The Judge of All the Earth

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church, Edmonton. To access more sermons, visit our website at gfcedmonton .com. All right, so we're in Genesis chapter 18. And as we begin our time, I want to share a quote with you from the prominent 19th century pastor, A .W. Tozer.

No doubt many of you have heard that name before. He once wrote this in one of his books, I believe it was in the Knowledge of the Holy, where he said, what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

What comes into our mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us. And the reason why Tozer wrote this, as he goes on and explains further, he adds this. He says, history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God.

And what Tozer was getting at as he wrote this is this, that the single most important thing about the Christian, the very thing that determines his walk, his worship, his faithfulness, his fruitfulness, his life at home, his life in the church, his witness in the world, that the quality, the overall quality of his Christian life, the thing that determines it, it is not his material resources.

It is not the strength of his zeal or the intensity of his Christian experience. It is his conception of almighty God. What we think affects how we live. Christian, what you think about when you think about God will determine absolutely everything about you.

The theology proper of the Christian, that is his understanding of God, is the fountainhead of the Christian life. Everything else that a Christian is and that a Christian does runs downstream from that fountainhead of the knowledge of God.

What this means then is that to the extent that the Christian possesses an exalted and glorious apprehension of God, his life is likely to rise to that apprehension. If you have a fountain that flows from 14 ,000 feet, then the stream itself will for a time flow at 14 ,000 feet.

But at the same time, to the extent that the Christian harbors a small and pitiful conception of God, his life is likely to sink and match his low conception. And here, Tozer has given us, I think, a helpful maxim to guide our thinking about God.

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the single most important thing about us. And this is, I would suggest, devastating news for the modern church. And while I wanna be careful not to overstate this, I think it simply needs to be said.

There are times that I preach like this and there are times that I don't. And I'm gonna address a malady that I think we see in the world around us, particularly the Christian world around us. When we survey the nearly 2 ,000 years of church history that we have recorded and at our disposal, I think we must admit that there have been few times in our history when Christians have held such a low view of God, such a low view as is held in the church today.

Now, without question, that the history of the church will demonstrate that through the various eras and centuries, many have embraced false views of God, that there have been no shortage of deeply flawed theological positions in history.

And yet even these faulty views were accompanied by a profound sense of the majesty and glory of God. I wasn't planning on quoting it, but this week I was thinking about it some and I thought about Thomas Aquinas.

You don't get much more Catholic than Thomas. And the thing about Thomas is this, while he is very Catholic, one thing that you have to give him is this, he had a great conception of who God was. He said, you know, God does not need our worship.

We need to worship God. We need to apprehend who he is and what he is. Maybe my first and last quotation of Thomas Aquinas. But today, many Christians hold such a low view and shallow view of God, that it must be acknowledged that their God is not the God of the Bible, but it is a small personal deity fashioned after their own image.

The knowledge of God in the church today has come upon hard times. And I think this is evidenced by the voices that are given prominence and platform in modern day Christianity. I think of a man named William Paul Young.

Many of you might know that name. He's the author of the book, The Shack, that sold over 25 million copies. I'm not sure about you. I've read The Shack. I read it as an early Christian. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I just will say it.

I enjoyed it in the moment. And I've since been rebuked many times. But in the book, God the Father is portrayed as an African-American woman named Papa. And the Holy Spirit, an Asian woman named Sarayu.

How I enjoyed that, I don't know. But to this day, it remains one of the best-selling Christian books of all time. And in its pages, Paul William Young says this, that God is not in the business of judging sin.

In his words, he says, "'God does not need to punish people for sin. "'Sin is its own punishment.'". And that pithy sentence might sound really nice, right? God is a nice guy. He's merciful. He's gracious.

He doesn't need to punish your sin. Your sin will punish you for you. But does that square with the justice and righteousness of Almighty God? Or does it paint a picture? Does Young opt for a nice, feminine God in the place of the just God of the Bible?

