Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
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, 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, and 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 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 giveyou a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.”
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. I grew up in a very musical family. And so songs and musical pieces come easily to my head. And every once in a while I read a bible passage and a song just leaps into my brain. Usually, it's preschool songs because I lead a preschool chapel once a week. And I get to sing a lot of these like short, quippy catchy songs. Their favorite is the hippo song. I don't know if you know Well, probably not because it's, it's just for preschoolers. It goes. In the beginning God made the seas and the forest filled with trees. He built the mountains up so high. On the top, he placed the sky gods finger prints are everywhere, just to show how much he cares. In the middle. He had loads of fun, made a hippo that weighed a ton. And this is the best part because it's a hippo, they go here, Pippo potamus. Here, pepper a God made all of us, and it is the cutest thing you have ever seen. But that's not the song for today. That's just a fun excuse to sing the hippo song. The song for today is father Abraham. Have you heard this song before? catchy little kids song. It goes, father, Abraham had many sons, many sons had father Abraham, I am one of them. And so where are you? So let's praise the Lord for that one. And then of course, you sing it again. And every time you sing it, you have to you move a different part of your body. So you go right arm and I have to do this arms, because the left arm because I'm facing the kids, and they wouldn't figure it out. You go right arm, left arm, right foot and you do the whole thing. It's kind of a silly kid song. And by the end, they're laughing so much they don't get to sing. But it is deeper than many of us give it credit. Father Abraham had many sons, many sons had father Abraham, I am one of them. And so are you. So let's all praise the Lord. And I think this song fits really well with what our reading from Genesis is trying to get across to us. God is making a covenant with Abraham. The promise is something that fits with this song. And it helps us to understand what is going on. So what I'd like to do is use the song as an outline for our sermon to see what it teaches us about father Abraham. So let's start. Father Abraham had many sons, many sons had father Abraham, I am one of them. And so were you. So let's all praise the Lord. So the first words of this are father Abraham. In this reading, Abram becomes Abraham, right, God changes His name from one name to the other exalted father to a multitude of nations. But it's still kind of a weird name. Because father, Abraham, still did not have the son of the promise. When God came to him the first time and said I will make you into great nation. It was 24 years ago. Can you imagine waiting? Half of my lifetime for a promise to come through actually more than half just in case you're wondering. 24 years between when God said I will give you a son, and now and it still has not happened. Abraham was 99 and his wife Sarah was 90. Can you imagine having a baby at 90
God comes down and repeats the same promise that he has been repeating for the last 24 years. He calls him, Abraham, father of a multitude. Now we know that it happens. The very next chapter begins the fulfillment of this promise that Abraham is going to have a child, we see the three visitors come to Abraham and Sarah, and they make this promise. And then Sarah gets pregnant. And they have a baby. And they name him, Isaac, and God is calling him Abraham. And we call him, father. Because God does amazing things, impossible things. In this moment, this covenant that he makes with Abraham, a promise based only on God's grace and His will. And his promise to Abraham, means that the impossible will happen. When we see something like this, something impossible, like this happened throughout Scripture. God makes Sarah pregnant. He gives a baby to Hannah, who was called barren. And we see it happen over and over again in the New Testament to Elizabeth, who was also well beyond her childbearing years, and even greater miracle in the Virgin Mary has a baby named Jesus. And the New Testament tells us that God can raise up children for Abraham from even the stones. God can do the impossible, no matter what they thought, he even could raise a man from the dead. Because nothing is impossible for God. And we call Abraham father, because we have a sure and certain promise from the Father in heaven, that he can do the impossible for you. That on the last day, when his son Jesus Christ returns, He will call you from the grave. Father, Abraham. The next line is many sons. Father, Abraham had many sons. Now, in the actual history of the Bible, father, Abraham did have many actual biological children. The first one was Ishmael. And what we don't read in Genesis chapter 17, is coming right after this. God gives him the promise. And Abraham's like, well, can we just use Ishmael? I mean, he's, he's alive and pretty good. But God says, No, you're gonna get the son of my promise. Isaac. Later on. After Sarah dies, Abraham gets married again. And he has 123456 more sons. Their names are Zim, Ron, Jacque Shan meet on Midian ich, Bach and shuwa. There will be a test after the sermon.
