June 23, 2025 • 24 mins
As we continue our Promises Made, Promises Kept series, Pastor Joe walks through Genesis 17 and reminds us that God’s promises often come with a different timeline than we expect. He unpacks the delay in Abraham and Sarah’s story, showing that even in our waiting—and even when we run with our own plan B—God remains faithful to his promise. Pastor Joe encourages us to rest in the truth that God's grace is relentless, his timing is perfect, and his promise to make us more like Jesus will not fail. When God makes a promise, nothing can stop him from keeping it.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Genesis 17 (00:00):
15 through 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 moreoverI will give you a son by her.
I will bless her,and she shall become nations.
Kings of peoples shall come from her.
(00:23):
Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed,and said to himself,
shall a childbe born to a man who's 100 years old?
Shall Sarah,who is nine years old, their child?
And Abraham said to God,
oh, that Ishmael might live before you.
God said, no, but Sarah,
(00:43):
your wife shall bear you a son,and you shall call his name Isaac.
I will establish my covenant with him
as an everlasting covenantfor his offspring after him.
As for Ishmael, I have heard you.
Behold, I have blessed him, and will makehim fruitful, and multiply him greatly.
He shall father 12 princes,and I will make him into a great nation.
(01:07):
But I will establish my covenantwith Isaac,
whom Sarah shall bear toyou at this time next year.
Everybody, good
morning and welcome to ChristCommunity Chapel.
I'm really glad you're here. Welcome.
Those of you here in West
and those of you over in the East serviceas you tuning in online.
(01:28):
Welcome, everybody.
This is the fifth week.
We are right smack dabin the middle of our ten week series.
In the Old Testament,we're looking at the life of Abraham,
and we're calling this series Promisesmade, promises Kept.
A promise, by definition, is something
that's going to happen in the future.
(01:49):
And one of the tricky things abouta promise is the timeline.
How long between when a promise is made
is going to passbefore the promise is kept?
If you've ever made a promise to a child,you know how tricky that can be.
Three weeks ago, Jimmy Cosey preached here
in West,and then, Jamie Stewart preached in East.
(02:11):
And in Jimmy's message,he used the illustration
of how he and his wife,Carolyn, decided to,
give surprise their kidswith a trip to Disney.
And they, we're going to take the triplater on in the year.
But they wanted to give them this giftat Christmas,
so that's when they made the promise,knowing that they were going to be
(02:35):
taking the trip several months later.
But if you put Mickey Mouse
ears under a Christmas tree,
with a promise to a five year oldthat you're going to take her
to the happiest place on earth, she thinksyou're leaving in minutes, not months.
That's a problem. And timeline.
That's what Abraham is experiencing inGenesis chapter 17.
(02:58):
So if you have your Bibles,go ahead and turn to Genesis 17.
If you want to use one of our Bibles,have something in your hand.
It's on page 11. Page 11.
Or you can just wait
for the verses to come up on the screenthat I'm going to highlight here.
My my three points that I want to useto kind of guide our time
together is a pretty simple,the first point is God delays.
(03:21):
The second point is Abraham laughsand the third point is God responds.
God delays. Abraham laughs,
and then God responds.
First.
Abraham delays.
There are a couple problemsthat people kind of have
with God and his promises.
(03:44):
The first problem that people can have is
they assume that God has made
a promise to themthat he never really made.
And that can kind of sneak up on you.
It can happen without warning
because it's almost a subconsciousassumption of the promise.
(04:05):
When my little brother was killedin a motorcycle accident at the age of 20,
I got really angry, with God.
And it was hard for me to even figure out
why I was so angry.
And, let me just have a sidebar hereand talk to you as a pastor.
I remember, counselortelling me that anger
(04:27):
was a secondary emotion,not a primary emotion.
A primary emotion is is hurt or pain.
And then the secondary emotion is anger.
You don't have anger without pain.
Like, if I were to walk up to you and kickyou in your shin
this morning, well,you'd probably leave the church, but
(04:48):
you would feel pain.
And then right after pain,you would feel anger,
pain, primary, anger secondary.
The problem with angeris that anger pushes people away.
So I was so hurt
when my little brother was killed,but I couldn't bring that hurt to God.
(05:08):
I couldn't be comforted by God.
Now the psalmist says God
is close to the brokenhearted,not God is close to the angry.
Nobody can get close to somebodywho's angry. But.
