Advent 4: New Names And A New Son
Genesis 17:15-21
“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; kings of peoples 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 is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety 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 will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father twelve 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.”
Genesis 17:15-21
When Our Solution… Isn’t
Sometimes, we get tired of waiting for God to work and decide to take matters into our own hands, thinking something like, “Maybe God is going to fulfill his promise through my creative problem-solving.” But, as is often the case, this type of solution does not solve anything. That is exactly what we see happening with Abraham and Sarah. God promised Abraham he would give him a son, but this didn’t seem to be happening, and his wife, Sarah, kept getting older and older. This is what happened in chapter sixteen.
We can only imagine the disappointment, frustration, or anger Sarah may have been experiencing. God promised to give her husband an heir, and she just wasn’t getting pregnant. What was she to do? In her case, she took matters into her own hands and told Abraham to have a baby with her servant, Hagar.
But this didn’t fix it. Sure, God gave Hagar a baby, but that wasn’t what God had in mind. And really, how could it be? Abraham had a wife, and God promised him a child. Surely, God meant the child to come from Sarah.
Narrowing and Expanding
When we get to chapter seventeen, God renews the covenant he made with Abraham. First, he gives him a new name. His old name, Abram, meant “exalted father.”
Let’s pause for a minute and recognize the irony here. Up to this point, Abram had lived ninety-nine years with a name that means “father” and did not have any children (imagine how much he must have been made fun of). Then, to make it worse, God changed his name to something even more ironic and renamed him Abraham which means, “father of a multitude.”
God promised him a son, and he had gotten one, but not the way God wanted. God then deals with Abraham so graciously and narrows his promise to let him know that the son that will carry on his line will be from his wife, Sarah. This is where God brings Sarah into the covenant as well. To make this clear, God changes her name too. Before this time, she was called Sarai, but God changes her name to Sarah. The reason for this is a little unclear since they are just different forms of the same word, but most people think that the distinction has to do with the fact that she will be a princess to a nation and not just to Abraham. So, we can see the covenant narrowing to Isaac but expanding to include Sarah.
However, this is not the only expansion we see in this passage. God tells Abraham that the covenant he is making with Isaac will be an “everlasting covenant.” This should get us thinking bigger than lands and families to something way bigger. Of course, Abraham wouldn’t know this at the time, but as we look back, we can see that God is not just planning for something here on Earth but on a covenant that will last forever.
Reflection
How does this affect the way we look forward to the birth of Jesus? We need to pause and reflect on the fact that God is good and can be trusted. We can have confidence that God will always keep his promises even when they look impossible. Our God is a God who does the impossible. When I talk to my kids about miracles, we talk about how a miracle is “something only God can do.” Not only is he the only one capable of working miracles, but it is also the way he seems to work best. This way, we can know for sure it was God who did it.
That is exactly what we see here. Abraham was ninety-nine years old, and his wife was ninety. They tried their whole lives to have children but couldn’t do it. Having kids for them was going to be impossible. But when God makes a promise, even to accomplish the impossible, he will fulfill it. And just like God was able to give a baby to an old, married woman like Sarah, he is the only one who can give a baby to a young, unmarried woman like Mary.
We need to apply this to our lives as well. Looking around us today, it might seem like God isn’t in control. It might seem like bad stuff is all around us, and nothing good could come from it. But we need not let that keep us from trusting God to work the impossible.
Let’s Talk About It:
- Have you ever felt like you knew better than God and tried to take matters into your own hands instead of trusting him?
- Have you ever been overwhelmed by how bad things look in the world around us, and it causes you to doubt the goodness of God?
- Take a few minutes and look at how God worked in Abraham’s life and how he was working everything out to bring us salvation. What does that mean for us in our lives today?
Free Advent Bible Study
Let’s stand back and marvel at God’s grace and sovereignty, and focus on God this Christmas. May we join with the angels singing, “Glory to God in the highest” (Luke 2:14).
Join this 25-day Advent journey, The Things Concerning Himself, as we worship Christ and celebrate his coming.
Zach Mabry is the worship pastor and one of the main teachers at Snowbird. He also directs our year-round Snowbird Institute program. He has a Master of Divinity from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and serves as an adjunct professor for Liberty University. Zach is a teaching pastor at Red Oak Church, a local church in the Andrews area.