Or there is Stephen Furtick, the pastor of Elevation Church, who's, I looked at it this week, whose current weekly audience exceeds 1 .4 million, who summarized the gospel with these words. The gospel is, and I quote him exactly, it is this, God broke the law for love.

That God, as an expression of his loving kindness for his people, came and transgressed his own law that he might save you. That Jesus took you into his arms and ran every divine red light as he chased the pursuit or pursued your redemption.

This is the beauty of the gospel, Furtick explains, that God saves us by breaking his own law. But what does this mean? Well, the gospel, according to Stephen Furtick then, is this, that God establishes covenants that either he cannot keep or that he has no intention of keeping.

He is a God who makes laws and breaks laws so that he can show you his reckless love. And as a consequence then, he is not a faithful God who is immutably good. His word cannot be trusted. He is a mutable God, meaning a changeable God, who like Furtick, is prone to fits of passion that make him transgress his own scriptures.

Or, if you can tolerate just one last example, I know some of this is low-hanging fruit, but I'm going somewhere here, that there are men like Joel Osteen, who despite all of his bad press over the last 10 years, continues to pastor the largest church in America, who has a weekly audience of 60 million, 60 million people who tune in to get their truth for life from Joel Osteen.

And in his words, God's concern, his main concern for you is this, to increase you financially by giving you promotions, fresh ideas, and creativity. That that's God's marvelous plan for your life, fresh ideas and creativity.

And the problem, however, is that the God that Joel Osteen preaches is little more than a personal genie who lives in your Bibles, and you unleash him not by rubbing the cover of the Bible, but by taking a verse out of context.

This is the God of Joel Osteen, and this is the God, it would seem, of at least 60 million people who tune in and listen to him every week. Now, where am I going with this? Am I here just to beat up on the easy guys?

What we need to appreciate is this, that it can be very easy for us to look down the bridges of our nose at these men. But the sad fact is that every single one of us, to some degree or another, harbors low and corrupted views of God.

Now, you might ask, how do I know that? Maybe I've never met you. Maybe you're visiting here for the first time, and you're going, how does he know me? How does he know that I hold to small views, to low views, to corrupted views of God, even in my redeemed heart?

And I would say it this way, that this is revealed in each and every one of our hearts every time we choose sin instead of obedience. That our corrupted views of God are exposed every time we manifest a reluctance to draw near to God in prayer.

When we look at our phones and say, I don't know about you, but this seems more interesting to me than God. What then? Our deficient views of God are uncovered every time we treat God's word as a burden, rather than the living communication that it is, communication from God himself.

Our low views of God are revealed every time we opt for a quiet day in front of a screen instead of the assembly of the saints, where God promises to be in our midst. And our low view of God is seen in a thousand other actions and attitudes that manifest themselves daily in our lives.

The reality is we can look at Joel Osteen, we can look at Stephen Furtick, we can say, ha, they have a small view of God, but I'm here to tell you, so do you. Our view of God is much too small. And I think that that is the corrective that we find here in Genesis 18, that God's word comes to us today.

And as it does, Genesis 18 is about a number of things. I could have preached from Genesis 18 and said it's a passage about hospitality. Let's all be hospitable. We'll talk about that in a moment. And that might be fair.

And we could look at it as dealing with the problem of unbelief, which is also true. We could look at Genesis 18 and say that it highlights the just wages of sin. But taken in its totality, I think that Genesis 18 offers us a glimpse at something much greater, much grander, much worthy of our attention.

And that is that Genesis 18 offers us a glimpse of the perfect character of God. That Genesis 18 takes us, as it were, to the base of the throne of God so that we would behold him for who he truly is, not for who he is in our hearts fashioned after our images, but for who he is.

Genesis 18 then has been given to enhance our knowledge of God that we might rightly understand him and live accordingly. And that's what I want us to do today. I hope that as we look at Genesis 18, we would sit here at the end and go, what a God, what a good, gracious, patient, merciful, faithful, just God.