But I finally started to figure out
that I was assuming that God had made mea promise that he had never really made.
And the subconscious assumptionwas that the promise would be that
(05:33):
nothing really badwould happen to people that I loved.
But of course, God never makesthat promise.
Do you read the Bible?
God never says he will keep us from pain.
He says that he will walk with us in pain.
He says that one day he will overwhelmand redeem pain.
In John chapter 16, verse 33,Jesus says this
(05:56):
I have said these things to you,that in me you may have peace.
In the world you will have tribulation.
But take heart.
I have overcome the world.
Well, that's a different promisethan what I was assuming.
And once I was able to see thatand lay aside
kind of that promise that I was assuming,
(06:18):
then finally, in the anger subsided,I was able to take my hurt
and my pain to God
and be comforted and begin to heal.
If you're here this morning
and you are angry with God,
what I've just said might be the mostimportant thing you hear this morning.
(06:39):
And it might be that you're angry with Godbecause you're assuming he
made a promise to you
that he never really made.
That's the first problemthat people have with God and promises.
The second thing is timeline.
The time lapse between when God makesthe promise and God keeps the promise.
And that's what Abraham is experiencing
in Genesis 17, because in Genesis chapter12, God makes a promise to Abraham,
(07:04):
and his promiseis that he's going to make Abraham
into a great nation, that he'sgoing to have many, many descendants.
And the problem in Genesis 12is that Abraham didn't have any children
yet, and Abraham was 75 years old.
Let me ask you this
if you were Abrahamand God appeared to you when you're 75
(07:24):
and told youyou're going to have children,
how long beforeyou think your wife's going to give birth?
I would guess right around nine months.
But, you know, Abraham went home to Sarahand said, God appeared to me, great news.
We're going to have a baby.Let's get started.
Let's getlet's get this thing going right now.
(07:45):
Here's this. That's Genesis 12.
Genesis 17 is 24 years later,
24 years.
And still Sarah
has not become pregnant.
Why? Why would God
(08:05):
delay 24 years after making a promise?
Why does God
make any of us wait for what
we are longing for God to do?
There are at least three answers, I thinkfor that least that I can think of.
One I'll called the delayed flight reason.
(08:26):
The second, the fullness of time reason,and the third, the Lazarus reason.
All right, first,the delayed flight reason.
I hate when my flight's delayed.
I don't think I'm alone.
Right?
I mean, it's just I remembersitting on the tarmac one time,
and I was just so frustratedbecause we're just sitting there
and I'm looking at my watch,and I'm just going, this is just silly.
(08:47):
This is silly.
So I, I grabbed one of the flightattendants and I just say, what?
What's going on?
Why are we sitting here waiting?
And she said, well, well, sir,they're they're deicing the wings
of the plane for the safety of our flight.
And I suddenly felt a little sheepish,
I because I went from being frustrated
(09:07):
to being grateful because it seems likea pretty important thing
to do to de-icethe wings of a plane in Cleveland.
When you're leavingin the middle of winter, right?
There is a good reason for the delay.
I just didn't know it.
There might be a good reason
why God is not giving youwhat you long for.
(09:30):
You just don't know it.
The second reasonis that the fullness of time is.
And there's a verse in Galatians
that says this in the fullness of time,God sent his Son,
born of a woman, at just the right time.
God sent his son, born of a woman.
Every once in a while someone will ask me,why was Jesus born in the first century?
(09:54):
Why not a couple of hundred years earlier?
A couple hundred years later?
And historiansand theologians point to three things
that have kind of convergedin the first century
that had never happenedbefore in the history of the world.
The first was what was called Pax Romana,the Peace of Rome,
the Roman Empire was so powerfulat that time
(10:17):
that there wasthere were no skirmishes, no conflicts
for about 180 years, rightsmack dab in the first century.
The second thing
that had happenedwas that Greek had become
the the language,the trade language of the entire empire,
which means that everybodyin the civilized world spoke the same
language, understood the same language.
(10:40):
And the third thing that had happenedwas that Rome had taken on it itself
to build a road systemthat would connect the entire empire.
That's where the saying saysall roads lead to Rome.
So when Jesus resurrectedthe news of his resurrection
could and did spread like wildfire
(11:01):
very quickly throughout the known world,because there was peace,
there was a single language.
And the roads, in the fullness of time,
God sent his son, born of a woman.
Why would God wait 24 years
to fulfill this promise to Abraham?
Well, a lot can happen in 24 years.
