Gen 17.1-18.15
new
(genesis 17.1-18.15)
Jason Procopio
17.1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless, 2 that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly.” 3 Then Abram fell on his face. And God said to him, 4 “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. 5 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. 6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. 7 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. 8 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.”
9 And God said to Abraham, “As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. 10 This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. 11 You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. 12 He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, 13 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. 14 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.”
15 And God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. 16 I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.” 17 Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, “Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” 18 And Abraham said to God, “Oh that Ishmael might live before you!” 19 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. 20 As for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation. 21 But I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year.”
22 When he had finished talking with him, God went up from Abraham. 23 Then Abraham took Ishmael his son and all those born in his house or 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. 24 Abraham was ninety-nine years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. 25 And Ishmael his son was thirteen years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. 26 That very day Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised. 27 And all the men of his house, those born in the house and those bought with money from a foreigner, were circumcised with him.
18.1 And the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. 2 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 3 and said, “O Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant. 4 Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree, 5 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.” 6 And Abraham went quickly into the tent to Sarah and said, “Quick! Three seahs of fine flour! Knead it, and make cakes.” 7 And Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to a young man, who prepared it quickly. 8 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.
9 They said to him, “Where is Sarah your wife?” And he said, “She is in the tent.” 10 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. 11 Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah. 12 So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?” 13 The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ 14 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.” 15 But Sarah denied it, saying, “I did not laugh,” for she was afraid. He said, “No, but you did laugh.”
In Revelation 21, we see John’s vision of the new heavens and the new earth. This is the point toward which all of biblical history is headed; this is where God’s people finally arrive where they have been heading all along, and where God brings his plan for his creation to completion.
In this vision, John sees Jesus, seated on the throne. And Jesus says in v. 5: “Behold, I am making all things new.”
This is perfectly fitting, because this is what God has always done. And this is what we see gloriously on display in today’s text.
For several weeks now, we have been looking at God’s promise to Abram from several different angles, and seeing how in his own family that promise been difficult to accept. Last week we saw Sarai try to get a son by giving Abram her servant to sleep with, and Abram trying to shoehorn in a solution to the problem by accepting Sarai’s crazy solution.
And now, God is going to take that promise and push it even further. He’s going to give Abram—and the rest of us—a clearer picture of exactly what it is he means to do here, and what impact it’s going to have on him and on the heirs of that promise.
New People (17.1-27)
Now, just as a reminder, this “promise” that God gave to Abram was that he would have a son, and that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars, and that through his descendants all the nations of the earth would be blessed.
So when God appears to Abram in chapter 17, he begins by saying in v. 1:
I am God Almighty...
The name God gives himself here is God Almighty—the emphasis is on God’s power, on his ability to fulfill his promise, no matter how old Abram and Sarai are, no matter how barren she is.
Now this kind of thing, we’ve heard before; but now, God is going to go further with it. He has already made a covenant with Abram, back in chapter 15; but now, he’s going to “revalidate” that covenant (so to speak).
God says (in v. 1):
…walk before me, and be blameless, 2 that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly.
A lot of us are uncomfortable with the idea that God would lay out conditions for his covenant, but that’s exactly what he does. He says, walk before me, and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you. If I am to make this covenant, this is what you have to do.
So firstly—walk before me. This means to pursue a relationship with him, to remain close to him, to know him.
And secondly—be blameless. This means to be holy, to be like God.
And of course these two go together, because you can’t know how to be like God until you know what God is like, unless you have a relationship with him. And if you know what God is like, if you walk with God, you will quite naturally want to become like him.
(Now these conditions are of course horribly problematic, because no one is perfectly blameless. How will Abram ever actually maintain the covenant if being blameless is one of the conditions? He can’t. And that’s how we see that the covenant God made with his people in the Old Testament is not a covenant of works, like so many people say. The Old Covenant is a covenant of grace just like the New—and the proof is that even when God’s people don’t meet the conditions of the covenant, God remains faithful to it, and holds it up anyway.)
Now with the conditions, and the covenant, comes a promise. V. 4:
4 “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. 5 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.” 6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. 7 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. 8 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.”
So God changes Abram’s name, from Abram to Abraham, in v. 5; he changes Sarai’s name to Sarah.Abraham Abraham means father of a multitude, and Sarah means princess. God is essentially applying his promises to the identity of those whom he will use.
And it’s perfectly apt. We saw before that Abraham’s fatherhood isn’t a simply biological reality, but a spiritual one as well. He becomes not just a literal father to the Jews, but a “father figure” to all of us who share his faith.