But these aren't the sons the song is describing. The sons come through Isaac. Isaac is the son of the promise, not Ishmael. That was a something that Abraham tried to take into his own hands. But Isaac, the one who would be born of 90 year old Sarah, God says, and I will establish my covenant between you and your offspring after you throughout the generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you, and to your offspring after you do. This might as well be the summary of the entire story of the Old Testament, right? God says, I will be God to you and your offspring forever. And what we see is a God who is faithful to a people that grows out of this son, Isaac, overall history. He is faithful to them, even when they turn away when he brings them out of Egypt and they complain in the wilderness when they get to the promised land, and they say Are the other people in there kind of scary and let's not go in when they get into the promised land and they worship false gods over and over when the kings come up and they lead them astray. God is constantly faithful to them over and over and over. Again, because most faithful, when He sends His Son Jesus Christ, another son born in miraculous ways, a child of Abraham, throughout all the generations, who becomes this perfect son, who is righteous and blameless in God's sight, and fulfills God's perfect promise for all of history. The covenant with Abraham is now fulfilled, and that God would be a god to his people through His Son, Jesus Christ, and the whole world would be blessed, including you and me. And this covenant that we see, given to Abraham, always points to that savior, Jesus Christ. So that the sons of Abraham could be gathered together in Christ, and made God's people. Father Abraham had many sons, many sons had father Abraham, I am one of them. And so are you. This is kind of the craziest part of the song, isn't it? I am a child of Abraham, and so are you. And I have to tell you, I have as far as I can tell no Jarrett, genetic relationship with Abraham. My people come from a different part of the world. But that's not that's actually the whole point. Right? Being a child of Abraham does not mean being biologically related to the man. The covenant with Abraham was that he would be a father of a multitude, father of the people. And through Christ, we realized that all people in Jesus Christ, are brought into that promise, and made children of Abraham. This is not a new thing in the New Testament either has, it always been this way, all the way back throughout the history of God's people, foreigners were brought into the family of God by faith, and by trusting in the promises given to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and all the rest. The best examples come from the line of Jesus's family Rahab the prostitute in Jericho is one of the people that they were supposed to wipe out and kill. When the spies come to the city of Jericho, and she saves them, and she expresses her faith in the God of Abraham. And she becomes a part of God's people as part of the family line of Jesus. Something similar is true for Ruth, Ruth, the mother of Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of King David, Ruth is, is married into the family of Naomi. And when all of the husbands die off, she is brought into the family of God by traveling with her mother in law back to Bethlehem, and being faithful to her and to her God. God's people have always been made up of foreigners. The children of Abraham have always gathered together brothers and sisters from a different family line. And it goes all the way down through history, all the way down to you. You are a child of Abraham. You are a son of the promise and air along with Isaac, of eternal life, because you have been brought into Jesus Christ by your baptism. Because his baptism where you become adopted into this family, joined together with with all of the people of God as children of Abraham, to inherit all of the amazing promises that God gave him. So that just as Christ is raised from the dead, we too will rise on the last day Which means we are all one great big family, the family of God, in every church and every sanctuary all over the world, we are one, people are bound together by this covenant that God gave Abraham, all the way back in the book of Genesis. Father Abraham had many sons, many sons had father Abraham, I am one of them, and so are you. So let's all praise the Lord, right? How could we do anything but praise God for this amazing gift of the covenant promise given to Abraham being given to you, through Jesus Christ, you're saved. We are given life, we are gathered together in God's family. So let's all praise the Lord. How do we do that? Of course, we can sing our songs of praise. And we can shout to the Lord, maybe raise our hands and say, God, you're awesome. But those aren't the praises that God really desires. Those are actually for us to teach us about who he is, and praises God desires, the works of love, the family does for one another, right? If we are truly children of Abraham bound together in Christ, the love of God works through us towards each other. We welcome each other. We work for each others, we love one another. We forgive one another, care for each other. And welcome each other into this family. And that's what praising God means. As we praise the Lord for His gifts. It means loving the people who are near us, our fellow members of this body of Christ, fellow children of Abraham, the father, Abraham had many sons, many sons had father Abraham, I am one of them, and so are you. So let's all praise the Lord. In Jesus name, Amen.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai