Genesis 17, What Sign?, Dr. John B. Carpenter

Genesis chapter 17, be reading the entire chapter, hear the word of the Lord. When Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, I am God Almighty. Walk before me and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you and may multiply you greatly.

Then Abram fell on his face and God said to him, behold, my covenant is with you and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.

I will make you exceedingly fruitful. I will make you into nations and kings shall come from you and I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your offspring after you.

And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God. And God said to Abraham, as for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations.

This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and your offspring after you. Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.

He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised, every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring. Both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money shall surely be circumcised.

So shall my covenant be in your flesh, an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people. He has broken my covenant. And God said to Abraham, as for Sarai, your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name.

I will bless her and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her and she shall become nations and kings shall come from her. Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, shall a child be born to a man who was a hundred years old?

Shall Sarah, who was 90 years old, bear a child? And Abraham said to God, oh, that Ishmael might live before you. 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 after him. As for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him and I will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly.

He shall father 12 princes and I will make him into a great nation, but I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year. When he had finished talking with him, God went up from Abraham.

Then Abraham took Ishmael, his son, and all those born in his house are bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham's house, and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskins that very day as God had said to him.

Abraham was 99 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin and Ishmael, his son, was 13 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. That very day Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised and all the men of his house, those born in the house and those bought with money from a foreigner, were circumcised with him.

May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word. Well, what sign do you make to show when you're serious? Usually we can tell someone's expression, their tone of voice, if they're joking or they're guessing or they're asking a question or if they're really deadly serious.

Sometimes you might have to raise your voice to some kids to get them to understand that you mean it. Get to bed now. Our formal commitments always come with signs, don't they? If you're buying a house, you know, earnest money.

Today when we make a commitment, we are usually asked to leave our signature as our sign. Sign is short for signature, signature, and it is a sign that we intend to do what we signed we would do. Pay the mortgage, make our car payments, prove that we receive a package.

We have other signs. For the sign of marriage, we have rings and for the woman it is in Western culture for her to change her last name to that of her husband. Chinese don't do that though. In 1990, as a young man living in a single 25-year-old living in Singapore for, well, three months I was living there doing my pastoral internship, but really there for the purpose of deciding whether I was going to make a commitment to marry.

One evening, the prime minister of Singapore gave a long but very interesting speech that I watched on TV. He advised Singaporean women, and remember why I'm there, okay, this is kind of interesting, coincidental, what I'm there for, but he advised Singaporean women who were marrying white men not to change their family name to that of their husband, noting, quote, white men marry you freely.

They also divorce you freely, at which point everyone burst out laughing. In other words, don't take the sign for something that might not last. The sign of a commitment, a name change, a ring, a signature, shows that you've made that commitment.

You've made the change. And in this passage, we see a God who has already made the commitment. Remember, God has already made his commitment. He's done the sign for himself in chapter 15. Here in chapter 17, he demands we make a commitment in response, that we take a sign in response.

We see that in this chapter in four parts. First, sanctification for verses one to eight, then the sign for verses nine to 14, then Sarah from verses 15 to 21, and finally surrender from verses 22 to 27.

Well, we begin 13 years after last week's chapter. Abram is 99 years old. Abram has this promise that he will be the father of many nations, but so far all he has is Ishmael. Ishmael is now 13 years old.

Abram has been promised that all the nations will be blessed through him, and that he'll get this land, he'll have a multitude, and only has one son so far. How's it going to work? Later, he had the promise confirmed when the Lord cuts a covenant with him when he was immobilized, remember, in chapter 15.

And he's a little bit after that. He has this one son through Hagar, and that's all. And then for 13 years, there's silence. But then the Lord appears to him in this chapter in verse one, and he introduces himself as, I am God Almighty.

In Hebrew, El Shaddai. How can God fulfill this promise that seems impossible? Yeah, he is. Well, he answers that himself. I am God Almighty, the all-powerful God who cannot be limited by anything outside of himself.

So infertility or age, even death itself, cannot restrain God Almighty. None of those things can keep God Almighty from fulfilling his promise. And yet, the amazing fact is, here is someone who cannot be restrained, who is perfectly free, God Almighty, cannot be restricted, and yet he restricts himself.

