JAN 26 2025 | Genesis: Behind the Curtain S5E1 | The Story of Isaac: Isaac’s Birth Promised

Sea Change Church · JAN 26 2025 | Genesis S4E1: The Story of Isaac: Isaac's Birth Promised
Genesis 17:15-21
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

I pray that we would use every single dollar we get, every minute of volunteer time would all be used to expand your kingdom, Lord, and that we would be in lockstep with each other as we move forward. Pray these things in your name. Amen. The book of Genesis, chapter 17, verses 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 moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall become nations. Kings of peoples shall come from her. Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child? And Abraham said to God, O that Ishmael might live before you.

God said, No, but Sarah, your wife, shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. As for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation.

But I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year. This is the word of the Lord. Welcome to church. If you've got your Bibles, open them up to Genesis chapter 17. We're back in the book of Genesis. This following up where we left off was season three. We finished up the life of Abraham, for the most part, and we're moving in to the story of Isaac.

Now, if you don't know who Abraham and his wife Sarah are, or who Isaac is, I want to encourage you to get into Genesis and read through the book of Genesis. These are three of the most important people in the Bible. And if you're going to understand the story of the Old Testament, the New Testament, but the story of Jesus, where Jesus comes from, and where our faith is built upon, then you need to understand Abraham and the patriarchs, Isaac, Jacob, and obviously the women that are married to them and part of that story.

If you know Abraham, Abraham, if you don't know, was the first Jew who ever existed. He was a man who was living east of where modern day Israel is. He was a shepherd. And God wanted to start his redemption story of bringing salvation through Jesus Christ through the world, or to the world. And the way that he did that was he picked one person, and from that one person he created a family.

From that family, as you saw in this message, he created a nation. From that nation, the Savior of the world would come, and through the death of Jesus on the cross, salvation would be given to all the nations through him. Abraham is the beginning. Now, God could have chosen anyone. He picked a random shepherd somewhere east of Israel, maybe near kind of Iraq or in that kind of area.

He just picked him. He could have picked somebody in South America. He could have picked a Native American. He could have picked somebody in Australia. He could have picked anybody he wanted, and then called them and to say, I am going to make you a nation. You are a new nation. And his son, Abraham's son, Isaac, has his name changed, and his name is changed to Israel.

He becomes named Israel. So just so you know, this is how it starts. God chose a man. He gave that man a family. That family became a nation. And that nation birthed Jesus Christ, and then through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, all nations will be saved, and that's how God did it. There's a problem, though. Abraham's wife is old and infertile.

It's going to be hard to birth a nation through someone who is infertile, who cannot have children. And so there is a hiccup in the plan. Go to verse 15. And God said to Abraham, as for Sarai, your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. That's important. Circle Sarah there. I will bless her. And moreover, I will give you a son by her.

I will bless her, and she shall become nations. Kings of peoples shall come from her. Abraham fell on his face, and he laughed. He said to himself, shall a child be born to me? A man who is 100 years old. Shall Sarah, who is 90 years old, bear a child? Okay. So we get to this place where there's a kink in the plan. And the thing that was promised to God, it seems like the hurdle is too much.

And Abraham, who has already been said that his faith, he was such a faithful man at this time, had been, you know, reckoned to him as righteousness, was now doubting. And not only doubting, he was laughing. He was laughing at God's plan because it seemed so surreal to him. His wife had already laughed before. Remember, there was two angels and God is how I understand the story.

Come to Abraham, and they tell the story that you're going to have this child, and Sarah's in the tent, and she begins to laugh at God. And the thing that I realize is this metaphor of laughter really is a metaphor for a lack of faith. I mean, granted, it was audible this time, but it's just all of a sudden the things of God no longer seem true to you.

You might have believed them once, but you don't believe them any longer. And you see this. And the story of the promise now is hinging on an impossibility. The story of the promise, the promise of God to save all the nations is now hinging on an impossibility. And I'm not saying that God always answers in every situation in our lives, but is there something perhaps that you've given up hope in, that you've tied to your story, and you've given up hope and you've begun to laugh at God.