And my thinking about God must conform to this God as he is revealed. So we'll look today at Genesis 18. These whole chapters are challenging, but we've cut it down in this case under three headings, and we're gonna look together at the character of God, three aspects of his character.

God's Covenant-Keeping Faithfulness

And the first that I wanted to look at today is God's covenant-keeping faithfulness. When we sing, great is thy faithfulness, what are we saying about God? What is true about him that we should rightly sing that hymn?

So we'll look first at that, his covenant-keeping faithfulness. And we'll look at verses one through eight. And the Lord appeared to him, that is Abraham, by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day.

He lifted up his eyes and looked and behold, three men were standing in front of him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth and said, O Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant.

Let a little water be brought and wash your feet and rest yourselves under the tree while I bring a morsel of bread that you may refresh yourselves and after that you may pass on since you have come to your servant.

So they said, do as you have said. And Abraham went quickly into the tent to Sarah and said, quick, three sieves of fine flour, knead it and make cakes. And Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf, tender and good, gave it to a young man who prepared it quickly.

Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared and set it before them. And he stood by them under the tree while they ate. So what do we see here about God's covenant-keeping faithfulness?

In verse one, we see that Abraham is back at the Oaks of Mamre. You'll recall that we first heard about this place in Genesis chapter 13 and verse 18. And there I reminded us or I explained to us how it was that, why it was important that Abraham should build an altar to the Lord there at the Oaks of Mamre.

And we saw that it was, is still today one of the highest places in Israel south of the Sea of Galilee. It's at roughly 3 ,040 feet. And they're at that high place beneath those trees where men would often worship their pagan idols.

What did Abraham do? But he worshiped Yahweh, the living and true God. And the Oaks of Mamre then appear again in Genesis chapter 14 and verse 13. And there we're told that after Abraham and Lot separated, Abraham settled here and made his, we might say his temporary home, the home of a sojourner here at the Oaks of Mamre in Genesis 14.

And so in verse one, we find Abraham then at home, at least his temporary home. And there he is in the heat of the day as the sun is highest in the sky at the door of his tent. And something happens that we might expect, which is this, that if you're a sojourner, if you're traveling and you're on a journey, and I looked at the temperature of Hebron today, I was just curious, what was the temperature today at noon?

It was about 35 degrees Celsius. So you're in the wilderness of Israel. And here we find exactly what we would expect. Those who are wandering, who are now looking for some shade and looking for an opportunity to rest and be refreshed on their journey.

And so we find Abraham seated at the door of his tent. And in verse two, we're told that three men were standing before him. These men who were now looking for some shade. And right away, the question becomes this, who are these three men?

I think if you look at various commentaries, you'll see that a variety of people have speculated. Some have said, well, these are the three persons of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Others have said, well, they're just men passing through an anti-supernatural kind of perspective. I think if we look at the Bible and we take our cues from scripture, it's fairly clear who these men are.

That the first visitor, the visitor who is addressed in the singular in verse three, when Abraham says, oh, better get to the right chapter here. "'O Lord, O Adonai, if I have found favor in your sight, "'do not pass by your servant.'".

The first visitor, the one that is highlighted most in the text is this. This visitor is none other than the Lord God. And we see this in verse 10, because we see the speech of this visitor recorded where it says, the Lord, literally Yahweh, the Lord Yahweh said.

And we find this language used in verse 10, in verse 13, in verses 17 through 22. And again, in verse 33, just to name a few of the references. And it appears that Abraham knew that this was in fact God who was before him, because verse two tells us that he bowed low to the ground.

He addresses, as I mentioned, in the singular in verse three, oh Lord or Adonai, master. And broadly speaking, what we would say is this, that the theologians would call this a theophany. That is an appearance of God.

It comes from two Greek words, theos, which means God, and phanaen, which means to appear or to show. And so in the opening verses of this passage, we don't find Abraham interacting with three ordinary men as they come walking, but one among the three is God.

God in human flesh. And then the next question we might ask is, who are the other two that are present with God as he comes to Abraham? And the text tells us, if we look at Genesis 19, one, that they were two angels.

