Lord, what we need to remember is that he would not be able to do this if the Lord were not gracious to him. If the Lord did not stand by him and have the big picture in mind, then Abraham would be in trouble and all of us would be.

The Lord knew the outcome of Abraham's life. He knew what it would be. And he is not going to give up on him because of sinful traps that he falls into on occasion. The Lord is patient. We know this about the Lord.

He's patient toward us as well as he works on us to make us more like him. And this is his goal for you. He's got, like I said, his plan for you is glorification. It says, for those of you who are new, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son.

And those of you who are predestined to be called, he also justified. Those of you who are justified, he also glorified. That's, so if you're saved, that's the end game. That's the goal. That's where he's bringing you to towards.

And so that's why he's so patient with you in your life because he has the big picture in mind. And everything that God does for us is for his glory and for our benefit. And this includes letting us bounce back when we foolishly sin.

So what we've seen in our second point is that the Lord displays his glory in everything that he does. And the second way how his glory is displayed is by letting his people bounce back from sin. The third way how his glory is displayed in this text is by producing joy in his people through his gifts, producing joy in his people through his gifts.

We'll see this in the final two verses of our text, verses six and seven. We transition to Sarah's response to this miracle in these verses. So please look with me if you would. And Sarah said, God has made laughter for me.

Everyone who hears will laugh over me. And she said, who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have born him a son in his old age. Up to this point in the narrative, through Genesis, Sarah has not been painted in a very positive light.

It was Sarah's idea to have Abraham conceive a child through Hagar. Sarah also went along with Abraham's foolish plan to pretend to be a sister in Egypt and also in southern Canaan, as we saw last week.

And in chapter 18, when she heard that the Lord was going to cause her to bear a child in her old age, she laughed in unbelief. So we have not seen anything positive written about her in Genesis up to this point.

But do you know what is fascinating? Hebrews chapter 11, which is known as the faith chapter at our old, my sister is here today and our old youth pastor used to call this the faith hall of fame. Hebrews chapter 11.

Hebrews 11 mentions her as one whose faith should be emulated. Verse 11 of Hebrews 11 says that by faith, Sarah herself received power to conceive even when she was past the age. Since she considered him faithful who had promised.

So we've seen a lot of doubt in Sarah in the pages of scripture, but the author of Hebrews who was inspired by the Holy Spirit, as he wrote, said that she did have faith. And up to this point, we have not seen evidence of that faith.

True faith is always accompanied by works. James in his book makes that clear. Faith without deeds is dead. But so we would expect if Sarah has faith, we would expect to see some works that back that up.

And we see that evidence right here. Sarah is filled with joy at seeing this promise fulfilled as she holds baby Isaac in her arms. She says that God has made laughter for me. She recognizes that God is the one who has brought this about and this joy produces laughter.

In the second half of verse six, she says that people will laugh over me. And given the context of this passage, this is a joyous laughter, a joyous celebration. People are sharing her joy as they laugh with her, not at her.

But of course, when you're when you're surrounded with people, you laugh together, right? It's a joyous occasion. And we see that joy can express itself in many different ways. And one of the ways that joy expresses itself is through laughter, right?

So when you're when you're feeling joyful, right, you tend to laugh more. Whenever you see a joyous occasion happen, a wedding, a long awaited reunion with loved ones, or in this case, a birth of a child, a joyous laughter fills the room.

And that's what we have here with Sarah. And Sarah says out of joy, who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? And what this means, what the author means by this is that the thought that a woman of her age could nurse a child does not enter into the minds of humans.

It just doesn't. But God is able to do the humanly impossible. You see that throughout scripture. Remember, he set up the laws of nature, and he's able to work outside of it if he wants. And he does it to show that only I could do this.

He shows it to show himself to glorify himself. And in Sarah's weak moments, her doubt led her to think that she could never nurse a child in her own age. And now she gets the opportunity and sees that she should have trusted the Lord more.