It’s the same for Sarah. Just as God decided to give Abraham a new name to align with his purposes for him, he does the same for Sarah. Because Abraham is not the only one who takes on a “parental” role here: Sarah too will become a “mother figure”—not just her son, but to entire nations, to all of God’s people. Her “royalty” is not linked to her natural identity, but to God’s choice to make her a mother figure for his people.
And then God drops this bombshell, which hadn’t been as clear up to now: God’s promise, God’s covenant, is not just with Abraham, but with all of his descendants. Everyone who is of the family of Abraham benefits from God’s covenant with Abraham. The question is, how would they know that they are among the people with whom God has established this covenant?
And we find the answer in v. 9-14—God gives Abraham a physical sign of the covenant, which is circumcision. So this sign, circumcision, would distinguish those who belonged to the line of Abraham, those who believed in the promises of God to Abraham, and those who did not. So we see later on, in v. 22-27, that Abraham is then circumcised, along with Ishmael and all of his male servants.
Now I’ll admit that as physical signs go, circumcision is a strange one. First of all, it’s on the sex organ of the male. Why? Because the promise God gives to Abraham is tied to his offspring—to his descendance.
But still: as identity markers go, even if it has meaning, you’d still think that if God wanted to distinguish his people from other peoples, he’d have given them a more visible sign—a beard or a specific haircut or a hat or tassles—or, as many Christians wear today, a cross around your neck. Circumcision isn’t something you can see on someone from the outside, if they’re clothed.
So why would God give them a sign that, for the most part, only the circumcised man (and his family) would usually see?
Because it is a sign, not for everyone else, but for the person who receives it. It is an outward sign meant to reflect an inward reality—a reminder to the person that they are no longer merely an individual, but that they belong to God’s people.
Now if we think forward of time a couple of thousand years, circumcision created a problem for the early church. Jewish Christians argued that if a Gentile became a believer wanted to belong to the church, they should be circumcised, because that was the sign of belonging to God’s people.
But the apostle Paul contended—and quite insistently—that this was not so. Circumcision was an outward sign which reflected an inward reality: belief in God’s promises to Abraham. So, Paul says, what is important is not the outward sign, but the inward reality itself. He says in Romans 2.28-29:
28 For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. 29 But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter.
He goes on to explain (Romans 4.9-12):
For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. 10 How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. 11 He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, 12 and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.
What is Paul’s point? The outward sign of circumcision was never an end in itself; it was a way of reminding someone that they belonged to God’s people. And Abraham received faith before he was circumcised, to show that it is not circumcision that saves, but faith—just as baptism today doesn’t save us, but reminds us of the faith that God has given us, reminds us of the church that God has brought us into. He’s reminding us that everyone who shares Abraham’s faith belongs to his people. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well.
Essentially, what happens here is that God literally creates a new people for himself. Not a people that is limited by blood or race or culture, but a people that exists because of God’s choice, through God’s election, through the work of God’s Savior. And that is of course where the sign of circumcision is headed: toward the offspring of Abraham who would one day shed his blood to save his people.
Think of how many times we have heard people talk like this: “I’m a Christian; I believe in Jesus and I follow Jesus; but I really have no patience with the church. I’ll follow Christ on my own; but the church…? No, I can do without the church.” How many Christians live their whole lives imagining that their faith has nothing to do with anyone else, but is only a matter between themselves and God?
This is not the case. If you have faith in Christ, you are a part the church, whether you like it or not. You are a member of the body of Christ. There is no Christianity without other Christians. Because when God saves us, he brings us into a family; if you have faith in Christ, your faith necessarily unites you with, and has an impact on, everyone else who has faith in Christ.
This is why if we have faith in Christ, we now have a say in what happens in the lives of our brothers and sisters. We are called to help them get up when they fall; to bring sin to their attention when we see it in them; and even to expose sin if that sin is persistent and unrepentant.
And by the same token, we are called to celebrate repentance in our brothers and sisters, to forgive sin when it is committed (against others or against ourselves) and trust in God’s promises not just for ourselves, but for our brothers and sisters in Christ.
We are a new people, whom God has created for himself.
New Place (17.8)
God gives Abraham this incredible promise that extends now to all of his offspring, all of his descendants. And this promise isn’t limited to numbers—to simply being a new and great people. It extends to the land they will receive.
V. 8:
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.
