FEB 4 2024 | Genesis: Behind the Curtain S4E2 | Promises, Promises

Sea Change Church · Genesis: Behind the Curtain · "Promises, Promises" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · February 4, 2024
Genesis 21:1-8
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

The book of Genesis, chapter 21, verses 1 through 8. Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age at the very time God had promised him. Abraham gave the name Isaac to the son Sarah bore him. When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him as God commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.

Sarah said, God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me. And she added, who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have born him a son in his old age. The child grew and was weaned, and on the day Isaac was weaned, Abraham held a great feast. This is the word of the Lord. If you're online, I apologize, you don't get to watch me dance. Only the in-house crowd gets to see that.

And one thing I've learned is if you're not a good dancer, the thing you need to do is just keep it tight, okay? Like, don't get all crazy out here. You don't belong out here. You just stay here is where you is. Anybody can dance if you keep it tight. So anybody can do that. So, you know, everyone knows. That's wisdom, isn't it, Larry? Thank you. I found out the reason you didn't get to see that picture is because I sent them in the wrong format.

I got to show you this picture of these kids on this bus. This is it. That's the bus you fill with kids. Man, I am just pumped to have all these kids from that school down the street and at Claremont High worship here from the Lord. Man, I just, man, I'm so proud of you and you guys are doing that. You guys made it happen. I made a promise to Harry. I said, I'll find the money. I said, I believe in my congregation. I'll find the money.

He goes, how are we going to pay for that? I said, I will find the money. They will give you the money. And I don't know if I keep that promise, but you have my back. So, super pumped. That's Keegan up there in the front. He went as a leader. Love that guy. He's one of my boys. So, let me just pray. I need to pray. Lord Jesus, bless this sermon. Be with us as we talk about promises, Lord, and how important they are. Let your word go out.

In Jesus' name, amen. How important is a promise? How important is a promise? Man, think about that. Is love more important than a promise? I mean, the Bible says it is. The greatest of these, faith, hope, love. The greatest is love. So, the Bible would say it is. But promises are about faith. Promises are about believing when someone says they're going to do something. Promises are about character. Promises are all over our society.

I kind of started thinking about this idea of promise because God makes a promise to Abraham and to Sarah, his wife, and he keeps his promise. And that promise is character. And that promise represents so many other promises that we see. I want to talk about that. Promises just, I remember on the playground as a kid, there was a thing called a pinky promise. Remember the pinky promise? You don't lay down a pinky promise if you ain't going to keep the promise, right?

I mean, they're going to call you on that, even if you're in sixth grade. In government, there's a promise. If you've ever read, you know, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, he talks about the social contract, that government has a promise with its people. We will do these few things if you do these few things. And he writes on the social contract. Thomas Hobbes speaks about that as well. Family and marriage based on a promise. I did a wedding yesterday.

It's all about a promise. And are you going to keep your word? And that promise becomes a vow. You look at the Old Testament. I found the Old Testament, the word promise comes up 225 times. In the New Testament, 78 times. And these promises are solidified oftentimes contractually. With the promise to Abraham, the covenant promise, it was through circumcision. So you see the circumcision kind of sealed the deal there, so to speak.

Abraham and his son Jacob both had times where they spoke to someone. One time, Jacob speaking to Joseph, his son, he said, hey, make me a promise. And when you do, put your hand under my thigh. Now, I'm never going to ask anybody to do that promise, right? Abraham does the same thing with a servant. When you go look for a wife or my son, just put your hand under my thigh because it just shows them. It has to do with posterity in ancient times.

It has to do with, you know, children and family. Whenever they did that, it was a familial promise underneath the thigh. But promise matters. When someone breaks a promise, it's a bummer, right? Some of you have had promises broken to you. Some of you have broke promises. What do you do when you break a promise? Abraham and Sarah broke a bunch of promises here. They broke covenant multiple times. God continued to show up.

I want to frame up promises and what it means to us because when we look at promises in God, it can be really dicey territory. We have these big promises that we're told about, Jesus coming back, the resurrection, things of that nature. And then there's this stuff that we believe God promises us to this occasion just personally because God cares about us. And I believe that God does make promises like that. But how do we find out, is there a separation between the big promises, the capital P or the lowercase p promises?

Which ones do we lean on? And sometimes those lowercase p's, those one like I believe God told me I'm going to do this or that or I've had a prophecy spoken over my life. We take those lowercase p's and they get bigger, they get inflated, right? And so I want to talk about that today and how we keep our eye on the actual promise that matters while still believing that God loves us and has promises for our lives. Two things today we're going to talk about.