He commits himself to Abram, to work through him. And even more narrowly than that, as we'll see, emphasizing verse four, my covenant is with you. A covenant is a commitment. You know, this church is named after a commitment.

First, the commitment that we believe that God has made to us. God made a covenant to save his people. It's called the covenant of grace. And notice that commitment here, the commitments of a commitment-making God.

Now, it's not in the ESV, it's not in the translation of the ESV here, but in the Hebrew, God emphatically says at the beginning of verse four, he says, in Hebrew, it begins with I, God speaking, I behold.

I'm talking here. My covenant is with you. In verse six, I will make you exceedingly fruitful. I will make you into nations, plural, not just ethnic Israel, but a holy nation. And for seven, I will establish my covenant between me and you to be God to you.

In verse eight, I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land. And at the end, I will be their God. And notice God's repeated commitment. God repeats the promise to act, that he will do what he's promising to do.

Five times in that first paragraph, God commits. He says, I will, five times. I will, I will, I will, I will, I will. So before God asked for a commitment, he makes a commitment. He's not a commitment phobe.

He's not fearful that he'll be abandoned. He's not afraid he'll be the sucker that he'll be taken advantage of. He's not someone who's been burned in the past and doesn't want to be vulnerable again, so he's afraid to make any commitments.

He's already laid himself out in a commitment to Abram, and now he requires one in return, as he still does today. And that what he's requiring of us, what he's asking of us, what he's commanding of us, is what we call sanctification.

Walk before me and be blameless. In verse one, he calls on us to make our commitments for us to say our I wills. I will walk with you, God. I will be blameless. But our I wills must be based on God's prior I wills.

Abram here, it's called to walk. Think about that, walk, meaning that every part of his daily life was to be in step with God Almighty. For Abram, holiness, that is sanctification, was to be a natural part of his life.

Just like walking is an everyday part of your life. You can't do anything without walking, every step of the way. And so you live with God, you walk before God all the time. He has been called by God, chosen, justified by faith.

In chapter 50, the Lord has seen his faith and God credited that faith to him as righteousness, that is God saw him as being right with God. And he has, Abram has experienced then the salvation by grace, that is by God working alone through his work alone.

That work came from, through faith alone, faith in the promise that was fulfilled by Christ alone. But that doesn't mean that Abram's now free to live without any commitments. Rather, the grace that's been given to him, this righteousness that was imputed to him, that was given to him as a gift, that God saw his faith and just declared him righteous because of that, this monogenistic, does that fancy theological word mean one working, this God alone working commitment that God has made, God has made to Abraham, this Abrahamic covenant, it results in, it tells Abram to walk with the Lord, right?

The justification leads to the sanctification. So be blameless, unlike people around you who can be blamed, be different, be set apart, that is sanctified. He's been given the gospel before, that is what God will do, the promise, and he believed that promise and declared righteous because of it, he's right with God, and now for the first time, he's had the gospel first, now he has the law.

That is something he must do in this relationship, in this commitment to God. What's his part of the covenant? God made his part of the covenant first already, remember? Chapter 15, this promise from God, Abram is totally out of it, he can't do anything, you can see and hear, but he can't do anything.

Does it add anything to this covenant? God makes the promise, but here God comes, you have something to do as a result of what I have done for you. So the gospel, God's promise, leads to the law, our obligation, our commitment, our covenant.

Now it's been a problem since the gospel was fully unveiled, particularly in the New Testament, that people abusing it to think that now they don't have to do anything, right? You may call it what you want today, easy believism, fancy theological word is antinomianism, that God's commitment they think to us doesn't produce our commitment.

That we can have grace, declare ourselves saved, not be any different, not be any changed, not live any differently, and we think we go to heaven still. That we can be justified and saved and not be sanctified.

But from the beginning here, this is here in Genesis, the gospel saves and results in our sanctifying, being sanctified. Abram is called to sanctification and with that call, the gospel and now the law, he falls down and worships in verse 3.

Notice that? The promise comes, he responds with worship. And that's what we're supposed to be doing right here. We hear the gospel, we hear what God has promised, how he's committed himself to us, how he's fulfilled that promise in Christ, and that he did it without our help.