(11:23):
The world can can change in a day.
We all know thatthere are a thousand variables
that could happenjust today, let alone 24 years.
People change. The world changes.
Maturity changes.
In the fullness of time.
God sent his Son
to Abraham.
All right, that's the second.
(11:44):
The third reason,though, is the Lazarus reason.
Like in John chapter 11, where we readthe story of Lazarus and Jesus.
Lazarus is a friend of Jesus. He's sick.
His sister sent word to Jesus.
Your friend Lazarus is sick. Come now.
Jesus doesn't come for a while.
By the time he gets to Bethany,where Lazarus was living,
(12:05):
Lazarus has diedand he's been dead for four days.
When Jesus arrives inthe movie The Princess Bride,
miracle Max,
played by Billy Crystal,said, there's a big difference between
someone being mostly deadand being completely dead, right?
If Lazarus had just been mostly dead,
(12:26):
there might be some other reasonswhy he got better.
His immune systemfinally kicked in the medicine
his sisters have been giving him.
Finally began to take effect.
But with Lazarus being completely dead,
well, that means it's only Jesus.
It's got to be 100% Jesus.
(12:47):
You know, with Abraham,
why would God wait so longto fulfill the promise of Abraham?
Well, Abraham says it.
Can a man who's 100 and his wife,
who's 90, have a baby?
Well, now, now,
now it has to be 100%.
God, there are some things in your life
(13:10):
where God waits until you know
that it's unmistakably 100% him,
100% grace.
And that's hard.
And that brings me to the second point.
Abraham laughs.
So God makes this promise in Genesischapter 12,
24 years later, he restates the promiseand Abraham responds two ways.
(13:33):
The first thing is he laughs.
He laughs.
Now what's interestingis that next week I'm going to speak on
Genesis chapter 18, where Sarah laughs.
But Sarah's laughteris more cynical than Abraham, I think.
Abraham laughs because now hehe knows that it's a promise
that it's almost too wonderfulfor him to believe, because he knows
(13:56):
he's aged out of participatingin this promise.
Now it has to be 100% God.
It's got to be 100% grace
and and laughter sometimes
is the most appropriate response to grace.
My wife, Karen and I went to a graduationthis last week.
(14:17):
It was a graduation that was held at,
Restore Addiction Recovery kind of center.
It's a
residential place where we actually was.
We helped start it.
Right. It's what we're doing.
The five k run to helpfund restore all of that.
(14:38):
But it's a program where
men who are strugglingwith addiction going,
and it's a year long program,which is a super long program.
And if you go the whole year
one, you are completely transformed.
But two, they have a graduation for you.
And there are two men who are graduatingwho had spent a whole year
(15:00):
in the program,and their names were Jake and James.
And one of the things about addicts
is that they realize they understandgrace better than most,
because they knowthey can't do it themselves.
But they asked me to prayat the end of this graduation.
So I was and,Jake and James were up with me.
(15:22):
And so I was praying for them,
and I was thinking, Jesus,I was just saying Jesus, I'm so grateful.
You're the kind of God that leaves the99 sheep to go after the one.
Becauseyou went after Jake, you went after James.
And when I said you went afterJames, James was standing next to me
and he said, Amen.
And he kind of chuckled.
(15:43):
And that was exactly the right response,because if I talked to James
and I said, James,how is it that you're a Christian?
He would say, yeah, it's crazy.
And it it's crazythat Jesus would come after me.
Come after me. Listen,I have news for you.
If you are a follower of Jesus right now,you weren't part of the 99.
(16:04):
You're the one.
No one comes to Jesus.
It's a 100% Jesus going after you.
Every one smile, the sheer wonder of that.
That Jesus knew you before you were you.
And he called youby name and he went after you
should make you just laugh.
(16:26):
Just laugh.
And that's the first thing.
The second thing that Abraham does isthe first thing is laugh.
The second thing is he,he tells God that that he's covered
God with plan B, that's what hethis is what he says in verse 18.
So God restatesthe promise, you're going to have a son.
(16:46):
And then Abraham says this.
And Abraham said to God, Othat Ishmael might live before you.
Remember last week Zach preached on this,
and and, if you haven'tlistened to that sermon, you should.
It's a really good sermon.
But plan B was just a messall the way around.
It was like God had promised Abrahamand Sarah they were going to have a sign.
(17:09):
He delays. They lose patience.
They decide to hatch their own plan.
And that involves Abrahamsleeping with a slave girl named Hagar.
And the result of that is a sonnamed Ishmael,
and that's what Abraham says to God.
I got you covered.
Plan B is in effect right?
(17:29):
And, what's interesting is that
God, doesn't he?
He blows right past that
plan B, it doesn't throw him out of whack.
What he's tellingAbraham is, I have plans for you, Abraham.
I have plans to absolutely change you,
(17:50):
to transform you and through you,
to change the whole world.
And of course, that's the promise,
the plan that he has for you toif you're a follower of Jesus.
And that brings me to my third point,
which is God's response that God responds,
(18:11):
So God promises Abrahama son in Genesis 12.
He waits 24 years.
He restates the promise in Genesischapter 17.
Abraham laughs, and then he says to God,
listen, I understand the promise.
I just want you to knowI've enacted plan B.
(18:32):
You're welcome. Right.
And this is God's response.
This is verses 19 through 21.
It says, 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 himas an everlasting covenant
for his offspring after him.
(18:53):
As for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold,
I have blessed him, and will make himfruitful and multiply him greatly.
He shall.
Father 12 princes.
I will make him into a great nation.
But I will establish my covenantwith Isaac,
whom Sarah shall bear to you at this timenext year.
A couple of things I want you to notice.
One is God doesn't get mad at Abraham.
(19:17):
He doesn't tell Abraham how disappointedhe is that he hatched this plan
because it's like God is says to Abraham,yeah, yeah, I saw plan B
and it's a mess.
But I want you to knowI'm going to I'm going to help you
with that mess.
But the promise I made you
(19:38):
is the promise I'm going to keep.
Because when the God of the universehas a plan and makes a promise,
there's absolutely nothingthat can stop him.
You've got.
God has a plan for you,and he's made you a promise.
This is the promise.
This is from Philippianschapter one, verse six.
(19:59):
It says this, and I am sure of this,
that he who began a good work in
you will bring it to completion
at the day of Jesus Christ,
that God is going to completewhat he started in you
when you came to faith in Jesus.
And what it means is that God is promising
(20:21):
that he's going to make you into somethingyou're not.
He is in the process of making you likeJesus.
His plan is to fill you with love
and joy, peace, patience, goodness.
He's going to make you goodand gentle and patient and faithful.
(20:41):
All the things that you're not.
I feel like I'm constantly coming up
with Plan B'sthat will somehow make my life good.
And God is saying, listen,I'm going to blow right past plan
B, I, I can even incorporatesome of what you've done.
I will fix your messes.
But I want you to know
(21:02):
that the promise I've made to you,
I'm going to keep
right now.
I remember as a kidplaying a game called risk,
and if you ever played that board game,it looks something like this.
The whole idea of the game is
that somehow you you're going to slowlytake over the world as a player.
You're going to it.
(21:22):
You go countryby country, region by region.
The game of risk is not a board gamethat you can play quickly.
You can't play it an hour.
It takes a day, sometimes two days, right.
To actually and I think that's the wayGod works in our lives,
at least in my life.
Like there's all kinds of thingsthat I'm doing.
(21:44):
But he is slowly moving,
slowly taking them slowly,making me more like Jesus.
Country by country, region by region.
And there's no variable in my life,no experience that he cannot use
to make me like there's no experiencein your life, no plan B that will derail
(22:08):
his promise to you,
to make you like Jesus
and in the fullness of time,
when we finally realizethat grace is seeping
deeper and deeper into our souls,
we will realize that our entire lives
God has been working his plan
(22:31):
and fulfilling his promise.
So no matter how longyou have been waiting for
God to do something in your life,
no matter how messed up your plan
B has made, your life,
I just want you to know
that God has a plan and a promise for you.
(22:52):
And when the God of the universehas a plan, it makes a promise.
There's absolutely nothing
that can stop him.
Promises made
and promises kept.
Would you pray with me?
Father in heaven, I come to you.
And I am so grateful.
(23:13):
First, I want to pray for anybody here.
Anybody, listeningor watching that, struggle
or struggling with anger towards you.
I pray that today might be a day,
that they put aside the anger.
Look at your real promises,the promises that you have made
and that they would find comfortand healing with you.
(23:38):
I pray for those of us
who just need to be reassuredthat you are progressing,
that you are fulfillingyour promise to make us more like Jesus.
I pray that we will be more likeJesus tomorrow than we are right now.