And we'll hear our brothers speak about that, I'm sure at great extent next week when we're looking at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. And so what we find is Abraham in the heat of the day, having a rather remarkable interaction, not with three ordinary men, but with God and with two of his angels.

And then as we continue in verses four and five, Abraham does exactly what we would expect him to do. In fact, his actions are perfectly in line with the customs of ancient near Eastern hospitality. And when we look at some of these cultural expectations, these expectations that would one day or soon become biblical expectations, we see a familiar pattern that it was common for those who are receiving company, number one, to offer care to the guests' animals.

I'm sure you can think of different scenes where that took place, where there would be the provision for water to drink, the opportunity to wash the guests' feet, there would be a prepared meal, and then eventually overnight accommodations if someone was particularly hospitable.

And verses four and five show us that Abraham does this. In fact, in verse five, he promises, at least he says a morsel of bread, but Abraham does something. He under promises, and then he over delivers.

He gives much, much more than a mere slice of bread. In verse six, we begin to see some of the urgency. We see the language here that Abraham went quickly to prepare a meal for his guests. What does he tell Sarah?

Quick, quick, quick, we need to prepare this. He ran to get to the calf in order that he might prepare the meal. And what we read about this meal, it was a meal truly of biblical proportions. We would expect maybe a small lunch, some kind of snack.

This is much more than a snack or even a large lunch. The meal consisted of cakes made, we're told, from three sieves of fine flour. Now I'm not a baker, and I don't normally measure in sieves. So what does that really mean?

Well, three sieves would be roughly the amount, it'd be roughly equivalent to 22 liters or 36 pounds of flour. So for husbands, if you can picture this, if your wife says, when you go to the grocery store, buy a 25 pound bag of flour, you know that getting that into the cart takes just a little bit of oomph, unless you're our brother, a little bit of oomph.

And then this is at least that and more, 36 pounds of flour. And so what could that make? Well, 36 pounds of flour can make about 20 to 40 loaves of bread, depending on how big your loaves are, something close to 50 cakes.

And so already Abraham is preparing, as we can see, a feast. We're told it was three sieves of fine flour, meaning that it was expensive, high quality flour that both recognized the divine guests and it demonstrates Abraham's generosity.

But there's more. If there were three people coming to my home and I made them 50 cakes, that would probably be enough. But we're told here that Abraham ran and he ran to get more food. And we see that he ran to get a calf.

Now, I had to do some research about this, but a calf after processing would account for, again, another 150 pounds of meat. That's on the conservative end, which if you have 150 pounds and you were to feed each of your guests half a pound of pure meat, that would feed already 300 people.

But there's more. To add to this bountiful meal, he prepares curds and milk also to serve. And then in verse eight, we see that he takes all of this that had been prepared, he set it before them. He stood under the tree and they ate.

And so what we see here is Abraham was not preparing a meal for a few passing guests. As I mentioned, it's not a snack. It's not even a big supper. Abraham was preparing a feast. A feast, as I said, of biblical proportions.

And we need to ask ourselves why this extravagance in some ways, it mirrors the preparations that we see or that we saw in Genesis 15. If we look at verses nine and 10, Genesis 15, nine and 10, when Abraham was cutting the animals in half and as he began to arrange them.

The uninitiated reader might look at that and go, what is Abraham doing? Taking these animals, cutting them in half and placing them on the ground. Well, we're here again. What is Abraham doing? Preparing this massive feast for how many people?

For three people. And what we see here is that Abraham knows something that we don't, or that isn't immediately apparent to us. In chapter 15, what was he doing when he was cutting those animals in half?

He was preparing for a covenant ceremony. And now here in chapter 18, he's doing something that we might not immediately recognize, but I wanna tell you what it is. He's preparing for a covenant feast.

And all of this fits in with the covenantal framework that we have observed all throughout this section of Genesis and hopefully you're seeing this by now, that if you do not have a paradigm in your minds that allows for covenant, that makes great room for covenant, these early chapters of Genesis will not make any sense.