And then we hear the call to walk before him, to be sanctified, and our hearts must overflow with worship. He is going to sanctify Abram by changing his name in verse 5. And now he'll no longer be Abram, his exalted father, but now be Abraham, father of a multitude.

So this father, now think about that, this father of one son, so far, through a servant, is supposed to go out and call himself now father of multitude. Now do that, Abraham. Take that sign. Because notice in the second half of verse 5, I have made, that's God speaking, I have made, like it's done, perfect tense, it's a past completed action, I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.

And people look at that, what are you talking about, God? He has one son through a servant, so it's even iffy whether he's a legitimate son. And God tells him to change his name to Abraham based on a completed fact, as if it's already done, that Abraham has been already made the father of a multitude of nations.

Notice how the verb tense is there in that whole paragraph, are both future, what God will do in the future, I will, and past, like it's already accomplished. Both, interchangeably, going back and forth.

That's because, like in verse 5 here, I have made you, as if accomplished, that's because of God's promise that you will be the father of a multitude. When God says you will be, it's as good as him saying you already have been.

Now Abraham now is to commit himself, to commit himself so much that he will, like a bride at a wedding, change his name. Now imagine him having to correct his old friends. That's gotta, that had to be a weird scene, a little embarrassing.

You know, he goes out, see the guys sitting around the oaks of Mamre, and as they call out, hey Abram, how's it going? And he says, wait, wait, wait, I got some news. Please call me. Now think, imagine he's only the father of one son by his, by his servant.

Call me now, guys. Abraham, father of a multitude, that's my name, right? They knew the meaning of the word. Now they probably snickered behind his back, you know, hey, yeah, yeah, what he's going, hey Abram, Ham, where's your multitude?

But God Almighty had told him to sanctify himself by claiming with his name the promise that God had given him. He is to commit himself to the God who has already committed to him. And the heart of God's commitment is found at the end of verse seven and eight.

I will be God to you. That is the everlasting covenant. That's what he's concerned with here, the everlasting covenant. It's not a dispensation that runs out at some time. It's everlasting. It starts here, it continues forever.

And that implies that Abraham, too, will be everlasting. And so I, God speaking, I, God Almighty, El Shaddai, will be committed to you everlastingly. So, your response, you be committed to me. And he says the same to his people.

To you today. Now notice here the promise is not simply to Abraham as a lone individual, but to him and his offspring collectively together. I will be God to you and to your offspring after you. In verse eight, the covenant is with him and his offspring and he says I will be their, plural, their God.

He will be the God of a group, of a gathering, an assembly, a church. Like Abraham here, we are called to walk before the Lord with all of Abraham's offspring. That's why we're called to walk together in Christian love, as our church covenant puts it.

That's why the Apostle Paul urges us in Ephesians chapter four, verse one, to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you all have been called together. The Bible knows nothing of the person who claims to be committed to the Lord, but who is not committed to the body of his people.

Like those who make no commitment to the church, who think all that membership and that covenant stuff is just optional, can do without that. Church membership is the sign of your walking together, because you've been called to walk together.

Second, the sign. Covenants have signs. The signs that you are a part of them, that they've been implemented, that they've been started, that you are part of it, you agree to it. Covenants have signs, like the name change or the ring for marriage.

Now here, God Almighty tells him you shall keep my covenant. In verse 10, by taking the sign of circumcision, the covenant comes with a sign. And for this covenant, to these literal offspring, it is circumcision.

Now remember we said a few weeks ago that the promises have a literal and a spiritual fulfillment. Now here, for the sign of the covenant, there is the literal and the physical on the one hand, and then there's the ultimate and the spiritual, the fulfillment of it on the other hand.

The sign of the covenant for the literal children of Abraham is circumcision. In verses 10 and 11, the boys are supposed to be circumcised on the eighth day of their life. In verse 12, but as the book of Galatians forcefully argues, we, that is the children of Abraham by faith, spiritual children of Abraham, we do not have to be literal children of Abraham.

And that means we do not have to take the same sign to receive the blessings of the Lord's covenant, of the Lord's new covenant with us. Indeed, Paul says if we take the sign here, if we take the sign here that Abraham is told to take, and we think through that, that that will put us in a covenant with God, that we get God's blessings, we get salvation, we get his rewards.