I pray that you would fill us morewith love and joy and peace.
All of that make us into what we are not,
(24:01):
so that one day we will praise you.
And when we do,
we will be like your Son Jesus.
Thank you for giving ussuch a wonderful Savior.
We pray this in his name. Amen.
15 through 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 moreoverI will give you a son by her.
I will bless her,and she shall become nations.
Kings of peoples shall come from her.
(00:23):
Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed,and said to himself,
shall a childbe born to a man who's 100 years old?
Shall Sarah,who is nine years old, their child?
And Abraham said to God,
oh, that Ishmael might live before you.
God said, no, but Sarah,
(00:43):
your wife shall bear you a son,and you shall call his name Isaac.
I will establish my covenant with him
as an everlasting covenantfor his offspring after him.
As for Ishmael, I have heard you.
Behold, I have blessed him, and will makehim fruitful, and multiply him greatly.
He shall father 12 princes,and I will make him into a great nation.
(01:07):
But I will establish my covenantwith Isaac,
whom Sarah shall bear toyou at this time next year.
Everybody, good
morning and welcome to ChristCommunity Chapel.
I'm really glad you're here. Welcome.
Those of you here in West
and those of you over in the East serviceas you tuning in online.
(01:28):
Welcome, everybody.
This is the fifth week.
We are right smack dabin the middle of our ten week series.
In the Old Testament,we're looking at the life of Abraham,
and we're calling this series Promisesmade, promises Kept.
A promise, by definition, is something
that's going to happen in the future.
(01:49):
And one of the tricky things abouta promise is the timeline.
How long between when a promise is made
is going to passbefore the promise is kept?
If you've ever made a promise to a child,you know how tricky that can be.
Three weeks ago, Jimmy Cosey preached here
in West,and then, Jamie Stewart preached in East.
(02:11):
And in Jimmy's message,he used the illustration
of how he and his wife,Carolyn, decided to,
give surprise their kidswith a trip to Disney.
And they, we're going to take the triplater on in the year.
But they wanted to give them this giftat Christmas,
so that's when they made the promise,knowing that they were going to be
(02:35):
taking the trip several months later.
But if you put Mickey Mouse
ears under a Christmas tree,
with a promise to a five year oldthat you're going to take her
to the happiest place on earth, she thinksyou're leaving in minutes, not months.
That's a problem. And timeline.
That's what Abraham is experiencing inGenesis chapter 17.
(02:58):
So if you have your Bibles,go ahead and turn to Genesis 17.
If you want to use one of our Bibles,have something in your hand.
It's on page 11. Page 11.
Or you can just wait
for the verses to come up on the screenthat I'm going to highlight here.
My my three points that I want to useto kind of guide our time
together is a pretty simple,the first point is God delays.
(03:21):
The second point is Abraham laughsand the third point is God responds.
God delays. Abraham laughs,
and then God responds.
First.
Abraham delays.
There are a couple problemsthat people kind of have
with God and his promises.
(03:44):
The first problem that people can have is
they assume that God has made
a promise to themthat he never really made.
And that can kind of sneak up on you.
It can happen without warning
because it's almost a subconsciousassumption of the promise.
(04:05):
When my little brother was killedin a motorcycle accident at the age of 20,
I got really angry, with God.
And it was hard for me to even figure out
why I was so angry.
And, let me just have a sidebar hereand talk to you as a pastor.
I remember, counselortelling me that anger
(04:27):
was a secondary emotion,not a primary emotion.
A primary emotion is is hurt or pain.
And then the secondary emotion is anger.
You don't have anger without pain.
Like, if I were to walk up to you and kickyou in your shin
this morning, well,you'd probably leave the church, but
(04:48):
you would feel pain.
And then right after pain,you would feel anger,
pain, primary, anger secondary.
The problem with angeris that anger pushes people away.
So I was so hurt
when my little brother was killed,but I couldn't bring that hurt to God.
(05:08):
I couldn't be comforted by God.
Now the psalmist says God
is close to the brokenhearted,not God is close to the angry.
Nobody can get close to somebodywho's angry. But.
But I finally started to figure out
that I was assuming that God had made mea promise that he had never really made.
And the subconscious assumptionwas that the promise would be that
(05:33):
nothing really badwould happen to people that I loved.
But of course, God never makesthat promise.
Do you read the Bible?
God never says he will keep us from pain.
He says that he will walk with us in pain.