We have covenants, covenant, covenant, covenant. And so in chapter 12, we saw that Abraham chose God, right? He chose God and sorry, God chose Abraham, wrong order. God chose Abraham. In chapter 15, God made a covenant with Abraham.

In chapter 17, didn't we see that there was the covenant sign of circumcision where Abraham and all of his succeeding generations were to wear the sign of that covenant. And now unsurprisingly, we see another element of the ancient near Eastern covenant, which is this, a covenant feast.

Now, this is something that we see again and again and again in scripture. In Genesis chapter 26 and verses 26 through 31, we read a story about Isaac and Abimelech. And in the course of their relationship, they make a covenant and what do they do?

But they seal it with a feast. In Exodus chapter 24, especially in verse 11, when the elders confirmed the Mosaic covenant with God, they sealed, they ratified this covenant we're told by eating and drinking before God.

One scholar, a man named Terry Johnson says this, that the covenantal meal in Genesis 18 served the purpose of ratifying and confirming the covenant already made between Abraham and God. So that within this context, we see again, God confirming, confirming, and then confirming again, his covenant.

Now, I need to be speedy about these things. We've got a long chapter to go through, but we might ask ourselves, what then does it mean for us? So we could see all of this. And I could say before you brothers and sisters, this is how you should show hospitality, right?

Open your homes, warmly welcome strangers, prepare them a big feast, make your guests feel welcome. That certainly would be a secondary application to this passage, but what is the primary application?

I think if we see all of this, and we assume that it's merely a passage about hospitality, we have grossly missed the main point of the text. The main point of the text is this, that in spite of all of the failures and the weaknesses and the sins that we see in Abraham's life, God is still a covenant keeping God.

We've seen this again and again and again, that Abraham demonstrates himself unworthy of the covenant. He's given this promise, God swears by himself that he will keep the covenant. What did we see in the following chapter?

Abraham seeks to take matters into his own hands. And yet here we have it, God coming again, not just giving him the covenant, not just swearing by himself, not just giving him the sign, but coming near to him, before him in flesh, in real flesh we see, because they eat and drink and they confirm this covenant by a feast also.

That God is not like man who says one thing and does another. He is not like the petulant gods of Greek mythology, or the, if I can say it this way, the small indecisive God preached by Stephen Furtick, who makes a law and later is forced to transgress it.

He's a God whose word is sure. And if you were to have a God that is worthy of the God of the Bible, if you were to have God as your God, then you must realize that he is a faithful God. And you must submit to him as this faithful God.

His yes is always yes, and his no is always no. He covenants with his people, he draws near to them, he says what he means, he means what he says, and what he says he will do. And in this passage, what we see is God providing many confirmations, as many confirmations of his covenant faithfulness as he possibly can, so that we might take him at his word and believe him.

The grace of God is immutable. The gospel of God will never change. And if you have believed on Christ, then you are eternally secure in him. Now, you're hearing me say this, and maybe some of you are wondering, we went through all of that just so you could give me theology 101, that God is faithful, that God keeps his covenant.

But what I want us to see is this, that every time we are anxious, every time we are concerned that we have somehow gone beyond God's saving ability, every time that we doubt God's promises, we demonstrate that we harbor a small view of God.

And so this is true of all of us. We all struggle with this, whether we like to admit it or not. But we need to listen to reminders like this. This is one from A .W. Pink. He writes, everything about God is great, vast, incomparable.

He never forgets, never fails, never falters, never forfeits his word. To every declaration of promise or prophecy, the Lord has exactly adhered. Every engagement of covenant or threatening, he will make good.

And this passage is interesting because it is far more relevant to our daily and weekly life than we might even realize. But perhaps you've never appreciated this, but do you know that you partake in a covenant meal every single week?

