A Time to Bless, Part Two

Genesis 18:10-14
P. G. Mathew | Sunday, January 30, 2000
Copyright © 2000, P. G. Mathew

Then the LORD said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.”

Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. Abraham and Sarah were already old and well advanced in years, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?”

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.”

Genesis 18:10-14

Promise of Divine Blessing

God desires to bless his people when they repent and obey him. We learned this in our previous study of Haggai, where we read about the exiles who returned to Jerusalem from Babylon during the time of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah. When these people first came back, they started rebuilding the temple according to the command of the Lord, but soon they became discouraged and stopped working on the temple for sixteen years. During that time they directed their energies to building luxurious paneled houses for themselves, all the while saying it was not yet time to resume building the Lord’s house.

This disobedience to a divine command so displeased God that he put a divine chastisement on his people to get their attention. God sent drought, blight, mildew and hail so that their crops failed to produce what they had expected, and what they did harvest was spoiled. Additionally, during the time his people were walking in disobedience, God did not accept their worship at the unfinished temple. All of these factors resulted in God’s people becoming miserable and depressed, a condition they had brought upon themselves by their sin.

At the end of sixteen years, God raised up two prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, to exhort the people to begin building again. The people responded to the word of the Lord, and after so many years of neglect, the exiles from Babylon resumed their work on the temple of the Lord on the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, which was December 18, 520 B.C.

As the people began to build, God noticed their work and was pleased. Because his people had repented, believed, and were obeying him again, God made a divine promise to them, which we find recorded in Haggai 2:19: “From this day on I will bless you.”

This blessing God was promising to his people was not only for spiritual blessings but also for tangible and historically verifiable blessings. God was promising, among other things, an abundant harvest in 519 B.C., 518 B.C., and all future years in which his people continued to obey him. This principle that obedience yields tangible blessing is stated by Jesus Christ himself in Matthew 6:33, where he said, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

The sins of the people had been their downfall, but through Haggai and Zechariah God was telling his people that if they repented and began to do his will, they would be blessed. No longer would they be anxious and afraid, miserable and depressed. When God is pleased with us, his benediction will rest upon us. This is a divine guarantee, a divine law. And so, when the people came to worship in the temple, the priest would bless them, saying, “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.” God-pleasing worship is the product of obedience, and when the Lord is pleased with our worship, he blesses us.

God has a plan to bless, prosper, save, heal, and restore us, just as he did for the exiles of Haggai’s time. In this study we want to examine that plan as illustrated in Genesis 18, especially in verses 10 through 14.

God’s Plan to Bless Abraham and Sarah

The first thing we want to look at is God’s plan to bless Abraham and Sarah, which is given in the promises God made to Abraham. In Genesis 12:2-3 God told Abraham, “I will bless you,” and in Genesis 17:16 he said, “I will bless Sarah.” It is always God’s plan to bless his people, and this is true of us as well as of Abraham and Sarah. If you belong to God, it is God’s plan to bless you.

In Genesis 12 we read that God commanded Abraham to leave his country, his people, and his kindred, and go to a country that God would show him. Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees and went to Haran. Later, he left Haran and went to Canaan, where he settled.

At this point in time, Abraham was seventy-five years old. He had no land or children, but in Genesis 13:15-16 God appeared to Abraham and promised to give him both land and children. Many years passed, during which time Abraham did not receive either land or children. In fact, he made a servant his heir. But in Genesis 15:4-5 God appeared again to Abraham and promised that not only would he have many children, but that a son would come from his own body to be his heir.

In Genesis 17, when Abraham was ninety-nine years of age, the Lord appeared to him again and promised to give him a son, Isaac, to be his heir. By this time, Abraham had fathered a son, Ishmael, by his wife’s slave Hagar and thought that Ishmael would be his heir. But that was not God’s plan, so God told Abraham, “Your wife Sarah will bear you this son Isaac,” and then he gave him additional information: “It will happen by this time next year.”

When Abraham heard this word from God, I am sure that he ran, even though he was an old man, to tell his wife the good news. He addressed her as Sarah, not Sarai, using the new name God had given her. Abraham told Sarah of the divine plan to bless them with a son, Isaac, by that time next summer.

This plan of God blessed not only Abraham and Sarah, but all of God’s people throughout history, because from Isaac’s seed came our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Sarah’s Sin of Unbelief

God has a plan to bless us, but we have a problem. So the second point we want to examine in this study is our problem, which is sin. God will not bless his people until their sin problem is taken care of.