He says that one day he will overwhelmand redeem pain.
In John chapter 16, verse 33,Jesus says this
(05:56):
I have said these things to you,that in me you may have peace.
In the world you will have tribulation.
But take heart.
I have overcome the world.
Well, that's a different promisethan what I was assuming.
And once I was able to see thatand lay aside
kind of that promise that I was assuming,
(06:18):
then finally, in the anger subsided,I was able to take my hurt
and my pain to God
and be comforted and begin to heal.
If you're here this morning
and you are angry with God,
what I've just said might be the mostimportant thing you hear this morning.
(06:39):
And it might be that you're angry with Godbecause you're assuming he
made a promise to you
that he never really made.
That's the first problemthat people have with God and promises.
The second thing is timeline.
The time lapse between when God makesthe promise and God keeps the promise.
And that's what Abraham is experiencing
in Genesis 17, because in Genesis chapter12, God makes a promise to Abraham,
(07:04):
and his promiseis that he's going to make Abraham
into a great nation, that he'sgoing to have many, many descendants.
And the problem in Genesis 12is that Abraham didn't have any children
yet, and Abraham was 75 years old.
Let me ask you this
if you were Abrahamand God appeared to you when you're 75
(07:24):
and told youyou're going to have children,
how long beforeyou think your wife's going to give birth?
I would guess right around nine months.
But, you know, Abraham went home to Sarahand said, God appeared to me, great news.
We're going to have a baby.Let's get started.
Let's getlet's get this thing going right now.
(07:45):
Here's this. That's Genesis 12.
Genesis 17 is 24 years later,
24 years.
And still Sarah
has not become pregnant.
Why? Why would God
(08:05):
delay 24 years after making a promise?
Why does God
make any of us wait for what
we are longing for God to do?
There are at least three answers, I thinkfor that least that I can think of.
One I'll called the delayed flight reason.
(08:26):
The second, the fullness of time reason,and the third, the Lazarus reason.
All right, first,the delayed flight reason.
I hate when my flight's delayed.
I don't think I'm alone.
Right?
I mean, it's just I remembersitting on the tarmac one time,
and I was just so frustratedbecause we're just sitting there
and I'm looking at my watch,and I'm just going, this is just silly.
(08:47):
This is silly.
So I, I grabbed one of the flightattendants and I just say, what?
What's going on?
Why are we sitting here waiting?
And she said, well, well, sir,they're they're deicing the wings
of the plane for the safety of our flight.
And I suddenly felt a little sheepish,
I because I went from being frustrated
(09:07):
to being grateful because it seems likea pretty important thing
to do to de-icethe wings of a plane in Cleveland.
When you're leavingin the middle of winter, right?
There is a good reason for the delay.
I just didn't know it.
There might be a good reason
why God is not giving youwhat you long for.
(09:30):
You just don't know it.
The second reasonis that the fullness of time is.
And there's a verse in Galatians
that says this in the fullness of time,God sent his Son,
born of a woman, at just the right time.
God sent his son, born of a woman.
Every once in a while someone will ask me,why was Jesus born in the first century?
(09:54):
Why not a couple of hundred years earlier?
A couple hundred years later?
And historiansand theologians point to three things
that have kind of convergedin the first century
that had never happenedbefore in the history of the world.
The first was what was called Pax Romana,the Peace of Rome,
the Roman Empire was so powerfulat that time
(10:17):
that there wasthere were no skirmishes, no conflicts
for about 180 years, rightsmack dab in the first century.
The second thing
that had happenedwas that Greek had become
the the language,the trade language of the entire empire,
which means that everybodyin the civilized world spoke the same
language, understood the same language.
(10:40):
And the third thing that had happenedwas that Rome had taken on it itself
to build a road systemthat would connect the entire empire.
That's where the saying saysall roads lead to Rome.
So when Jesus resurrectedthe news of his resurrection
could and did spread like wildfire
(11:01):
very quickly throughout the known world,because there was peace,
there was a single language.
And the roads, in the fullness of time,
God sent his son, born of a woman.
Why would God wait 24 years
to fulfill this promise to Abraham?
Well, a lot can happen in 24 years.
(11:23):
The world can can change in a day.
We all know thatthere are a thousand variables
that could happenjust today, let alone 24 years.
People change. The world changes.
Maturity changes.
In the fullness of time.
God sent his Son
to Abraham.
All right, that's the second.