And we're also going to look at one other thing, and maybe not actually laughing, but metaphorically, that you've lost faith in that. And then I also want to talk about the difference between our personal lives and the things that God has for us and the destiny of the kingdom of God. And ask you, which one are you more tied to? If you don't get the shiny thing that you want, they don't dance your dance, they don't sing your song, you never meet that husband, you never have that baby, you never meet that wife, you don't get that job.

Is Jesus enough for you? That is a very, excuse me, difficult question. Here's the main point of the message today. Faith is messy. I want to put actually really messy. You'll see that as your main point. You could put really in front of that if you want. Faith is really messy. Abraham's laughter shows faith is a blend of doubt and trust in the relationship with God.

His laughter is doubt, but he's had so many moments of trust. He's had lowlights, huge lowlights. He's had huge highlights of his faith, and maybe that's like you. You've had those moments where like you persevered. You believe God showed up. The check came through. The relationship was healed. The sickness was perhaps healed. Then we've had those lowlights.

We've given up. We've gone back to an addiction. We've gone back to a relationship we shouldn't be in anymore. We've done things where it's a lowlight. And what I have found is faith is not one or the other. Faith is oftentimes messy. But what we find is that faithful people continue to choose faithfulness and go after faithfulness even in the midst of the mess.

Here's some lowlights from Abraham and Sarah's faith. I'm just going to give them to you very quickly. I've got four of each. Abraham was originally called to leave his family and to go to Canaan, the promised land. God said, leave and go. He says, don't take anybody with you. That's going to be found in Genesis 11, 31, and Genesis 12, 4 and 5. The first thing he does is he leaves Canaan, excuse me, he leaves where he is, and he goes on his way to the promised land, but he stops in a place called Haran, Haran.

He stops in Haran, and he settles there for a while. Have you ever done that? I mean, he's faithful, and you're faithful to God. You do something, but you do a half measure. It's kind of a lowlight, right? He has the faith to leave. He has the faith to go to this place. And he goes so far, but he stops, and he hesitates there and doesn't end up making it to Canaan for a very long time.

We also know that God said, leave your family, except, you know, take your wife, Sarai at the time, which means my princess. Take your wife and go, and don't take anybody with you, but then he takes his nephew Lot with him. So he disobeys in that because he just needs a plan B, right? He just needs a little backup to go with him. So that's a lowlight of his faith.

He's fearful in his deception twice. You'll see that in Genesis 12 and Genesis 20. Twice he got into other nations, and his wife was incredibly beautiful, the Scripture says, and he knew that they would just take his wife and kill him. That's how they rolled back then, obviously. And so he twice said, oh, it's not my wife. She's my sister. And the kings came, and they took his wife, and then all of a sudden God showed up to them, and they came back to him.

They said, hey, this is not, I've had a dream or whatever it is. This is not your wife. This is not your sister. This is your wife. Twice he lied because he didn't believe in God's protection for him. That's lowlight. You also have Sarah's doubt and laughter. We talked about that. That's in Genesis 18, 10, and 12. She doubts. And then you also have where she gets to the point where she knows she can't have children anymore, so she takes her maidservant, and she says to her husband Abraham, hey, just take my maidservant, because this is how it worked in their culture.

If you can have a child with her because she is my slave, then her son will be my son, and my line can go through him. That's not God's plan. It was a plan B. What's interesting is even in the midst of all, these are big failures. These are massive failures, probably bigger failures than most anyone in here has done in regard to God. Giving your wife away, lied about it, I mean, all this craziness that's going on, God still shows up.

And we end up here in Genesis 17 with a God who doesn't want the messy, but he's faithful through the messy. And I guess if I can say anything to you today, is if you kind of are in a place where you're like, I'm a mess. We all get to a place where we're a mess. And at any point, you can choose faith again. And God is a faithful God who loves you, and he will continue to immediately get the plan for your life back on track as it's in with his plan.