One is understanding the promises of God. And number two, how do you walk in a promise? Understanding them is one thing, but then how to walk faithfully in a promise is another. And I think there's some hope in there because we see that Abraham and Sarah, they weren't always faithful in their promise walking, but God still showed up because he's a God of grace. And so those are the two things. Let's go to the first one.

Understanding the promises of God. Let's go to verse one through three. I'm going to read it. Now the Lord was gracious, circle gracious. We're going to get back to that, to Sarah. Sarah, as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age at the very time God had promised him. This is awesome. This is a personal promise, but it's also a capital P uppercase promise because it has to do with God's covenant promise that we still live with today.

There's a new covenant, and Christ builds upon this. And sometimes we look at these Old Testament promises, and we think, well, the same is true for us, that if God's promised me something. I have a story of Pastor Joshua who just came on staff with us, and he believed ten years ago that God promised him on a certain date. He told the story here when we brought him up that God would make him a pastor. And it was ten years of, I don't know if this is going to happen and whatever.

And then him and I met at a house showing, just ran into each other, started talking. Next thing you know, he told me his story. Next thing you know, on the exact day that God had told him ten years later, he started here at this church. Awesome promise, right? We love that promise. That promise sells in Christendom. That promise sells. We all want that promise. Listen, you can go to conferences and give that promise theology, so to speak, and people will love it.

But what happens for some of us that we maybe got it wrong? The promise hasn't happened. I came across this thinking about this verse with this juxtaposition between personal promises and these big, giant promises. And I realized in faith, in Christendom today, there is a promise theology. Now, I knew someone had thought about that before. And so I looked up promise theology, Googled it, went to all these different Google sites.

I actually couldn't find it. Really surprised because having been in a charismatic tradition for a long time, I know promise theology exists. No one's just ever named it. I'm not saying I've coined the phrase, I just couldn't find it anywhere else. But let me tell you what promise theology is. I wrote a definition for it. The belief among Christians that God makes specific commitments, assurances, or pledges to his followers.

That's right. Both in terms of the broader eternal promises and the individual promises to individual believers. Man, this can get so muddy, right? Because oftentimes we care more about the individual promise for ourselves, right? I mean, we're just human. We care about that thing. We want to write that book. We want to sing that song. We want to have that baby. We want that wife. We want that husband. We want that home.

We want that job. We want that thing for our government. We want that thing for our nation. We have all these things. And those are the things we often want. While at the same time kind of maybe missing the things that matter most. I want to really kind of give a little bit of a hard word. And it's because I think we've gotten kind of soft. And in America, we have really gotten to the point where the personal promises tend to trump the eternal promises.

Let's say the eternal promises that are all that matters. Jesus Christ has promised us himself. He has promised us heaven. He has promised us that we are children of his. What more do we need than that? And I want to say when the personal promises don't hit, when they don't come in, the receipts don't come in like you think they should come in, it's really easy to get lost in your faith. This is something I personally experience.

We see with Sarah here that God had spoken to her. God had spoken to her and said, you're going to have a baby. And he told her when she was young. Remember, she was so beautiful that Abraham had to keep lying to people about who his wife was. Not she just my sister. Because she was like just young and vibrant. And she was, you know, ready and willing. And God had given her this promise. And now she's past the time of having children.

And Abraham is old. And the promise seems gone. But they held on to the promise. But you'll see what happens with Abraham later on in this story when he's willing to sacrifice the fruition of the promise, his son Isaac. The very promise itself. He's willing to sacrifice that promise to God. That Abraham matures to a place where the promiser is more important than the promise. Where the promiser is more important than the promise.

If you don't get to that place on earth, you'll get there in heaven. You'll understand it when we get to heaven. And many people will never get to that place in heaven. There will be a glass ceiling on your faith and your maturity and your walk with Christ. There's just a glass ceiling. God will love you. You will have great things in your life. You will see God move. But there is a level of Christian maturity that moves us to that promise.

I want to talk about eternal promises. Look in your notes. Examples include God's promise of eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ. That's John 3.16. Great promise. A promise you need to believe in. The promise that matters. One is the assurance of God's unfailing love. Romans 8.38 and 39. The promise of the resurrection and a future with him. 1 Corinthians 15.22. When it comes to the capital P, the uppercase P promises of God, these are the ones that God has bound himself to.