(11:44):
The third reason,though, is the Lazarus reason.
Like in John chapter 11, where we readthe story of Lazarus and Jesus.
Lazarus is a friend of Jesus. He's sick.
His sister sent word to Jesus.
Your friend Lazarus is sick. Come now.
Jesus doesn't come for a while.
By the time he gets to Bethany,where Lazarus was living,
(12:05):
Lazarus has diedand he's been dead for four days.
When Jesus arrives inthe movie The Princess Bride,
miracle Max,
played by Billy Crystal,said, there's a big difference between
someone being mostly deadand being completely dead, right?
If Lazarus had just been mostly dead,
(12:26):
there might be some other reasonswhy he got better.
His immune systemfinally kicked in the medicine
his sisters have been giving him.
Finally began to take effect.
But with Lazarus being completely dead,
well, that means it's only Jesus.
It's got to be 100% Jesus.
(12:47):
You know, with Abraham,
why would God wait so longto fulfill the promise of Abraham?
Well, Abraham says it.
Can a man who's 100 and his wife,
who's 90, have a baby?
Well, now, now,
now it has to be 100%.
God, there are some things in your life
(13:10):
where God waits until you know
that it's unmistakably 100% him,
100% grace.
And that's hard.
And that brings me to the second point.
Abraham laughs.
So God makes this promise in Genesischapter 12,
24 years later, he restates the promiseand Abraham responds two ways.
(13:33):
The first thing is he laughs.
He laughs.
Now what's interestingis that next week I'm going to speak on
Genesis chapter 18, where Sarah laughs.
But Sarah's laughteris more cynical than Abraham, I think.
Abraham laughs because now hehe knows that it's a promise
that it's almost too wonderfulfor him to believe, because he knows
(13:56):
he's aged out of participatingin this promise.
Now it has to be 100% God.
It's got to be 100% grace
and and laughter sometimes
is the most appropriate response to grace.
My wife, Karen and I went to a graduationthis last week.
(14:17):
It was a graduation that was held at,
Restore Addiction Recovery kind of center.
It's a
residential place where we actually was.
We helped start it.
Right. It's what we're doing.
The five k run to helpfund restore all of that.
(14:38):
But it's a program where
men who are strugglingwith addiction going,
and it's a year long program,which is a super long program.
And if you go the whole year
one, you are completely transformed.
But two, they have a graduation for you.
And there are two men who are graduatingwho had spent a whole year
(15:00):
in the program,and their names were Jake and James.
And one of the things about addicts
is that they realize they understandgrace better than most,
because they knowthey can't do it themselves.
But they asked me to prayat the end of this graduation.
So I was and,Jake and James were up with me.
(15:22):
And so I was praying for them,
and I was thinking, Jesus,I was just saying Jesus, I'm so grateful.
You're the kind of God that leaves the99 sheep to go after the one.
Becauseyou went after Jake, you went after James.
And when I said you went afterJames, James was standing next to me
and he said, Amen.
And he kind of chuckled.
(15:43):
And that was exactly the right response,because if I talked to James
and I said, James,how is it that you're a Christian?
He would say, yeah, it's crazy.
And it it's crazythat Jesus would come after me.
Come after me. Listen,I have news for you.
If you are a follower of Jesus right now,you weren't part of the 99.
(16:04):
You're the one.
No one comes to Jesus.
It's a 100% Jesus going after you.
Every one smile, the sheer wonder of that.
That Jesus knew you before you were you.
And he called youby name and he went after you
should make you just laugh.
(16:26):
Just laugh.
And that's the first thing.
The second thing that Abraham does isthe first thing is laugh.
The second thing is he,he tells God that that he's covered
God with plan B, that's what hethis is what he says in verse 18.
So God restatesthe promise, you're going to have a son.
(16:46):
And then Abraham says this.
And Abraham said to God, Othat Ishmael might live before you.
Remember last week Zach preached on this,
and and, if you haven'tlistened to that sermon, you should.
It's a really good sermon.
But plan B was just a messall the way around.
It was like God had promised Abrahamand Sarah they were going to have a sign.
(17:09):
He delays. They lose patience.
They decide to hatch their own plan.
And that involves Abrahamsleeping with a slave girl named Hagar.
And the result of that is a sonnamed Ishmael,
and that's what Abraham says to God.
I got you covered.
Plan B is in effect right?
(17:29):
And, what's interesting is that
God, doesn't he?