Here's the highlights of his faith. He has an obedience to leave. In Genesis 12, he leaves. And is there anything you have left? Is there a land that you're in or you've dwelt in metaphorically or a relationship or an addiction or something where you just said, I'm going to leave? God has called you to leave. Or have you gone halfway? I see this in Alcoholics Anonymous all the time.

I'm just not going to drink hard alcohol anymore. Just beer. Just drinking beer. God's told me not to drink, but he's not going to drink hard alcohol. Like beer can't get you drunk, right? You hear that? If you're in AA enough, you will hear people say that. It's halfway to the promised land, man. Halfway. But he did have the obedience to leave. He did something to leave.

He had a belief in God's covenant. In Genesis 15, 6, it said that he believed and God credited him as righteous through his belief. That's the first time we see that we are saved by faith, not by actions. His faith, the thing you can't see, it was credited to him as righteousness. And that's a verse in the New Testament in our entire theology of the redemption through Christ is built upon that verse and the others that follow.

We know his incredible faithfulness is that Sarah does have a son, spoiler alert, his name's Isaac. And God eventually says to him when he's a teenager, when Isaac's a teenager, I want you to take your son Abraham and go sacrifice him to me at what is now the top of the mount, the temple mount in Jerusalem. Right there is the exact place where Jerusalem is.

And this was the hill that he had gone up on. He had obviously made it to the promised land by that time. And Abraham, at this point in his life, God had shown up so many times that he goes up there. He actually has his son Isaac carry the wood and he pulls out a knife to sacrifice him. And an angel stops him and says, whoa, we don't do human sacrifice.

I know the other people do. We don't. I was just testing you. And then there's a ram in the thicket. And he pulls the ram and he sacrifices the ram in the thicket. That's amazing. That is next level. I'm not saying God's ever going to call you to that. But from all the lowlights I just mentioned to you, it would be easy to think that this person's never going to get to that amount of faith.

The final one is Sarah's faith is rewarded. And then Sarah, who was Sarai, whose name was changed, her identity was changed, ends up in the Hebrews chapter 11. Now, if you don't know Hebrews chapter 11, read it. It is the hall of fame of faith. It just starts talking about all these people who were just normal people that had faith. Sarah, who laughs at God, laughs at God the first time, doesn't believe his promise, said, take my maidservant.

Gave her maidservant to her husband to sleep with. But, right, you're not, if you had to make a list of who makes the hall of faith, of fame of faith in the scripture, and no one's famous except Jesus and God himself and the spirit. So there are no humans that are famous. But nonetheless, who make that chapter, I don't think she makes the cut early on.

Maybe you don't either. But your story's not over. Your story's not over. I want to encourage you that faith is messy. We're going to look at two things today and then we're done. Two points are this. I want to look at purpose versus destiny. And I want to look at when laughter becomes legacy. Purpose versus destiny. There's a big difference. I wrote, understanding personal purpose in light of eternal destiny.

There's two things. God has a purpose for your life. There's a lot of ifs and buts in there. God can reroute that plan. I've said it a million times. It's still one of my favorite statements. We give more credit to Google Maps to reroute our life than we do to God. It can find nine routes for you and you agree with it and believe that these are good routes.

God can find 38 routes for your life as well based on our faithfulness. The scripture uses the words, the conjunctions, if and but. If you do this, if you don't do this. And God's going to go, okay, we can go on pause here. He did that with Israel going with Moses to the promised land. 40 years of pause. Some of you might be on pause right now. Because, guys, I'm just waiting for some faithfulness.

So I got you on pause. And I will release the pause if, I don't know your life, but that is a truth of scripture that we see that happening. So we look at purpose versus destiny and we're looking at legacy versus laughter when laughter becomes legacy. Go to verse 15 again, purpose versus destiny. And God said to Abraham, as for Sarai, your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name.

It's a real important shift. It's a real important shift. Identity is huge to God. I was just listening to an Instagram reel about some Hollywood person and they were like, well, I don't really believe in identity. I think it's just a concept that's made up and, you know, and that's, I mean, fine for her. That's unbiblical. God knows who you are.