We're trusting in that and not trusting in Christ. And in Galatians chapter 5 verse 2, Paul says about that, that if you accept circumcision with that attitude, with that mind, Christ will be of no advantage to you.

So you can believe in the, you can believe in that sign or you can believe in Christ, not in both. The sign changed. Our sign of the covenant, first in Colossians chapter 2 verse 11, is the spiritual one, the fulfillment of it.

It says there, in him also you were circumcised. That's the sign of the covenant. With a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ. And this is the circumcision of the heart, which was foretold already in the law in the Old Testament in Deuteronomy chapter 30 verse 6, where it says, and the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring so that, this is the purpose statement, the Lord your God will circumcise your heart, the heart of your offspring for the purpose and the effect of that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, that you may live.

Now think about that. The sign of the covenant, then for us, foretold already in the Old Testament in Deuteronomy, is we will get the mark of the covenant in our heart that will have the effect of making us love him with all our being.

Notice God does it. He does it to our heart. And if he does it, we love him. He does it so that we will love him and live. And that circumcision of the heart then makes us one of his people. We're in covenant with him.

We are now the true Israel. In Romans chapter 2 verse 29, a Jew is one inwardly and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. That is, our sign of the covenant is in our hearts, where God has given us a love for him.

How can we know if you have that sign? Do you love him? And it's not by the letter. It's not by a ritual. That is God's covenant of grace with us to save us. If he makes that covenant, he then gives us the sign of the covenant, which is a circumcised heart that loves the Lord.

So it's not baptism. Reformed people who baptize babies say, baptism is the sign of the covenant. And so they baptize their babies just like Abraham here is told to circumcise them. Because they say baptism has replaced circumcision.

But the Bible never says that. It says our sign of the covenant is in our heart, giving us a love for the Lord. And now that will result, baptism is not done away, but that will result if we have that new heart that gives us a love for the Lord, that will result in us being baptized.

Because if you now love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, you will then want to obey him. And so you will be baptized. But baptism doesn't put you in a covenant or a relationship with God.

It shows that you already have one. Now those who argue that baptism is the new sign for the new covenant then say that just as babies were circumcised and considered in the covenant with God, and in chapter 17 here in the Old Testament, so too babies now should be baptized and considered in covenant with God.

That is the main argument of what's called covenant theologies, defense of infant baptism. They say there is a complete continuity, that is there's nothing changes, that the sign of the covenant, like here in Genesis 17, the sign of the covenant is applied to infants today just as it was to them then.

Continuity. Now I believe in a continuity of the covenants, that there is one covenant of grace that's administered here by the Abrahamic covenant, later in the Sinai covenant, and then the covenant with David, and that Christ fulfills all those covenants.

They're not done away, they're fulfilled, and we live in them. And he gives us the new covenant and everything in the old covenants, like Abrahamic covenant, everything in the old covenants that's not explicitly changed is retained.

There is a continuity of the covenants. For example, the food laws were explicitly changed. In Mark chapter 7 verse 19, Jesus declared all foods clean, so you can eat pork or shrimp. The Sabbath law was changed, so we're not judged for Sabbath keeping, at least not on the seventh day.

It's why we're meeting today on the first day of the week and not the seventh. Everything else, like the Psalms, is retained. The Psalms were given as songs and instructions for worship. It's not really clear whether they're from the Sinai covenant.

The Sinai covenant actually called for them, but it was in effect at the time. But during the Sinai covenant and the Davidic covenant, many of them coming directly from David. Psalm 101, we read today, from David.

And they serve that purpose. They serve the same purpose for us as they did originally. They come from to give instructions for worship and actually songs for songs, or lyrics for songs. They are endorsed in the New Testament twice, in Ephesians chapter 5 verse 18 and Galatians chapter 3 verse 16.

And so we not only sing them, but we follow their instructions, like in singing and making music and Psalm 101 tells us to make music. So we do. That's not a hard burden. That's not a burdensome command, is it?

His commands are not burdensome. They're good for us, including new songs. Psalms tells us to make new songs. So we're not restricted to the Psalms. Even with the New Testament tells us to sing Psalms.