God has not bound himself to your book. God, he might be really interested in your book. He might be willing to do it. It might be happening for you. But he hasn't bound himself in the same way that he has bound himself to the salvific promises of the cross. If we're going to be a mature congregation, a congregation that can go through the froth and bubble and the turmoil of what goes on in the society, we cannot be a congregation of people that put the promises for our personal lives in front of the eternal promises of God.

I ask you this. And for me, the answer is no, oftentimes. Am I more excited about God's eternal promises or about my personal promises? I'm going to just be straight honest with you. I feel way more dopamine thinking about my promises than I think about the eternal God letting me know I'm his son, that he loves me. There's moments, right? When he saves me from something, then it's like I'm all about the eternal promises.

But in the in-between, I'm oftentimes about myself. And so these eternal promises, so I guess that's the first question. And I know that's a hard word. I know it's a really hard word. But it's a word that will save your faith. It's a word that will save your faith. And it's one that we see that Abraham was living in. Let's look at the personal promises. Personal promises are the promises that some Christians believe God communicates directly to them.

Through prayer, personal experiences, deep sense of conviction. These promises are often specific to an individual believer's circumstances, needs, or calling. Now, the Bible does have some kind of personal promise language, right? It's not as much as the eternal promises. But if you look, there are some. And if you are in a charismatic or you grew up in a charismatic or Pentecostal background, they live in this territory.

And let me just tell you, when hope runs dry, you need a Pentecostal in your life. Someone's going to blow the shofar, pour the oil, dance the dance. You want them. Why? Because they live in hope. And as I said at the wedding yesterday, that was Alan and Michaela's word that they wanted me to focus on was hope. Is that when someone says hope, all hope has died or all hope is lost, that can never be true for hope. Because hope always hopes.

Hope springs eternal. And so one of the things about the promises of God is you're always just hoping that somehow God will bend it towards your will, towards his will, and for your betterment. And so we see those promises. And so in that world, you see those promises a lot. Now, non-charismatics do this a lot as well. They just don't do it the same way. They won't walk up to you and say, God spoke to me last night. He said, thus saith unto you.

And they'll, you know, that's the, if you grew up in that, you know what I'm talking about. If you didn't grow up in that, it's going to freak you out, okay? But the same thing happens because they'll roll up on you and say, you know, hey, I just want you to know, I was reading my Bible yesterday and I read this scripture and this scripture was really powerful. And I just want to give you this scripture for your life.

And it speaks directly to what they know that you want to do for your life. And I think God wants to just do this scripture for your life. And it just looks a lot more framed up. It's kind of the same thing. And the Bible actually has some, look at the notes I think you're going to see is Matthew 7, 7. Personal promises. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you.

So there's a sense of like God just saying, hey, just ask. I want to do it for you. I want to give you the thing that you want. And I would say many of you here probably have a promise you're holding on to that you feel that God has given you. Do not throw out the promise with the bathwater. Okay. Hold on to those promises. There's nothing wrong with holding on to those promises. Like I said, it's just putting those back in personal perspective and how we find those things.

I would say, though, that as we're holding on to those, we once again need to keep saying to Christ, even if it doesn't happen, God, I am with you. Now, I actually about shipwrecked. I didn't shipwreck my faith, but I shipwrecked my walk with the Holy Spirit for a good decade. And I would say I'm probably still recovering. You say, how did you do that? Did you do some sin now? It wasn't like that at all. I was a youth pastor.

God began to just speak to me. He began to tell me stuff that was going to happen. He began to give me prophetic words. And I just couldn't. He just gave me a season where I wasn't wrong. I don't know why, but there was a season. I could have been wrong, but I wasn't for a while. To the point where I was like, I'm walking in authority. And I was at a vineyard church, and they're like, dude, you got the mantle, blah, blah, blah.

They're just feeding me. And so I remember there was this one gal, and I wouldn't do this today. I would do it differently. There's a gal, we were in a worship time, and she had MS, and they couldn't get pregnant, and she couldn't have a baby. They're like, there's no medical way you can have a baby. And I just got this word. The Lord said, go tell her she's going to have a baby. I'm like, oh, right? But I was all about it back then because I was stupid.

You know, I didn't know what I was doing. So some would say that's not stupid. So I rolled up. I said, Lord, really? Like, I know the story. So I went up, and I was like, hey. I don't know how I did it. I was 29. I was new, and it was fresh to me. And I was like, hey, the Lord says you're going to have a child. Three months later, she was pregnant. I was like, oh, let's go. And then she's had three children since then.