What was Sarah’s response to the amazing good news that the preacher–in this case, her husband–brought to her from God Almighty? She refused to believe it. Sarah’s reaction was just like the reaction of many people today who refuse to believe the gospel. Sarah reacted in unbelief to the message Abraham brought her.

Now, we realize that, humanly speaking, Sarah had all the reasons in the world not to believe this promise of God. But God wanted her to exercise faith in him, not to remain in her unbelief. This is true of us as well. God wants to bless his people, but he will not bless anyone who does not exercise faith in him. As we read in Hebrews 11:6, “without faith it is impossible to please God,” and without faith it is impossible to receive blessings from God. Unless we lift the arm of faith up to God, we shall receive nothing from him.

Sarah refused to believe God’s promise given to her through Abraham, so in Genesis 18 we read that God himself came to personally minister to Sarah. In Genesis 18:1-2 we read, “The Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground.”

I believe this was a Christophany–an appearance of the second Person in the Old Testament in human form. The Lord was accompanied by two angels who also appeared in human form. These heavenly visitors received the hospitality of their gracious host, Abraham, eating and drinking while he waited on them.

At the conclusion of the meal, the Lord addressed the issue of Sarah’s unbelief. This is an illustration of the doctrine of the irresistible grace of God, and this is something we experience also. As he did with Sarah, God deals with our unbelief and causes us to believe when it is his intent to bless us. As sinners, we are full of unbelief; however, our unbelief cannot stand in the way of God’s eternal purpose to bless us. God himself graciously breaks down our castle of unbelief and enables us to believe, and when this happens, we join with Thomas, who said, “Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief,” and we receive the blessing of God.

Sarah’s Reasons for Unbelief

Before we see how God dealt with Sarah’s unbelief, let us consider Sarah’s reasons for not believing God’s promise of a son. You see, Sarah was a very reasonable person, and we are very reasonable also. In fact, it is because they are very reasonable that many people do not want to believe in the gospel. Let us, then, examine Sarah’s reasons for her lack of faith in God’s promises and see what God says about them.

“I am barren.” The first reason Sarah gave for not believing God’s promise was that she had been infertile all of her life. We read about this in Genesis 11:30. How can a barren woman bear a son?
“I am past the age of conception, even if I had been able to conceive.”Sarah’s second reason is found in Genesis 18:11. Sarah knew she had passed the age of childbearing long before, even if she had been able to bear children.
“I am an old woman of ninety years.” Not only was Sarah past the age of childbearing, but she was ninety years old. Abraham mentioned this in Genesis 17:17.
“My whole life was a disappointment. My hopes have been aroused again and again, only to be dashed and brought down. Why should I raise my hopes now?” Sarah didn’t want to take the chance of trusting God and having her hopes destroyed if God failed to keep his word.
“I am belote.” Belote is a colorful word used by Sarah in Genesis 18:12 to describe her physical condition. It means something that is worn-out, withered, and ready to fall apart as an old, used, moth-eaten garment is. This is how Sarah described her body.
“I have gotten used to having no children of my own. I have gotten used to living with this disgrace. It’s okay. I know how to handle it.” Sarah had learned to live with her disappointment.
“Abraham is ninety-nine years old and his body is as good as dead. He is impotent; thus, it is biologically impossible for him to father a child.”
“After I proved to be barren, Abraham and I came up with a plan of our own to have children according to the custom of our country and region. Years ago, when Abraham was eighty-five years old, he fathered a son, Ishmael–a good-looking, healthy boy–through my Egyptian maid Hagar, according to my counsel. It is true that this was not our ideal way to have children, but we decided to settle for second best.”
“We have never heard of any other couple in whom the aging process was reversed, barrenness was cured, and impotence dealt with so that a child could be conceived. How, then, could this happen to us?”
“To tell you the truth, as a couple, we have not engaged in sex for a quarter of a century.”
“In fact, for many years, we have been living in separate tents–his and hers.”

These were Sarah’s reasons to justify her unbelief in God’s promise. The only problem was that Sarah was basing them on her understanding of the world and herself. She needed to lift up her head to the heavenlies and look to God, who is El-Shaddai, the Lord Almighty, for whom nothing is impossible.

Isn’t this the problem of many people in this world today? They believe in a closed system of reality and have no place for God and his supernatural works. They are like the fool who said in his heart, “There is no God.” They are reasonable people, but such reasonableness can prevent them from experiencing God’s blessing.