He blows right past that
plan B, it doesn't throw him out of whack.
What he's tellingAbraham is, I have plans for you, Abraham.
I have plans to absolutely change you,
(17:50):
to transform you and through you,
to change the whole world.
And of course, that's the promise,
the plan that he has for you toif you're a follower of Jesus.
And that brings me to my third point,
which is God's response that God responds,
(18:11):
So God promises Abrahama son in Genesis 12.
He waits 24 years.
He restates the promise in Genesischapter 17.
Abraham laughs, and then he says to God,
listen, I understand the promise.
I just want you to knowI've enacted plan B.
(18:32):
You're welcome. Right.
And this is God's response.
This is verses 19 through 21.
It says, 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 himas an everlasting covenant
for his offspring after him.
(18:53):
As for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold,
I have blessed him, and will make himfruitful and multiply him greatly.
He shall.
Father 12 princes.
I will make him into a great nation.
But I will establish my covenantwith Isaac,
whom Sarah shall bear to you at this timenext year.
A couple of things I want you to notice.
One is God doesn't get mad at Abraham.
(19:17):
He doesn't tell Abraham how disappointedhe is that he hatched this plan
because it's like God is says to Abraham,yeah, yeah, I saw plan B
and it's a mess.
But I want you to knowI'm going to I'm going to help you
with that mess.
But the promise I made you
(19:38):
is the promise I'm going to keep.
Because when the God of the universehas a plan and makes a promise,
there's absolutely nothingthat can stop him.
You've got.
God has a plan for you,and he's made you a promise.
This is the promise.
This is from Philippianschapter one, verse six.
(19:59):
It says this, and I am sure of this,
that he who began a good work in
you will bring it to completion
at the day of Jesus Christ,
that God is going to completewhat he started in you
when you came to faith in Jesus.
And what it means is that God is promising
(20:21):
that he's going to make you into somethingyou're not.
He is in the process of making you likeJesus.
His plan is to fill you with love
and joy, peace, patience, goodness.
He's going to make you goodand gentle and patient and faithful.
(20:41):
All the things that you're not.
I feel like I'm constantly coming up
with Plan B'sthat will somehow make my life good.
And God is saying, listen,I'm going to blow right past plan
B, I, I can even incorporatesome of what you've done.
I will fix your messes.
But I want you to know
(21:02):
that the promise I've made to you,
I'm going to keep
right now.
I remember as a kidplaying a game called risk,
and if you ever played that board game,it looks something like this.
The whole idea of the game is
that somehow you you're going to slowlytake over the world as a player.
You're going to it.
(21:22):
You go countryby country, region by region.
The game of risk is not a board gamethat you can play quickly.
You can't play it an hour.
It takes a day, sometimes two days, right.
To actually and I think that's the wayGod works in our lives,
at least in my life.
Like there's all kinds of thingsthat I'm doing.
(21:44):
But he is slowly moving,
slowly taking them slowly,making me more like Jesus.
Country by country, region by region.
And there's no variable in my life,no experience that he cannot use
to make me like there's no experiencein your life, no plan B that will derail
(22:08):
his promise to you,
to make you like Jesus
and in the fullness of time,
when we finally realizethat grace is seeping
deeper and deeper into our souls,
we will realize that our entire lives
God has been working his plan
(22:31):
and fulfilling his promise.
So no matter how longyou have been waiting for
God to do something in your life,
no matter how messed up your plan
B has made, your life,
I just want you to know
that God has a plan and a promise for you.
(22:52):
And when the God of the universehas a plan, it makes a promise.
There's absolutely nothing
that can stop him.
Promises made
and promises kept.
Would you pray with me?
Father in heaven, I come to you.
And I am so grateful.
(23:13):
First, I want to pray for anybody here.
Anybody, listeningor watching that, struggle
or struggling with anger towards you.
I pray that today might be a day,
that they put aside the anger.
Look at your real promises,the promises that you have made
and that they would find comfortand healing with you.
(23:38):
I pray for those of us
who just need to be reassuredthat you are progressing,
that you are fulfillingyour promise to make us more like Jesus.
I pray that we will be more likeJesus tomorrow than we are right now.
I pray that you would fill us morewith love and joy and peace.
All of that make us into what we are not,
(24:01):
so that one day we will praise you.
And when we do,
we will be like your Son Jesus.
Thank you for giving ussuch a wonderful Savior.
We pray this in his name. Amen.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.