I can't claim the other two. First one God told me about, right? So fast forward a little bit longer. God told me about this trip and how God was going to show up. And I won't go into all the details, but I was believing on this thing for God. I was just believing on it. I knew it was going to happen. It went so sideways. I lost the church, like $7,000, which back in 1997 was a lot of money. I went in. I bought this thing.

I knew God. I just started, you know, moving and shaking. And it didn't happen. It literally shipwrecked my walk with the Holy Spirit. Like, it was 10 years of recovery of, like, what was that all about? To where I look back, and I was like, God, what is that all? Like, what, what, I will say one thing it's done is when I give you a word now, I will say something like, hey, I believe God might have told me he's going to have to confirm this in you.

I'm a lot wiser how I share that. But I would say for a while, I kind of stopped believing in the promises. I don't ever want to see that happen to anybody. And the only way that doesn't happen is when you get the most important thing becomes the most important thing. And then say with the other, God, whatever happens, happens. So that's just a little personal experience. The second point is this, then. If that's true, if we understand the framework of what's really important, the capital P promises versus the lowercase p promises, how do we walk in the promises?

I want to go back to this verse 1 and 2 again. Now, the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said. And the Lord did for Sarah. He did for Sarah what he had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age at the time God had promised them. I will say we need to be careful when we see what God does with the patriarchs of the faith and the apostles. We know that God can do things like this, but it is a little bit in a different camp, right?

God shows up to them. He actually has shown up in angelic form or in form when he came to the tent and he spoke to them directly. Sarah was there. Remember, she was listening outside the tent and God gives this promise. And what does she do? He laughed at God. Just laughed at him. We'll get to that in a minute because it shows that we can make some mistakes and God's still going to show up. Let me just stop real quick and just say God cares about you deeply and he cares about the things that are interesting and you're excited about.

It says he gives you the desires of your heart. That's another promise. There's these other verses. It says, know that God cares about you deeply. But he also cares about making you into a perfect being that will be in heaven with him. He's going to perfect your nature. And that's more important to him than that promise. The final outcome of you is more important to God than the book you're going to write. I just want you to know, he loves you too much sometimes to give you the thing you want.

Because the final outcome of you, because he loves you more than your thing. He absolutely loves you more than your thing. And so we see that here. The first thing I wrote, and I told you in the circle, it said, the Lord God was gracious. Any promise from God of the universe is a grace given. Who are we to think that God should promise us anything? He is the God of the universe. We turned our backs on him. There is so much grace.

And I love that word grace. The fact that you even believe in the eternal promises or in the promises that he might have for your life is so much grace. It shows how good God is. The fact that God would deal over and over again with people like Sarah and Abraham and Isaac. As I'm reading through Genesis, I just finished it. I'm into Exodus now for the year, trying to read through the scriptures again this year. It's just a train wreck of emotions and mistakes over and over again.

Not understanding, not believing God. But little by little, they became the person that God wanted them to be. So the first thing is gracious. Whatever your promises are, the things you believe for your life, realize that it is a graceful God who loves you deeply. And to say thank you, God, for this and live in grace. So when you're walking in it, just regularly realizing that, God, this is a grace. I submit this promise to you.

The thing that I'm hoping for, the thing that I want so bad, I want to submit it to you. The next thing is God's promises are not dependent upon your perfection. Revelation says God's going to open a door that no one can close and close a door that no one can open, right? I told you earlier in the service, God might have opened a door. If I look back at my personal faithfulness, the faithfulness of our congregation, whatever it is, it would be really easy to say, man, why would God ever do that?

Why would God ever open a door for us? Because God is gracious. And grace is something that you don't deserve. And a promise is something that we oftentimes deserve. She didn't deserve it. In verse 6, Sarah says something. And if you know that back story that I just told you, the laughing in the tent, right? God told her husband something, and she laughed at God. That's a big deal. I don't think you should laugh in God's face.

I don't think it's a cool thing. I don't think it's something that we would feel wise doing. But she laughs at him. What is so interesting in verse 6, look what happens when this promise. Sarah said, God has brought me laughter. And everyone who hears about this will laugh with me. Think of the grief. I mean, back then it was all about providing an heir for the family. That was it. There wasn't like trying to get the corner office.

The things women were going after in that time, this was it. This was the ultimate thing. She couldn't have it. Imagine all the angst. The fact that she would even give her maidservant to her husband and say, make her your wife and go sleep with her. At least I can get someone through my maidservant. She is in a desperate place. She laughed at God. She had tears with God. But when God turned it around, look at that story.