Like Sarah, we can let our reasonableness lead us into unbelief, but God will minister to us as he ministered to Sarah.

The Lord’s Effectual Ministry to Sarah

The third thing, then, we need to look at is the Lord’s effectual ministry to this woman of unbelief. As God ministered to Sarah, we see a demonstration of his omniscience and omnipotence.

In Genesis 18:9 the visitors asked Abraham, “Where is your wife Sarah?” That was an amazing question, since these three travelers had just met Abraham, and Abraham had just begun to call Sarah by that name a month or so earlier after God had spoken to him. This tells us that the Lord we worship is omniscient; he knows our names.

Not only does God know our names, but he knows our problems also. In verse 10 we read, “Then the Lord said, ‘I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.'” I am sure Abraham had not told these visitors anything about their inability to bear children, but God knew that also.

Not only that, the Lord knew something else. In verse 12 we read, “So Sarah laughed to herself.” Sarah was in the tent, behind the Lord, so he did not see her listening. When the Lord said Sarah would bear a son, Sarah began to laugh to herself in unbelief. But the omniscient Lord saw it all, and in verse 13 he asked, “Why did Sarah laugh?”

Not only that, the Lord could also read Sarah’s thoughts. Again, in verse 13 we read, “The Lord said to Abraham, ‘Why did Sarah laugh and say, “Will I really have a child, now that I am old?”‘” God knows our thoughts.

In fact, God knows everything–our sin of unbelief, our lying, our cover-ups, our cheating, our secret sin. We stand before him stripped naked–stripped of all our defenses, excuses, and reasons. We read of this in Psalm 139, verses 1-4, “O Lord, you have searched me and know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely, O Lord,” and in verse 23, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me, and know my anxious thoughts.”

Is Anything Too Hard for God?

Not only is God omniscient, he is also omnipotent. God responded to Sarah’s unbelief by asking, “Is anything too hard [or, in some translations, too wonderful] for the Lord?” The idea here is, “Is anything too difficult for God?” The Hebrew word carries the sense of the judges of a lower court not being able to deal with an issue–it is too difficult–so they push it up to a higher court. But nothing is too wonderful for God. God was not surprised or stymied by Sarah’s problem. He is omnipotent.

When Sarah thought of her problem, she never figured the almighty power of God into the equation. But nothing is impossible for God.

We see this question, “Is there anything too hard for the Lord?” repeated throughout the Scriptures, particularly in Jeremiah 32:17, 27; Zechariah 8:6; and Luke 1:37. This question is an important gem of truth set in the context of human unbelief. And what is the answer? No. In Isaiah 9:6 we read that his name is Wonderful Counselor, but there is nothing wonderful or surprising to him. Oh, that we might put our problems before God and confess: “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”!

In Genesis 17:1 we read, “When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, ‘I am the Lord Almighty.'” Our God is El-Shaddai, the omnipotent Lord, the Creator of all ex nihilo. This almighty God raised Jesus from the dead, saves the worst of sinners, and sends all his enemies to hell. By the manifestation of his power he made his Son the Lord, Savior, and Judge of all, and we are told he is going to create a new heaven and a new earth.

The omnipotent, omniscient Lord is in the midst of us. He sees all our excuses, all our reasons for unbelief, and all the foolishness of our hearts. But, as Paul tells us in Ephesians, he also works on our behalf, and the power of our God is incomparable for us who believe. As he did for Sarah, our God will work on our behalf to bring all his plans to fruition.

God’s Gracious Dealings with Sarah

Not only is the Lord omniscient and omnipotent, but he is also holy. He saw Sarah laugh when she heard God’s promise, and knew that she did not believe because she had gotten used to her own reasoning. He knew that Sarah was refusing to look to the heavenlies, refusing to believe in the gospel brought to her by her husband, and refusing to acknowledge that nothing is too hard for the almighty Lord. He knew Sarah was steeped in unbelief, but such unbelief is one sin God will not put up with. Unbelief strikes at the very heart of the glory of God. So God, who is holy and will not tolerate sin, began to deal with Sarah.