It’s hard to emphasize just how important land was to these people, at this time. Your land was just as tied to your identity as your family was. So in promising to give this land not only to Abraham, but to his descendants, God was promising him permanence. He was promising him the hope of durability.
And this was intentional. From the very beginning of the Bible, to the very end, this promise of the land rings true and strong.
When God created the world, and created the man and the woman, where did he put them? He put them in Eden—a perfect garden. Then the man and the woman rebelled, and they were cast out of Eden, and the world was fractured and corrupted by their sin. (We see all of this in Genesis 2 and 3.)
So now we have people seeking a land—seeking a place to call their own. And God gives Abraham this promise of the land of Canaan, which God would fulfill after the exodus from Egypt, and in the books that follow Exodus. He gives them their land, which would become the nation of Israel.
But even there, the promise is not perfectly fulfilled, because the people of Israel are constantly having to fight to keep hold of their land. And eventually, they will lose that fight. When we arrive in the New Testament, Israel is under Roman occupation.
So when Jesus comes, everyone is hoping that he, the Messiah, will free Israel from Roman occupation—why? So that once again, they could have the land. But the physical country of Israel was never the endgame. Jesus came, and lived and died and was raised, in order to secure for his people the promise of an even greater country.
What does Jesus say at the end of the gospel of Matthew? Matthew 28.19-20:
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…
Why? Because when God created the world, he never intended for the final home of humanity to be one isolated nation. God doesn’t just rule a nation, he rules the world. And he intends for humanity—his image bearers—to rule with him and dwell with him forever, everywhere. From Eden, to Israel, to the entire world—this is the land which the promise of God to Abraham is heading toward.
New Perspective (18.1-15)
At the beginning of chapter 18, God appears to Abraham again—this time by the oaks of Mamre (where he had settled back in chapter 13), and this time we get some specifics on how he appeared to him. In v. 2 we see that God appears to Abraham in the form of three men, standing in front of him.
We see in what follows (mostly in what we’ll see next week) that two of these men are angels, and the third is God himself. So Abraham is of course pretty stirred up seeing them, brings them a sizable meal, and stands next to them as they eat.
In v. 9, the men ask where Sarah is, and when Abraham answers that she is in the tent (v. 10):
The Lord said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son.”
If you’ve been following with us the last couple of weeks, the problems with what God says here are obvious. The first problem—which we've seen many times in previous chapters—is that Abraham’s wife, Sarah, is barren; she cannot have children.
The second problem is much simpler: they’re both really old. Chapter 17 begins thirteen years after we last saw Abram, when Hagar gave birth to Ishmael. It’s now been twenty-three years since God promised that Abram would have a son; he’s now ninety-nine years old. (Sarai herself is ninety, we see in v. 17.) In 2019, a 74-year-old woman from southern India gave birth to twins, making her the oldest woman in modern recorded history to give birth. But she did it through IVF. The oldest woman to give birth naturally was 59 years old (according to Guinness World Records); she gave birth via C-section in 1997.
Sarah is ninety. And Abraham is ninety-nine. And they can’t get help from modern technology. Even back then, when people tended to live longer, this is not something that would have happened naturally (especially given that Sarah was barren to begin with).
And we need to keep in mind that this is the first time God has been this clear about how he would accomplish his promise. So in v. 12, we see what is one of the most purely human moments in this story. We see a response that is totally logical.
Sarah is listening to this conversation from the tent, and when she hears that in a year she’s going to have a son, she actually laughs, because it’s ridiculous—she’s barren and really old, so of course she’s not having kids. V. 12:
So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?”
Remember what we saw last week. Sarah knew about God’s promise that Abraham would have a son, and that through him all the nations of the earth would be blessed; but she surely didn’t think that this promise would happen through her. Why? Because it’s ludicrous. That’s why she concocted this scheme to have a son through her servant—it makes no sense that it could happen any other way.
We totally understand her reaction, because we’d have the same feeling in her shoes. And we understand Abraham too—we often talk about Sarah laughing here, but we shouldn’t forget that Abraham responds exactly the same way in Genesis 17.17. And he even asks God to use Ishmael, the son he had with Hagar—as if to say, But we took care of it! We’ve got this, God, don’t go through any more trouble!
But God does not respond as we would. V. 13:
13 The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ 14 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.” 15 But Sarah denied it, saying, “I did not laugh,” for she was afraid. He said, “No, but you did laugh.”