It says, everyone will laugh with me. You know what? It was interesting that she didn't have to be perfect. She laughed at God. What did she name her son? Her son's name is Isaac. If you look at the word Isaac of the Hebrew origin, it's often given to boys. It's derived from the Hebrew name Yetzig, which means he will laugh, and God will give him laughter. Isn't that an incredible? Isn't that an incredible? Look at how God takes the brokenness.

And I will say that God will redeem your brokenness. He has promised that because that's an eternal promise of God. He will restore. He says this to the Israelites. He doesn't say this to us, but I believe this is a scripture we can use. He says it in Joel, I will restore to you the years that the locusts have eaten away. I will promise you this because this is an eternal promise of God, that you might not get the exact thing you want, but God will redeem your brokenness, and he will turn your ashes into beauty, into his glory.

He will turn it around if we make him burst. Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and what? All these other things will be added unto you. And I think that's a beautiful part of the story. So two takeaways for you today as we frame up these promises. First one is this. Get your promises in proper order. I would encourage you during this Lenten season, maybe it's a time to walk with those promises. Write down, God, what I want.

Pray for those things. Go after them. Pray for those things, but make sure that you also understand the other promises of God. If you know all the promises that you want from God, that you feel that he's spoken to you, but maybe you couldn't name five promises out of the Bible, might be time for a tune-up. Might be time to say, hey, I'm just gonna fast my promises for 40 days. God, there's all these things that I want.

I'm gonna not think about it for 40 days. I'm not gonna go after them for 40 days, and for 40 days, I'm gonna pour into your promises what you say about me. That's the first one. Hold tight to the eternals and loosely to the personal promises of God. And number two, sow seeds. This is the second thing you can do after maybe you get through getting things in proper order. Sow seeds into your personal promises. Sow seeds.

What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is if God has spoken to you about writing a book, don't just sit and wait for a publisher to call you. Write. I remember I had been wanting to write my first book, and I said to the Lord, I said, you know, hey, can you just give me a publisher, blah, blah, blah. And I felt a strong word say, are you writing? And I was like, no. And so he said, start writing. So I wrote a children's book for my kids.

I'll tell you what happened. I was at Dietrich's up in Carlsbad, and this is like when that promise thing happens and it hits, and then you gotta be careful not to start living in that direction too much. I finished the children's book. It was about a little rat that lives in London. And I pressed save. It took me like three months to write it. It was called Raskin. And I pressed save, and I said, Lord, if you want me to write any other stuff for you or the kingdom, I wrote a book.

It was for my kids, but have someone contact me. And the next day I got a phone call. And they said, hey, I met you at a conference. We're looking for pastors to write books about parenting and your age group. Would you like to meet for a coffee and talk about writing a book? It was the next day. I was like, for real? Like, really, God? I'm like doing the God dance. You know what I mean? Like the whole thing. And it's interesting, too, because sometimes when you get your promises, then that promise, when I got that promise, it's really hard to manage the promise, right?

And all of a sudden, anxiety, when the window's closing for my next book, and then boom, that was a whole other story. I don't need to preach all that now. But sometimes you get the promise, and it's kind of hard to live with. But so into it. Whatever God has for you, whatever you want to do, if you want to be a teacher, give your time away tutoring. Just whatever it is, sow into the thing that you want to do. It says, when God is faithful with little, he will give you more.

Sow into your promises. Don't give up on those. Final thing I'll say is this. Your job is not to answer the promise, but to be faithful to the promise. Abraham and Sarah, throughout this story, they keep trying to answer the promise themselves. You know? You want a business, or whatever the thing is, you keep trying to force things happen. We do this in relationships all the time. We want that perfect family. We want whatever it is, but I'm willing to sacrifice for less because I want to make the promise happen now, and we don't do things God's way.

If you want things God's way, you got to do things God's way. So I put, just to end with this, the job is not to answer the promise, but be faithful to the promise. With that, I just want to say that God is excited about your promises. He's excited about you. Let me just end with that. He cares about you. If you're into water polo, he loves water polo. If you're into surfing, he loves, you're surfing. If you like macrame, he loves watching you just do your macrame.

If you buy buildings for a living, he loves doing that with you. God is into your stuff. There's just one caveat. Not as much as he's into his stuff. That's it. Some of his stuff is communion, where we get to share the blood and body of Christ, and Pastor Joe is going to lead us in a time of communion where maybe we can reframe some of those promises in our own hearts today. Amen? Amen? Amen.