One sin leads to another. Not only did Sarah refuse to believe God, but then she lied. However, she could not receive any blessing until she was convicted of her sin by the Lord Almighty. Remember how Jesus went to Samaria to minister to a Samaritan woman? Like Sarah, she could not receive his ministry until she was convicted of her sins. The Samaritan woman wanted the living water Jesus offered her, so Jesus said, “Fine, go and call your husband.” “I have no husband,” the woman said. “That’s true,” Jesus replied. “You have had five husbands, but the one you are living with now is not your husband.” Did the Samaritan woman disagree with Jesus’ analysis of her situation? No, and she received the great blessing of salvation from him.

This is exactly what God was doing with Sarah. In Genesis 18:15 we read, “Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, ‘I did not laugh.'” Sarah had expressed unbelief to her husband when he brought her the gospel, and now she was expressing unbelief to God himself and lying about it. But God did not leave Sarah in her sin. He challenged her, saying, “Yes, you did laugh.”

May God so destroy all our lies and defenses also! May he expose us that we may agree with him and confess, “I lied. I didn’t believe. O God, forgive my sin and have mercy upon me.” When this happens, we will be blessed.

All of Grace

Salvation is all of grace. When we look at Abram and his wife, what kind of people were they? Sinners, without strength and without hope. They had done nothing to merit anything from God, yet God in his mercy and grace wanted to bless them.

Sarah refused to believe the gospel brought to her by Abraham, but God convicted her of her sin and she agreed with him. Then the Lord himself reiterated the gospel for Sarah, so that four times in chapters 17 and 18 we find the same words: “Next year at this time you will have a son.”

Praise God that he repeatedly speaks the gospel to us! We are dull-headed, arrogant, unbelieving people, but God does not give up on us. He comes to us again and again, reiterating his promise to bless us. That is why we say salvation is all of grace.

God’s gracious dealings with Sarah were effectual and she repented and believed. This demonstrated God’s irresistible grace to Sarah and it is an example of what happens to us as well. If God chooses us from the foundation of the world, he will break down our unbelief and save us.

In Hebrews 11:11 we find evidence of the efficacy of God’s ministry to Sarah. Now, in the New International Version we read, “By faith Abraham, even though he was past age–and Sarah herself was barren–was enabled to become a father. . . .” but in other translations, including the King James Version, the American Standard Version, the New American Standard Version, and the Jerusalem Bible, we read, “By faith even Sarah herself received ability to conceive.”

“By faith,” means the faith of Sarah. Sarah repented of her unbelief and began to believe that God would do what he had promised. So we read, “By faith even Sarah herself received ability to conceive even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered him faithful who had promised.”

God’s Blessing Comes

The fourth point we want to examine is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah. If God intends to bless us, he will carry that intention out. In Genesis 12:2 God told Abram, “I will bless you,” and in Genesis 17:16 God said, “I will bless her,” meaning Sarah, but including Abraham as well. If you are married, I hope you will understand that when God says he will bless you, he is speaking to husbands, wives, and children.

If God makes a promise, you can count on it, no matter how long it takes to be fulfilled. Don’t ever get impatient and settle for the second-best, as Abraham and Sarah tried to do in the case of Ishmael. They had leaned onto their own understanding and made things happen rather than waiting for God, and the result was Ishmael. But this passage teaches us that God’s best comes to us in God’s own time. The best plan for Abraham was to father a son through his wife Sarah by the energy of God. Maybe some of you are still waiting for the best to come. If so, I urge you not to settle for the second-best, but to wait for God.

What happened as a result of the repentance and faith of Abraham and Sarah? God’s blessing began manifesting. As we read in Haggai 2:19, when the people repented, God said, “From this day forward I will bless you,” and they experienced spiritual and tangible blessings. In the same way, Abraham and Sarah both began to feel God’s power working in their lives. There was rejuvenation, repair, healing, and restoration.

Do we have any evidence of the tangible nature of this rejuvenation process? Yes. In Genesis 20 we read that Abraham and Sarah left Canaan for a time and went to a place called Gerar. In those days, a king could take any unmarried woman into his harem, if he wished. Gerar was ruled by a king named Abimelech at this time, and his people were always noticing women who could be brought before the king. When they saw Sarah, they noticed her immediately and brought her before Abimelech.

Why do you think people would notice a ninety-year-old woman? Because Sarah was once again a beauty. God had worked in her mind, in her face, in her body–in every part of her–to prepare her to bear Isaac, and it was obvious to all who saw her. As we said before, God’s blessings are historically verifiable.

A Set Time

God set a time for the fulfillment of his promise to Abraham and Sarah, as we read in Genesis 17:21, 18:14; and 21:2. God always has a time set for his blessing.

