Child of Faith
We were unable to video record this Sunday’s sermon. We apologize.
Text: Genesis 21:1-20
Pastor Phil Hughes, American Fork Presbyterian Church, Utah
February 2, 2025
God made a promise to Abraham that he and his wife, Sarah, will have children of their own, and that nations will come from them. This promise is made in the face of all odds. They are childless and old. It shouldn’t and can’t happen. Abraham and Sarah both laugh about it. Them having a child? That’s a good one, God. A real knee-slapper.
In fact, in Genesis 18 we hear the story of three men visiting Abraham. One of them says that in a year he will return and Sarah will have a son. Sarah is in a nearby tent, hears this, and starts laughing. This is what we read,
Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”
Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, “I did not laugh.”
But he said, “Yes, you did laugh.”
Yes, Abraham and Sarah have a good laugh. But God always has the last laugh.
I remember being a young seminary student saying that one place I would never go to be a pastor was Utah.
Abraham and Sarah have a baby. There are a couple of things to note about this birth. First, it is a humorous event. The child is named Isaac, which in Hebrew means, “he laughs”. Sarah claims the laughter of it all by saying that everyone who hears about this birth will laugh with her. It’s laughable. It’s like the type of thing we would see in the National Enquirer or Globe magazine (are those still around or is all the wildness on social media now?) while standing in the check out line: “100-year old man and 90-year old woman have baby”. You just laugh at it.
Second, it is a divine event. It was a “God-thing”. The Lord was gracious to Sarah. The Hebrew word that the NIV translates “gracious” means “to attend to”, “to care for”, or to “come to someone’s aid”.
Joseph uses the word when he tells his brothers that the Lord will come to their aid and take them to the land promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Jeremiah, the prophet, uses this word when he prays for the Lord to care for him. The word is also used in Jeremiah for God’s coming to restore the exiles from Babylonian captivity. In Psalms it is used for God’s care and attentiveness.
The Lord visits Sarah. He comes to her aid and cares for her, resulting in her having a child. He brings her from barrenness to fruitfulness.
And the reason he comes to her is he said he would. Sarah’s pregnancy and Isaac’s birth are a result of the word of the Lord. Twice the promise of the Lord is emphasized.
It is not Abraham and Sarah who get credit for this birth. It is the Lord. Literally in Hebrew it is “the Lord did for Sarah as he had spoken”.
Centuries later, the writer of Hebrews will say, “By faith Abraham, even though he was past age – and Sarah herself was barren – was enabled to become a father because Abraham considered him faithful who had made the promise.” Heb. 11:11-12
God is the God who speaks and it happens. God speaks into existence what is not. The word of the Lord accomplishes what it is set out to do. Even for senior citizens on medicare checking into the maternity ward.
The journey of faith requires knowing and having faith in the word of the Lord. The journey of faith takes believing his promises that he will always be with us, that loves and forgives us, and that all things work together for good in our lives when we love him.
After all the promises that God has brought to Abraham, after coming again and again to reassure Abraham that he would indeed have a son, after all the drama and conflict and tension that happens in the working out of this birth, wouldn’t we expect Isaac’s birth to get a lot of print in the Bible? This is the child of the promise!
Yet, the birth of Isaac and the fulfillment of this promise get very little attention. A few brief verses. It takes nine chapters and about 25 years to get to this place. And we get very little about it. Why?
Perhaps because it’s more about the journey than the end. Perhaps it is more about what God was doing in Abraham and Sarah as they hoped, wondered, doubted, believed and wrestled with the promise.
Isaac was easy – for God. Maybe the real story was what God was doing in Abraham and Sarah. They needed to learn about God, know him, discover what it meant to be in relationship with him and walk by faith, so that a people of faith could be born from them.
God makes Abraham and Sarah wait. Waiting builds or breaks faith. God asks Abraham and Sarah to trust. God puts Abraham and Sarah on his time. Waiting and trust is a constant theme for anyone trying to follow God.
While the things we wait for are important, perhaps more important is the work God wants to do in us as we wait. We wait for the right relationship, a job or the right job, healing or change in another person or in ourselves, a pregnancy or a child, the next phase in our lives.
God uses all of the experiences leading up to Isaac to build Abraham and Sarah’s faith. Faith believes that God is control, that God has a plan, and that God will bring to fruition what he wants according to his time. Along the way we doubt, wonder, struggle, pray, and sometimes try to force what we think should be happening. It’s the journey, as much as the destination.
Tony Dungy was the coach of the Indianapolis Colts in the National Football League and was the first black man to lead a team to victory in the Super Bowl when the Colts won in 2007. But it was a long road for Dungy to get there. Dungy endured racism. As a player he was on a championship team, then got traded to the worst team in the league. He worked his way up the coaching ladder through various assistant positions. He was fired as the head coach in Tampa Bay and wondered if he would ever coach again. Then, he did not get any interviews for another job. He lost both of his parents in a brief amount of time, and then tragically lost a son to suicide while coaching in Indianapolis.