It says also hymns and spiritual songs. In 1 Corinthians 14, it says, Paul says to the church, you come. So everyone has a hymn. It's a word. It's, you know, it's fine, but make sure it's done in order.

That's the important thing. You can have different, you're not restricted to the book of Psalms, but you should be singing Psalms too. Using musical instruments, you have those. The book of Psalms tells us to use them.

You can use them, Jacob, believe it or not. Yes, you can, because Psalms tells us you can. And again, his commands are not burdensome. So whatever is not canceled continues. Most of it continues. There is a continuity of the covenants, but here the sign of the covenant is explicitly changed.

After all, if the Lord had intended a complete continuity of the old covenant with the new, everything, like, you know, again, those arguing for infant baptism say, well, it's just like in the old covenant.

So we baptize infants. Well, it's continuity. It's the same. So we baptize just like they circumcise. Well, if the Lord intended a complete continuity, then why not simply continue circumcision? That's kind of an obvious question, isn't it?

If there's no change, why did the sign of the covenant change? Why not require Christians to be circumcised, as some were proposing in the early church? And Galatians is written for those people, and Paul's words about them were very strong.

In other words, the fact that circumcision is not our sign is a sign that there was some change. Besides, those who use this passage to argue for baptizing babies, they don't do it on the eighth day. You know, if you were to say there's complete continuity, except baptism replaces, you can just kind of take out, cut and paste, wherever it says circumcised, you put baptized.

If that's the case, you should be baptizing on the eighth day. They don't do that. They change that. Well, let's put it another way. Let's attack the question in another way. Are we in our covenant, this new covenant, because of our ancestry, that is because of our parents, because of their faith, we're in a covenant with God?

Of course not. Absolutely not. I mean, even true for Isaac. It's not true for us. Some of us here did not have Christian parents, but now you are in a covenant with God. One cannot inherit this covenant or kind of pass it down like a family heirloom.

It depends entirely on the Lord's gracious work. That's why Nicodemus had such a hard time understanding this. He was supposed to be a teacher of the law, and Jesus says to him, you know, you must be born again.

It's not good enough just to be born to be one of God's people, to be in the kingdom of God. You have to be born again. Nicodemus goes, why? What are you talking about? I don't understand. Because his whole idea was that you're born into God's covenant.

You're born into God's kingdom. It's who your parents, your ancestors are. And Jesus says, no, it's not. The spirit blows where he wills. The spirit makes God's people out of any people. You must be born again.

And we have no way of knowing if a small child is born again. It can be. John the Baptist was apparently from his mother's womb, but we have no way of knowing. It is a blessing to be born into a Christian home.

And 1 Corinthians tells us that such children are set apart. They're sanctified in a way. That is why I pray for the children of our members, every service. But the New Testament never talks about covenant children or shows us anyone being baptized on the basis of someone else's faith.

It never shows that. It never shows, well, my dad was the jailer and the Philippi, and he got saved, so I'm going to go along and do it because of him. A baby being baptized because their parents were believers never shows anything like that.

The command is to be baptized by the Lord Jesus himself in Matthew chapter 28 verse 19. It's for the church to baptize disciples. Go make disciples baptizing them. Who? Baptizing the disciples. How can we know if a baby is a disciple?

We can't. And so we can't baptize them. Baptism is a sign for disciples to point to their commitment to the Lord. It's for disciples to say, I have a new heart. I've been born again. God has made the sign of the covenant in my heart.

That's what we say with baptism. For that matter, though, some Baptists need to be reminded that we can manipulate small children into being baptized. It's not even particularly difficult. Small kid wants to please you.

Say this prayer after me. Pronounce him saved. We can do that without really knowing if they are really disciples either. We need to see their life to see if they have indeed been brought by the Lord into a covenant or to a relationship with him.

If they have been circumcised at heart. If they have, they will love the Lord with their whole heart and with their whole soul and they will live. They will have new life. They will be disciples. And so they will be baptized at the right time.

So it says baptism is the sign of the circumcision of the heart. We should reserve it for people who show that sign. Third, Sarah. Now, up until now, the promise has been just to Abraham, right? We start in chapter 12.