He knew you before he formed you in the womb. You have an identity in God. And when something is known to God, it is a reality. So even before conception, people would say life starts at conception. I would say it doesn't start at conception. I think that's too soon. I think, or too late. I would say life starts when God thought of you. And if he's known you and you have been in his mind, then you are real and you exist and you will exist because of that.

That's just my interpretation of the scripture. Her name is changed. And he changes her name for a very important reason. Because he is graduating her from something that is in her nature, from something that she was called to by her father. Her father and her family gave her a name. But God says, I have a name that adds to that, that calls you into something deeper.

In Revelation, one of my favorite, most interesting, I would say, existential verses in the Bible. There's just one verse. And it says that Jesus will come to you when you're in heaven if you believed in his name. And he has a stone, a white stone. And it has your true name on it. And it says the only people that will ever know that name are you and him.

And he will give you a stone with your true name on it. And he will know you with a depth of intimacy like no one has ever known you. You will know yourself for the first time ever. And then you will live in that reality for eternity, the scripture says. That's powerful. That's identity. Identity does exist. God has a purpose and a plan for that identity that he gives you.

But he doesn't need to fulfill that identity if you don't want to get on board. Because he can still reroute it. Because he knows the destination is his eternal destiny. He cares more about your eternal destiny than he does about your momentary purpose here on earth. That's a tough thing to swallow. God cares more about your eternal destiny with him than he does whether you write that book, sing that song, or dance that dance, or meet that person.

He cares more about your eternal destiny. I put the New Testament leans heavily. If you look in the scriptures, you are not going to find, even though we bend them, you know, to make bumper stickers that tell you that you're the most important thing in God's whole world, your purpose. As an individual, yes, he loves you, he'll die for you. It says the New Testament leans heavily towards God's eternal purposes.

Ephesians, the book of Ephesians, all about that. His eternal purposes. With personal calling serving as a secondary and supportive role. Individual callings are valuable, but they find their meaning in how they align and further God's kingdom. What I'm saying is if you want to write that book, you want to dance that dance, sing that song, is it for the glory of God?

Or have you convinced yourself it's for the glory of God when perhaps your motive, which Proverbs says we don't even know our motives, but perhaps our motives are not as pure as we think. And so we see God wanting to call us deeper into this. The Sarai is really interesting. Sarai, if you'll look in the notes, says, from Sarai, which means my princess, her name was changed to Sarah, which just means princess.

It signifies a shift in her identity. She's no longer seen only in relation to her immediate family, but as a matriarch of the nations, reflecting God's broader eternal purpose for her. I think it's interesting. Her father said, I have two girls. I'm a girl dad, right? I always wanted to be a girl dad. Had some really close friends of mine that had girls, and as soon as I saw them, I was just like, I'm going to be a girl dad.

That's all I want to be. I've always wanted to be a girl dad. I could have had 39 girls, and I would have been happy. And I know when you hold them for the first, like, there's just something, just my princess. They're just little princesses, right? I just want to squeeze them, you know, and they're little fat, chunky legs, and they're just awesome.

I love it. My princess. But never was I thinking princess of the nations. She's my princess, and I will defend and protect her and both of them with my very life, with my blood. I will do anything to protect those two girls, my wife included, obviously wife priority number one. But I never thought beyond that. God comes in and says, I'm changing her name.

Yes, she has a family. She's a princess in this family. That's so great. Her dad loves her. They see she's the little princess, and maybe you have a little princess that runs around in your house, right? But God says, I'm changing that, and I'm gonna tie her momentary purpose, which will pass away, because your momentary purpose in this life will pass away.

And I'm going to tie it. I'm going to knot it together, knead it together, if you want to use that analogy, with my eternal purposes, because little did she know when she was only wanting a child. And that was a big thing. That was the thing. The number one thing in that culture, in many cultures today, for women, is to be a matriarch of a family. To pass life on in the family name.

That is the most important thing. It isn't about having a corner office. If you go to different places, I've talked to Carmen, our missionary. You look at almost every woman she works with. The number one thing for a woman, whether you like it or not in a Western culture, is to be a matriarch of the family, to pass life on to the family, to pass that family on, and to raise up the next generation of people who will lead and change the world and support their family.