At the end of 2006, when the Colts won the conference championship to put them in the Super Bowl, it wasn’t the trophy he was holding that he was really thinking about. In his book, Quiet Strength, Tony Dungy said, “For me, it wasn’t even the Super Bowl itself that was uppermost in my mind. It was the thought of the journey and the way we had persevered through it all. Not giving up. Staying the course.”
He said the focus in his life had always been living his life in a way he thought was right, and walking where he felt the Lord was guiding him. And while he wanted to reach the goal of football’s ultimate game, he knew the Lord did not call him to be successful in the world’s eyes. No, the Lord had called him to be faithful.
The actual winning of the championship eventually comes down to one game. There are a few hours of celebration, you get a t-shirt and hat, a parade, a ring, and then it’s over. But it is the getting there that Tony Dungy appreciated.
I’m not suggesting the birth of Isaac was like winning the Super Bowl. And none of us are called to something as grand as what Abraham and Sarah were called to. But it’s what God does in us in the waiting, trusting, the hoping, and the not-knowing that I want to draw attention to.
What is your journey of faith? What is God doing in you as you are going there?
Are you paying attention?
What is he tearing down, and then what is he building?
What he is putting to death? What is he bringing to life?
What is he growing in you, in me, in us?
Sometimes I tell parents struggling with their children that maybe the point in this struggle isn’t what God is doing with your child, though it looks like that is the issue. Maybe it is all about what God wants to do in you as a parent.
It’s what God was doing in Abraham and Sarah that might have been the real story.
While we might think the birth of Isaac is the end of the story and everyone lives happily ever after, it isn’t. There is this thing that happens.
Remember, there is another son –Ishmael - whom Abraham had through Sarah’s servant, Hagar, when Abraham and Sarah tried to force the situation and have a child in this way.
At a party Abraham throws to celebrate Isaac, Sarah sees Ishmael, is bothered, and tells Abraham to get rid of Hagar and Ishmael. Sarah doesn’t even use their names. She refers to them as “that slave woman and her son.”
This is actually the second time Sarah has driven Hagar away. Sarah is a woman of faith, and God works through her to bring about his plan of salvation for the world. But Sarah can also be jealous, full of hatred, and cold.
One of the amazing things about the Bible and part of what convicts me of its truth is that nothing is cleaned up. The people in God’s story of salvation aren’t without faults or problems. There is brutal violence, lying, conniving and chaos. But amidst all of that, God is there, achieving his purposes through the mess. People are full of disbelief and problems yet God uses them to work his purposes. If you are looking for a faith that is pure, clean, and detached from real life Jesus is not for you.
Sarah’s demand to get rid of Hagar and Ishmael stresses out Abraham. After all, Ishmael is his son, too. God tells Abraham not to get stressed, that he will take care of his son. And God does. After Hagar and Ishmael are sent into the desert, and the water runs out, and Hagar abandons her son, not able to bear to see him die, God comes to Hagar, says he has heard the crying of the boy and provides water for them. The boy grows up and they make a life for themselves.
God cared about Hagar and Ishmael, too. Ishmael wasn’t the child of the promise but that didn’t mean God didn’t care about him. What we see in this story of the birth of Isaac is that God works in the mess - in the mess of rivalry, jealousy, and pain. God is not limited by our imperfections and the chaos of this world. It isn’t as if God is too pure and holy to move in this dirty and decaying world. God’s plans are not stopped by the drama, conflict and muck. He is working.
Don’t we see that at the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ? God took something that was ugly, wretched, and destructive, and transformed it into the place of his victory and glory? The hopelessness of death was overcome by the hope of resurrection.
You’ve made some mistakes? You’ve experienced some brokenness? You haven’t been a saint? Problems in your family and your circles? Not every situation has to be all cleaned up for God to move.
I always need to be reminded of this because I like everything nice, clean and tidy. I like people to be together. I like my life, my family, my church and my relationships smooth and everyone looking just like Jesus. And then when there is a problem or conflict, “Oh, oh, we better get it all together so God can work.”
It’s not that God wants the problems, sins and foolishness of his people. It’s just that those things are part of a world gone bad on rebellion, but it is not going to keep the Lord from working his purposes in this world. So if your life situation, or your family, or job seem like a mess, it isn’t enough to keep God out. That’s a reminder for my faith, and maybe you can find it useful, too.
The prophet Isaiah preached to Israel saying,
“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness and who seek the Lord: Look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry from which you were hewn; look to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah, who gave you birth. When I called him he was but one, and I blessed him and made him many.”
When Isaiah preached this, it was to the people of Israel when they had lost their home and were in exile. They had lost so much. Isaiah’s message was “Look to Abraham and Sarah. Remember what God did with them. It looked hopeless for them. But Isaac was born. With God it is never hopeless.” The exiles were to remember that the Lord brings blessing in the most unlikely circumstances.
So if you are walking by faith, maybe a little weary on the journey, needing some inspiration, or wondering if whatever it is God has for you is ever going to come, look to Abraham and Sarah. They are the boulder of faith for all who walk by faith. We are chips off the old block.
They waited, trusted, and wondered. But Isaac finally came.
As we sing this hymn “Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah” that leads us to Communion, let’s sing it as a prayer of faith that God is with us and leading us. Whatever our walk of faith is right now, we are in the hands of the Lord.