Abraham gets the promise there. The Lord tells him that he would be a, that he would make Abraham a blessing to every family of the earth. In chapter 15, it was Abraham who was told to look at the stars and see that's how many descendants you're going to have.

So it's kind of natural, I guess they thought, well, Sarah's not bearing any children. It must be Abraham with someone else. Agar, maybe? So far, they thought it's just him. And they try to help God out with the Hagar thing and they're helping God out.

Didn't work out so well. And so now 13 years after Ishmael was born, they're now 13 years older, 13 more years away from Sarah's childbearing years when she was infertile anyway. And God still narrows his options.

It's not just you, Abraham. It's you and Sarah. He commits himself. God tells Abraham, Sarah will bear the child who will carry on this covenant. God is so insistent on that that he changes her name from Sarai to Sarah.

There's really no change of meaning. It's just God's way of calling them to change. It's her, you know, sign of being in the covenant. Her name is changed. And to be in covenant with the Lord is to change.

Abraham receives the sign and he receives Sarah, now clearly designated in verse 16 to be the mother of many nations. That the very same promise given to Abraham in verse 6, you know, kings shall come to you, said to Abraham, now is repeated about Sarah.

Kings will come from her. It's applied to her. She's an infertile, now 90-year-old woman. And to that, Abraham, the great man of faith, right? The model of faith. Now having stood up from his previous memory, fell to the ground in worship when he's given the promise, he goes back down to the ground, this time with laughter.

Maybe he's trying to hide his laughter. But in internet lingo, this is R-O-F-L, rolling on the floor laughing. Maybe he wasn't rolling. Maybe it should be P-O-F-L, prostrate on the floor laughing.

In verse 17, it's like, oh, that, that is ridiculous. I mean, really, God? You not realize? You know, even if somehow she gets pregnant, I'll be 100 years old by the time the child is born, and she'll be 90.

She was infertile in the first place. You do know she was infertile already, right? In verse 18, and have we told you about our, our meaning Hagar and mine, forget Sarah, Hagar and mine son, Ishmael, he laughs.

And God Almighty, El Shaddai, laughs back. In verse 19, no, he says, the covenant will not pass down through Ishmael. That was your way. That's the flesh doing your thing. It's you trying to help me out.

I'm not going along with your work. This is not synergy. This is not us and you, me, God, and you working together. No, no. Monogynistic, this is monarchy. This is me working alone. God is saying it will come through Sarah and he'll be called the boy.

He laughs. You thought you could laugh, Abraham, and get away with it? I'm going to name your son. He laughs. Isaac. That's his name. So he now, God, laughs. God is laughing that you thought these little things, they may be big to you, but little to him, could stop God Almighty.

Little things like infertility, old age, coming death. And God says, it is with the not yet born Isaac, through Sarah, that I will establish my, what's that word again? Covenant, as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him.

And that promise made back, starting in chapter 12, kind of officially authenticated in chapter 15, to be a blessing to every nation, to the earth, those symbols for God's presence in chapter 15, going through the pieces of the animals where God declared, may what happened to these animals happen to me if I break this covenant.

All of that will be fulfilled through a son born of Isaac. So God is narrowing his options so narrowly, as narrowly as he possibly can. Sarah. And that will require a miracle. So God gets the last laugh.

God tells Abraham, he's heard his prayer for Ishmael. Okay, you know, I get it. God says in verse 20, I have heard you. I have blessed him. Notice that verb tense again. I have blessed. It's already, I've already issued the decree.

The blessing has gone out. I will make him fruitful. Again, the past of God's commitment produces the future of our blessing. He'll be the father of 12 princes. But notice that this is really not the promise that God has been developing all along with Abraham.

This isn't the main theme of this passage. Abraham here wants to make it the main thing. This is all he can see is Ishmael. You know, have you seen Ishmael? He's the guy. No, no, no. But I will, I have blessed him and he will be a multitude.

But this is all an added extra as far as God is concerned. I've seen people get so diverted by the literal nations of the Middle East. You know, who will do what? What prophecies are fulfilled by who?

That they think that that's what the Old Testament is all about. These ancient kingdoms seem so far away, these strange names. And maybe some of them will rise up again before Armageddon and there'll be all this and they'll conjecture and guess and write books about it.