That's what it's all about. Little did she know when she wanted that, that it was far inferior to what God had planned because he was gonna bring Jesus Christ himself through her line. The thing that you want for yourself, God wants to tie it to his stuff. And it'll be exponentially spiritually nuclear. It'll have a power. It'll become spiritually radioactive.

It'll have a power that affects everything, that if you leave it somewhere, it'll have a half-life. You know, they talk about that with radiation. If God is on what you're doing, and you are in, whether it's your marriage or the song or the worship you're doing or whatever you're doing, your business, if God is on that, you can take that thing and move it, and it will still resonate there with a spiritual half-life because it is of God, and it will continue to resonate in that place.

I wanna assure you, you don't want what you want unless it's tied to the eternal purpose of God. And that's a great question to ask yourself. The other thing that I think is, is besides her getting more than she bargained for, because if you start saying, God, I want what you want, and you can take my thing, and I don't need my thing if you're not part of it, that's a great prayer.

God, if I'm not living with a motive or you need to change my motives, don't give me the thing I want. Pray that. Pray that. That'll start getting you on the road to probably closer to getting it than you would have been because you're saying, God, what matters to me is Jesus Christ and him crucified. I was with a 16-year-old student. One of the kids in the congregation reached out to me.

He said, I wanna ask you some questions, and I love it. I got a bunch of high school students that are reaching out that wanna hang out and talk, and I'm like, awesome. So we went out to breakfast yesterday. We're sitting there having breakfast, and he's like, hey, I've been watching YouTube videos on teleportation and this thing called dream recording, and he was going into all this stuff.

And kids are like, there's a lot on YouTube, and he's asking questions about heaven, and he wanted to know about aliens and all these things and his afterlife and this whole thing. And I said, bro, the book of Enoch, and I was like, bro, that stuff is awesome. There's two buckets, though. I said, first of all, have you read the whole Bible? He says, no.

I said, let's start there. Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added unto you. I said, let's start with that place right there. And I said, there's this bucket here, but then there's this other bucket that really matters, and it's the eternal bucket. It's that Jesus Christ died for you. He's coming again. He has blood set us free.

I said, this is all that matters. I said, enjoy that other stuff, but you've got to know about the eternal things of God, and that's what I'm saying to you. We've got to make the eternal things of God the most important thing in our life. Here's the next thing that I see. This is just quick, and for the ladies and the men. If you would, go to verse 19.

Verse 16. I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall become nations. Kings of people shall come from her. Then Abraham fell on his face, and he says, and he goes on and on. She, at that point, is not just an appendage to Abraham. I'm going to bless you, and she's going to just have the baby. He says, I'm going to bless her.

She is actually brought into the covenant and becomes the covenant keeper and the covenant maker. God brings a woman into the covenant. He tells Abraham, he tells her husband, I'm going to bless her. She will be blessed, and she will do this, and she will do this, as opposed to, I'm going to bless you, which he has said the whole time, and then you're just going to have this wife.

And wife, you just do your duty. Just go have the babies, give them to me, and I'll take care of business from there. No. He brings you into the covenant, and that's powerful. And I think it's powerful for women as well to remember their importance as part of the covenant and covenant keepers. That just quickly came to me, and I wanted to hit it up.

As we come in for a landing here, I want to talk about this idea of when laughter becomes legacy. The irony that, well, go to verse 19. God said, What is interesting, if you know what Isaac's name means, means laughter. If I'm God, and I'm going to bring this son, and twice now they've laughed at me, I'm not calling the kid laughter, unless I'm willing to redeem that laughter and turn that laughter into joy.

Because it goes on to say, in Genesis 21.8, when we're not there yet, Sarah says this, God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears me about this will laugh with me. The beauty, it's so beautiful. It resonates with beauty. The beauty of taking someone's pain that had been turned into, I don't know if it was mockery, whatever that is, that laughing, that laughing.

