FBC Daily Devotional – January 13, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Middle of the week, here we are, halfway through this work week, the second week, full week of January of 2021.

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How's your week going? How's your new year going? I trust you're doing well and coping with the cold and all the rest that goes with winter in the upper

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Midwest. On this Wednesday, we look forward to this evening in the midweek service, our prayer time,

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Bible study time, and hope if you can get out, make it to that midweek service.

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At least we're planning on it at this point in time. So hope you can join us for that if possible.

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But in today's reading, if you're following the Bible reading plan, you're in Genesis 16 through 18, and then also

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Psalm 7. But in chapter 18, there's a question that is asked of Sarah that's a good question for us to ponder.

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The angel of the Lord asks her, is anything too hard for the Lord? What do you think is too hard for the

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Lord to do? I'm not talking about intellectually or theologically here.

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I'm sure if you're a follower of Jesus, you've trusted him as your Savior, you're a

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Christian, that you surely know your doctrine well enough to know at least in your head that the

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Lord can do anything. But practically speaking, what have you sort of accepted as unchangeable or given up on as being unattainable?

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Even though the Lord maybe has promised it to come to pass.

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Well, you're not alone. You're not alone. In the account in Genesis 18, remember the messengers from the

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Lord came to Abraham and he's outside, and Sarah is inside the tent, and she's kind of eavesdropping over the conversation.

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And the angel of the Lord tells Abraham that this time next year, you're going to have a son.

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Abraham's about 100 years old. Sarah is about 90 years old. And yeah, you're going to have a son.

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Sarah hears this and she laughs. She can't help but laugh.

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Laugh at the very idea that what God had promised her could ever come to pass.

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You know, that's one of the ways that we express our faith, our lack of faith, isn't it? We laugh at the possibility.

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We kind of dismiss the possibility that what God said could possibly come to pass.

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That's one way of expressing it. Earlier in our reading, in chapter 16, Abraham and Sarah both expressed it in a different way.

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And it was before their name changed. So sandwiched between chapters 16 and 18, you have that account in chapter 17 where the

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Lord comes and reaffirms the covenant with Abraham. And at that point, he changes his name.

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He says, your name is no longer Abram, it's Abraham. And your wife, she's no longer

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Sarai, she's Sarah. That's another discussion for another time.

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But in chapter 16, Sarai is in her late 70s.

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She's probably about 77 years old. She's never been able to have children. And Abram, who's 10 years older, had been promised by the

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Lord that he would be the father of a multitude of descendants. Remember that scene where the

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Lord takes him out at nighttime and points him to look up to the sky and look at the stars and tells him to count them?

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And of course, that's an impossible thing. And the Lord tells Abram, so shall your seed be.

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You're going to have descendants as much a multitude as the stars in the heavens.

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Well, this is the promise to Abram. But Sarai, she couldn't have any children.

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So we need to help God out here a little bit. And they tried to force the fulfillment of the promise and do so through what was a culturally acceptable practice that seems so bizarre to us, understandably so.

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But it was the practice of the husband having a child through a servant girl of a wife who couldn't have children.

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So in this case, Sarai had this servant girl, Hagar, and Hagar could have children.

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Sarai couldn't. So, you know, the thinking goes, the reasoning goes, we need to force this fulfillment.

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You know, God made this promise, so we got to make it happen. We got to make it happen. So Sarai says to Abram, you need to take

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Hagar and have offspring by Hagar. Well, things didn't go so well as a result of that forced fulfillment, attempting to fulfill that promise.

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Things didn't go so well, and the consequences of that disaster have been going on for years after the fact.

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So here's a couple of different ways that we can tell the Lord that we think things are just a little too hard for him to do.

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We can either laugh at the prospect of it, or we can try to force what he's not yet done.

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Well, this passage shows us, our reading today shows us that, you know, neither of those is a good option.

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Neither is a good option. Far better. Far better, as the old gospel song says, to trust and obey.

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For there's really no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.

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I trust that your reading today of this account will encourage you to trust and obey.

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Our Father and our God, I pray that you'd give us grace to do that very thing. Sometimes it's difficult to see.

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We can't see how you're going to bring promises to fulfillment. And when we can't see it, it's very tempting on our part to try to make things happen, or to laugh them off, dismiss them as if they're never going to happen.

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O Lord, increase our faith. We believe. Help our unbelief, we pray.

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And we ask this in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. All right.

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Well, may the rest of your getting over the hump of the week go well, and look forward to meeting you again tomorrow,