And I think we feel that in our own life. Sometimes our faith can be so weak, and we need to trust the Lord more. He's proven himself over and over again. He's proven himself faithful. We've heard that with our missionaries today, how the Lord has proven himself faithful with them.

And so we need to understand that, too. The Lord's been good to Sarah, and he takes one who has had shaky faith, and he made her joyful. And one thing that is so wonderful about our relationship with the Lord is that he makes us joyful.

The Lord does not make us joyful just by giving us stuff like a grandfather, a grandparent, a grandmother spoils their grandchildren. No, the Lord makes us joyful by giving of himself to us. He is the source of all joy.

So when he gives us a gift like a child or any other good gift, this is meant to lead us to have joy in him. The joy in the giver of the gift. He's the author of it, and it only makes sense that the gift is not meant as an end, but as a means to an end.

It's pointing us to him. And we enjoy the gift because he is the author of the gift. And Sarah's joy is over this child, but it is true holy joy because she is overwhelmed with worship of God over this precious child, Isaac.

Finally being born. Sometimes in my own life, I catch myself thinking about how blessed I am to have my wife, Brianna, and my daughter, Alethea. And I think about like my family is actually here in town.

My sister is right there. My dad's here. And you think about how all the blessings in your life, the wonderful gifts from God. And as you think about these gifts, what we must think is how great must God be if he gave us these things?

Remember, he's the author of the mistake that humans make as they turn the gift into worship instead of worshiping God, right? We should always direct our gaze to God when we think about the gifts that he's given us.

We should always say, thank you, Lord, how wonderful you are. He's the source of all these gifts. And that's what Sarah is doing here. She's joyful in the Lord as she rejoices over her son, Isaac. And these gifts are meant to show us his greatness and to make us fully joyful in him.

So this is what we have seen in our third point. The Lord displays his glory in everything that he does. And the third way how his glory is displayed is by producing joy in his people through his gifts.

And we saw the gift of Isaac to Sarah. So to summarize, and thank you for staying with me. I know it's humid in here. So thank you for sticking with me. These servants feel longer when it's humid. The Lord displays his glory in everything that he does.

And we have seen three ways how his glory is displayed. The first way how is by delivering on his promise with precision. The second way how is by letting his people bounce back. And the third way how is by producing joy in his people through his gifts.

The Bible, this is such a precious book. I was telling my nephew last night, this is the only book that God has written. And it's the greatest book in the world by far. The Bible is a book about how God works with humanity and specifically his people.

The story of the Bible is the story of life. And you are living in this. And God's aim is to glorify himself. And everything that he does is meant to bring attention to him. And he produces good in you as he works on you, as you gaze on him.

And as you worship the Lord, what happens is that you start to reflect him in his holy character. You start to reflect his holy attributes. And today we have seen him glorify himself in the birth of this miracle child, Isaac.

And as we look at this story, we should praise him for the way in which he accomplished it. Why did the Lord make them wait so long? I mean, there's probably a lot of reasons. But one of the reasons that we must notice here is that he made it so that this could only happen through him, right?

This didn't happen through the natural means that he just set up. He made it so that it would happen after the age when they could have a child. And people would say, wow, look what God did. And we should praise him for that.

Now, next week, we will look at the shift in the narrative that's brought back to the other child. Remember the child that happened through Hagar, Ishmael. And what we will see is how the Lord handles the messy tension between these two families, that the family that came through Hagar and the family that came through Sarah.

Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for your help this morning. Lord, every week, we plead with you that your presence would be with us, that you would work in our midst, that you would cause unbelievers to become believers, that you would cause believers to grow, to reflect you more.

Lord, your design in this world is that your image bearers, the humanity would reflect you. And that's your master plan for all of our lives. And may we understand that, Lord. May we understand the big picture.

And may we see, Lord, that all the work that you do in our lives is meant to bring glory to you. And it's for our joy. It's for our benefit. And how wonderful that is. You are so good to us. And so we thank you for that.

And I'm also going to close in prayer, Lord. Pray for our food as we go downstairs. We do ask for a blessing.