It was just an apathy. To take that and to say, no, that thing, your biggest mess there, that's a big mess. And I'm going to take the mess, and I'm going to name your child that mess. But it's a different type of laughter. I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing with you. And as she says, everyone will laugh with you, or will laugh with me. I want to say that mess in your life, that thing, that thing that's a big mess.

Maybe it's a mess right now. Maybe you just, you're in a mess. God can redeem and rename that mess and change that and turn that laughter into a legacy. And maybe you've seen people do that. The name Isaac, meaning laughs, captures the moment, symbolizing both human doubt, God's power to fulfill his promise. Here's the takeaway. Your faith doesn't have to be perfect to be powerful.

Your faith doesn't have to be perfect. Keep moving forward. God's grace is bigger than your mess. God's grace. God's grace. Have you disqualified yourself? Just for a moment, you just disqualified, disqualified the promise. Two things you can do this week. The first thing is, sit by yourself. I think we sold out of all of our little candles that we use.

I like lighting a candle because it's just symbolic to me, the fire of God. So I light one of our little candles and I sit there and I sit with God and just begin to say, God, I got this thing that is my purpose and I want it and I just want to tie it. I want to give it to you. Take the things that matter most to you and give them to God and say, God, I don't want them unless they're tied to your eternal purpose.

Because at that point, there is a reactive chain that will change it to become more than you've ever dreamed. So I'd say that's the first thing, is that. And the other thing is to take that pain and that mess and invite God into it. And maybe this is the only prayer you can pray. God, get me to the place where I want to pray to have that removed from my life.

Because I've been in that place where I don't even want to pray for that thing to be removed in my life. I just know it's not real. But I can pray, God, will you please get me to the place where I want that thing to be removed from my life. Amen? Let's stand if you would. I'm gonna invite the worship team forward. Amen. We have the prayer team come forward as well and they'll be here in front.

Chris is gonna lead us in a chorus of her choosing. Let's just lean into this. This is a powerful message. Not saying my words are that powerful, but the scripture here, what happened and what God did in this story is so important. So I want to encourage you to, let's lean into that for a second, then I'll come and bless you at the end. Amen. Oh, how He loves us.

Oh, how He loves us. Oh, how He loves us. Oh, how He loves us. Oh, how He loves us. Oh, how He loves us. Oh, how He loves us. Oh, how He loves us. Oh, how He loves us. Oh, how He loves us. Oh, how He loves us. Oh, how He loves us. Come on, let's sing. You love us. Oh, how He loves us. Oh, how He loves us. Oh, how He loves us. Oh, how He loves us. Amen. Well, Nancy, stretch out your hands right now.

If you need prayer today, come forward. If you've never made a decision to follow Jesus, come forward. We want to lead you to Christ. If you need to be prayed for, for some of the messes in your life, come forward. Our team is here. We have a big team here. We want to pray for you today. I believe it's an important message and a time and an opportunity.

Now, Lord, I want to ask that You would bless Your people. You would cover Your people, Lord Jesus. That in our messes, God, You would give us grace, that You would let us find our identity and You be tied to eternity, not tied to the temporal, to let go of those things, God, to make Your story, making You famous, the most important thing to us. God, in the wanting and the longing, sometimes we wait too long.

We feel like we're waiting too long, but Your timing is perfect. You know our name. You know our true name. And let us step into that true identity, become the people You've called us to be, to walk in an advancing kingdom forward, to change this world through the blood of Jesus Christ and through the covenant that comes through Abraham, but that we are invited into to be covenant keepers as well, God.

God, we just bless You. We bless Your people, God, as we get serious about You this week, as we get serious. And just a word from the Lord, just in my heart right now, that some of you know you need to get serious if you've not been serious. And it's time to get serious, whatever that means to you. If that's a word for you, then go get about it. I send you out now with a blessing from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet, to your hands, through the restoring of relationships, to the bringing back of the prodigals, the healing of the cancers and the anxieties, the divorce-free church, Lord God.

Would You bless these people in Your name? Amen. We love You. We'll see You next week.