We need patience and faith to wait for the set time of God’s coming. “Oh,” you may say, “We don’t need God’s help. We don’t want to wait for his solution to our problem.” Let me warn you, if you settle for second best, you will live the rest of your lives in grief and sorrow.

God is never in a hurry. Any delays we encounter are for our benefit, not his. God is always on time, and twenty-five years does not matter to God. God wanted to wait until both Abraham and Sarah were as good as dead to show that salvation is by grace, not by human merit.

The Lord had told Abraham and Sarah, “I will return next year at this time,” and he did. In Genesis 21 in the New International Version we read, “Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah,” but in other versions it says, “Now the Lord visited Sarah, as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised.”

The Lord visits us to be gracious to us–to bless us, in other words. When the Lord first came to them, Abraham and Sarah were probably living in separate tents, not engaging in marital relations and possessing bodies which were as good as dead. But as Abraham and Sarah believed God, they engaged in sexual relations within marriage, and, to their amazement, everything worked. This was God’s blessing, and in Genesis 21 we find the description of another change in Sarah–a change that she had been looking forward to her whole life. In verse 2 we read, “Sarah became pregnant.”

God’s blessing can be historically verified. That is why we can say with the psalmist, “The Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes” (Ps. 118:23).

As Sarah realized what God was doing in her life, her whole countenance changed. I am sure she began to laugh more, but this time it was in faith, not in unbelief, and where she had been miserable and unhappy before, Sarah now began to experience the joy of the Lord.

It is God’s intention that we should laugh, rejoice and be blessed. We may have thought it was his intention to make us miserable, but it is our own unbelief that causes us to be miserable.

We read about such joy and laughter at God’s doings in Psalm 126:1-3: “When the Lord brought back the captives to Zion, we were like men who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’ The Lord has done great things for us and we are filled with joy.” When God blesses his people, they are filled with so much laughter and joy that they may think they are dreaming. But God’s blessing is not a dream.

In Psalm 113:9 we find a description of Sarah’s new condition, “He settles the barren woman in her home as the happy mother of children. Praise the Lord.” Sarah was indeed happy, but that is not the end. You see, Sarah was a believer, and a believer never concludes by simply being happy. There is something else she did: she prayed to the Lord.

In Genesis 21:6 we read, “Sarah said, ‘God has brought me laughter.'” That is what we will do too when God blesses us. Not only will we believe; not only will we experience blessing–spiritual blessing and tangible, historically verifiable blessing; not only will our mouths be filled with laughter; but, finally, we will fall on our knees and say, “God did it.”

Another Promise Fulfilled

The fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham and to Sarah foreshadowed the fulfillment of another promise–the promise of a Savior, who would bring joy and laughter to all who trust in him. After several centuries, in the fullness of time, the virgin Mary conceived and sang with joy, “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:46). And in Luke 2:10 we read that this Savior, Jesus Christ, brought joy to the poor shepherds to whom the angel said, “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people.” There was laughter, joy, and worship at the birth of Jesus Christ.

God Wants to Bless Us

What can we learn from this study? That our God wants to bless us, and he is willing and able to help us in all our problems. He is the Lord almighty and nothing is too hard for him. Today he is saying to us, “The time has come–the time for blessing, the time for joy, the time for laughter.” Our God is able to save even the worst of sinners. He saved murderers like Moses and David, and he will save us too. He will forgive all our sins and bless us.

But he saves only those who repent and trust in him. Without faith it is impossible to please God, and without holiness no one can see him. Therefore, I urge you to repent today and confess your sins. Realize that all of us stand before God, stripped naked of all our defenses and excuses, and put your trust in him alone–he who is the Son of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, and Mary. Jesus, the Savior, came, and he is here with us. He will bless you, and you shall be blessed–so much so that you will laugh and give praise to God.

The intention of God is to bless his people through Jesus Christ. As the apostle Peter said on the day of Pentecost, “The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off–for all whom the Lord our God will call” (Acts 2:39). That promise certainly includes us, does it not?

God told Abraham in Genesis 12:3, “All the peoples of the earth will be blessed through you.” God wants to bless you even this day. Therefore, I beseech you again to pay attention to this word and repent and believe in Christ. It is my prayer that he will fill you with laughter and you will praise the Son of Abraham, the Son of David, the Son of Mary–Jesus Christ, the only Savior, whose name is Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. Amen.