In your opinion, how many times in the subsequent years to you think Sarah remembered that moment? As she held her baby boy—that she herself carried in her womb for nine months—as she saw him learn to walk, as she taught him to speak, as she enjoyed those early moments of his life…how many times do you think she thought back on this moment and remembered God saying to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh? Is anything too hard for the Lord?”
Last week we spoke about believing in impossible promises. That kind of faith is impossible too—for us, at any rate. Belief in a promise that is utterly, humanly impossible is a gift that is given to us by God, through his Holy Spirit; and it is proven over and over again, as we see God fulfill his promises in his Word, and as we see him fulfill his promises in our own lives.
When God brings us into a new people; when he gives us a new identity; he also gives us a new perspective—a new way of looking at the world around us. We are so tethered to the “rules” of our natural world; we know for a fact that some things are possible, and other things are not. We know that if you drop something, it falls to the ground. If you undergo a procedure, you have to recover. If there is a cause, it will produce an effect.
If you’re barren, you can’t have children.
But so often we forget that nothing is too hard for God. Of course I’m not talking about the simple fulfillment of our desires—God has never promised us that he will solve all our problems, or make everything right that has gone wrong (at least in this lifetime).
But he has promised us that he can do those things. And he invites us to pray with faith, trusting that nothing is too hard for him. He invites us to pray with faith, knowing that he is wise, and that he will always answer our prayer in the best possible way—even if that means not giving us what we asked for.
Because his ultimate goal is not the end of all of our suffering in this life. His ultimate goal is not to make us happy by giving us temporary, finite pleasures. His goal us to make us like him—as individuals, and as his church. His goal is to teach us to trust him.
And all too often the fulfillment of that promise will seem just as impossible to us as making an old, barren, post-menopausal woman have a baby. We will find ourselves in situations where we look around ourselves and say, “This is pure, random, senseless suffering; no possible good could ever come out of this.” And at least from a human perspective, we’d be right.
But when God saves us, he invites us to look up. He gives us a new perspective—one that doesn’t see the world through the lenses of what is ordinarily possible, but through what God has promised to do with the world he has created, and the people he has made his own.
I know for a fact that a lot of you are hurting today. I know that a lot of you find yourselves in situations where you’re looking at the facts, and the facts in front of you are telling you that nothing good can come of this.
But listen—you know who your God is, and nothing is too difficult for him. NOTHING. Not even making you more like Christ through the incomprehensible, awful situation in which you find yourself. So he’s calling you to look at your situation, not through the lenses of the facts, but through the lenses of his infinite power and wisdom.
Conclusion
So a lot of times we’ll look at a text and study it and ask, “Okay—so what do I do?” That’s a good reflex. God’s Word always requires an active response from us. Always.
But sometimes, that active response isn’t to do anything—but rather, simply to see, and believe. And that’s the case here.
Not one single promise of the Bible is meant to simply bring us happiness. People will read texts like Jeremiah 29.11, when God says,
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
And they’ll say, “Awesome!” Because they have a picture in their minds of what they want their futures to look like, where they want to go in their lives, what they want to do for a living, what kind of spouse they want, how many kids they want, where they want to live and what kind of car they want to drive.
And there is not a single promise in the Bible that is meant to reassure us about those aspects of our future. Not because they’re not good and important things, but because the real goal God had in mind when he created the world is so much greater than those things.
God absolutely wants us to be happy, but the happiness for which he created us is a very specific happiness, with a very specific focal point. Every promise in the Bible has its sights set on Jesus Christ. He is the focal point of God’s plan, and he is the source of the happiness God created us for.
And we know this because in Christ, God either fulfilled his promises directly, or took the first step in their fulfillment. Through Christ’s life, God fulfilled all righteousness for his people—he lived the life we never could have lived, for us. Through Christ’s death, God tasted death for his people, so we wouldn’t have to. Through Christ’s resurrection, we are raised to new life, and brought into the people whom God has created for himself.
So this text calls to see the world through that lens; in this text, God calls us to see, and believe, that in Christ, we are a new people. HIS people. We no longer belong to ourselves, but to a people—our salvation isn’t just individual, but collective.
This text calls to see, and believe, that in Christ, we are waiting for a land—our home. When we come to Christ, we are brought into a promise that is thousands of years old, that one day we will live for him and reign with him in the entire world.
This text calls us to see the world through our new perspective—the new perspective of what God can do, and what he has done in Christ. We no longer see the world through the finite lenses of what is humanly and naturally possible, but through the lens of the impossible, because God has done the impossible, and he will continue do the impossible, to bring us to him.