What did the Lord Jesus mean when he said in Luke 22, 20, after taking the cup and they had eaten, he said, this cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. That there was a covenant meal, not just in Genesis 18, not just in Genesis 26, not just in Exodus 24, but in Luke 22 and then every week here as the Lord's people meet.

That we come together and what do we come together to remember? Great is his faithfulness. Great is his covenant faithfulness. We remember what Christ has done until he comes. To quote from Terry Johnson one more time, he says, the communion table became the point at which commitment to Christ, and this is, I should say, this is him speaking about the rediscovery of the Lord's supper at the reformation.

The communion table became the point at which commitment to Christ was either refused or ratified. If you were a faithful believer, reaffirmation of the covenant with Christ would take place at the table.

The table for you was a blessed spiritual meal, a reminder of the grace of God and communion with Christ, the risen Christ himself. By participation in the Lord's supper, one identified oneself as a member of the covenant community in fellowship with Christ and in fellowship with those in fellowship with Christ.

God is a covenant-keeping God. And that means that we can entrust ourself to him fully. And that means that we can come week by week and remember his covenant faithfulness that he sent his son. He sent his son to put away our sins.

God's Gracious and Sovereign Power

And what he has promised, that will he do. But we see another aspect of God's character displayed in this chapter, the end in verse nine. And that is God's gracious and sovereign power, God's covenant-keeping power.

We read in verse nine, and they said to him, where is Sarah, your wife? And he said, she is in the tent. The Lord said, I will surely return to you about this time next year. And Sarah, your wife shall have a son.

And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him. 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 pleasure?

The Lord said to Abraham, why did Sarah laugh? And say, shall I indeed bear a child now that I am old? Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time, I will return to you about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son.

But Sarah denied it saying, I did not laugh. For she was afraid. He said, no, but you did laugh. Now what is going on here? As we move into verses nine through 16, we see why confirmation meals, covenant confirmation meals were needed.

At this point in Abraham's story, I went back and looked at this. God had already promised Abraham a descendant, not once, not twice, not three times, not five times, but seven times. In Genesis 12, seven.

In 13, 15. In 15, four and five. In 17, two. In 17, four and eight. 17, 16. And again, in Genesis 17, 19. And yet what we see here again is that the Lord promises to give Abraham and Sarah a son. And what's more, this is perhaps the news they've been waiting for the whole time, that God gives them a timeline, that by this time next year, you will have a son, that God is a covenant-keeping God.

And yet as John Calvin puts it, and I think he's right about this in his commentary on this passage, he says, the faith of saints requires at intervals renewed assistance. Or as Matthew Henry, he adds to the chorus, he says, we are slow of heart to believe and need line upon line to the same purport.

And so this is a translation. What is God doing as he utters these words to Abraham and Sarah? God knows our frame. He knows that we are dust. He knows that our esteem of him and his promises is prone to contract, to shrink and to shrivel over time.

And so for this very reason, he uses repetition, the repetition of his covenant promises to buttress our faith and snap us back into reality. And again, we see some of the divine and supernatural identity of these guests.

It's interesting that we see in verse nine, for instance, that they refer to Sarah by name. And what's interesting is there were no introductions up to this point. Wouldn't that be interesting if someone, man, if someone came to your home and said, I'd like to speak with Sarah, your wife, and you say, how do you know my wife's name?

So we hear, we see a confirmation already of the supernatural, the divine identity of these visitors. But then it goes further. In verse 10, we read that Sarah was listening at the tent door behind these visitors.

And yet though she is behind the visitors, and as they utter the promise, the covenant promise, that she would bear a son, and she laughs, it says in verse 12, to herself, right? Just that quiet laugh when you go, hmm, yeah, right.

Though she is behind in a separate tent, they know her name already. The Lord not only knows what was happening in the privacy of that tent, but what was happening in the inner recesses of her heart. And no lie on her part could conceal it.

God was promising or repeating his promises, but Sarah could not believe it, could not believe them. And we see a little bit of why that was. In verse 11, we're told that the way of women had ceased to be with Sarah.