I Said What I Said

If you have a Bible, you can go and grab it and turn it to the book of Genesis—to the book of Genesis. We'll be looking at chapter 21. If you don't have a Bible, you can use a pew Bible that's in front of you. If you don't own a Bible, we're very glad that you're here. Feel free to just keep that Bible; we would love for that to be our gift to you. We would love for you to be able to have a copy of God's word that you can keep for yourself and read and see what the Lord has to say to you.

We'll be looking at the very first book of your Bible. So, if you flip past the table of contents and go into Genesis, we'll be looking at chapter 21. The big number is the chapter number, and the little numbers are the verse numbers. We'll be looking at the entire chapter, Genesis 21. I'll be reading from verse one.

The Lord came 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 appointed time God had told him. Abraham named his son who was born to him—the one Sarah bore to him—Isaac. When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him, as God had commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. Sarah said, ‑God has made me laugh, and everyone who hears will laugh with me.‑ She also said, ‑Who would have told Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne a son for him in his old age.‑ The child grew and was weaned, and Abraham held a great feast on the day Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son mocking—the one Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham. So she said to Abraham, ‑Drive out this slave with her son, for the son of this slave will not be a coheir with my son Isaac!‑ This was very distressing to Abraham because of his son. But God said to Abraham, ‑Do not be distressed about the boy and about your slave. Whatever Sarah says to you, listen to her, because your offspring will be traced through Isaac, and I will also make a nation of the slave’s son because he is your offspring.‑ Early in the morning Abraham got up, took bread and a waterskin, put them on Hagar’s shoulders, and sent her and the boy away. She left and wandered in the Wilderness of Beer-sheba. When the water in the skin was gone, she left the boy under one of the bushes and went and sat at a distance, about a bowshot away, for she said, ‑I can’t bear to watch the boy die!‑ While she sat at a distance, she wept loudly. God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, ‑What’s wrong, Hagar? Don’t be afraid, for God has heard the boy crying from the place where he is. Get up, help the boy up, and grasp his hand, for I will make him a great nation.‑ Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well. So she went and filled the waterskin and gave the boy a drink. God was with the boy, and he grew; he settled in the wilderness and became an archer. He settled in the Wilderness of Paran, and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt. At that time Abimelech, accompanied by Phicol the commander of his army, said to Abraham, ‑God is with you in everything you do. Swear to me by God here and now, that you will not break an agreement with me or with my children and descendants. As I have been loyal to you, so you will be loyal to me and to the country where you are a resident alien.‑ And Abraham said, ‑I swear it.‑ But Abraham complained to Abimelech because of the well that Abimelech’s servants had seized. Abimelech replied, ‑I don’t know who did this thing. You didn’t report anything to me, so I hadn’t heard about it until today.‑ Abraham took flocks and herds and gave them to Abimelech, and the two of them made a covenant. Abraham separated seven ewe lambs from the flock. And Abimelech said to Abraham, ‑Why have you separated these seven ewe lambs?‑ He replied, ‑You are to accept the seven ewe lambs from me so that this act will serve as my witness that I dug this well.‑ Therefore that place was called Beer-sheba because it was there that the two of them swore an oath. After they had made a covenant at Beer-sheba, Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, left and returned to the land of the Philistines. Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beer-sheba, and there he called on the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God. And Abraham lived as an alien in the land of the Philistines for many days.

— Genesis 21:1-34 (CSB)

Let's pray.

Lord, we do call upon your name—on the name of the everlasting God. We know, Lord, that without your help, we would be found to be utterly faithless. Our ears would be closed to your word. So, we do ask, Lord, that you would come and speak to us this morning. Help us to understand and to treasure you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

We've been going through the book of Genesis for a long time. As we've been following the past nine chapters of Abraham's life, we've seen example after example of God giving promises to Abraham about something that would happen in the future. In every single chapter over the course of 25 years of Abraham's life, he's had to wait for God to come through on what He said that He would do.

Now, in chapter 21, after nine chapters of waiting—after 25 years of waiting for God to come through—God finally does what He said that He would do. By seeing God doing what He said He would do, we get to see by extension that God is always faithful to all of His promises. We actually see three examples of God's faithfulness here in this story.

First, we get to see God's faithfulness in a feast as He fulfills His promises to Abraham: faithfulness in a feast. Second, we see that God is faithful in famine: in famine, as He interacts with Hagar and Ishmael. And thirdly, we see that God is faithful in foreign lands: foreign lands, as Abraham still has to wait for God to fulfill the entirety of the promise that God had promised him.

Faithful in the Feast

Let's start with point number one: faithful in a feast. Read with me from verse one.

The Lord came 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 appointed time God had told him. Abraham named his son who was born to him—the one Sarah bore to him—Isaac. When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him, as God had commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.

— Genesis 21:1-5 (CSB)

They have been listening to God's words for over 20 years. Abraham and Sarah followed in faith, they failed in sin, they've seen partial fulfillments in blessing the nations, and they have been patiently waiting for God to fulfill what He said that He would do—provide a seed, a promised offspring, to them. And now, in chapter 21, that seed has finally come.

And suddenly, it reads like all of these covenant promises that God gives to Abraham in Genesis 17 suddenly dump like a bucket of cascading water onto Abraham and his wife, Sarah. God says in Genesis 17 that He will bless Sarah, and then God comes to Sarah in Genesis 21. God says that Sarah will bear Abraham a son in chapter 17, and Sarah bears Abraham a son in chapter 21. He tells Abraham to name him Isaac in chapter 17, and Abraham names him Isaac in chapter 21. God tells him to circumcise his son in chapter 17, and Abraham does it in chapter 21. God tells him it will happen in the next year when Abraham was 99 years old in chapter 17, and it says in chapter 21 that Abraham was 100 years old. If you're bad at math, that's one more than 99.

Every single setup in chapter 17 has a payoff, and it all happens in the beginning of this chapter in chapter 21. The focus of what happens here is not on all that Abraham and Sarah did. You can imagine telling this story in a way that focuses on Abraham and Sarah's experience after decades of waiting—the tears of joy after holding their son, Abraham's sigh of relief as his shoulders drop in the face of all that the Lord has done for them. But the story does not do that. That's not the focus in these first verses.

In fact, look at verses 1 through 3 and how they describe this great fulfillment for Abraham and Sarah. There is a focus, and it's not on Abraham and Sarah at all. It says that the Lord came as He said, the Lord did what He promised, and that the son came at the appointed time that God had told him.

In other words, the reason why these promises came to pass—the reason why Abraham and Sarah were able to receive this remarkable gift of a son—wasn't because of anything that they did. If anything, if you look at what they did do, most of their proactive action and decisions actively worked against God's promises, not for them. Abraham gives up Sarah to a foreign king. Sarah tries to create a son through another woman, Hagar. All the times that Abraham and Sarah tried to microwave God's promises, it ended up in sinful disaster.

But when the right time came—not their timing, but God's timing—God acted exactly as He said that He would. God said it, God did it. Good things come to those who wait. In fact, waiting is one of the main things that you will do as a Christian for the rest of your life.

You might have heard the phrase, "God helps those who help themselves." Let's be honest: there are plenty of times where there's really nothing you can do to help yourself. Abraham and Sarah don't bear a son because of their own initiative or how steadfast they were in their efforts. There's plenty of times where circumstances in life corner us in such a way that we are completely immobilized and unable to do anything for ourselves.

In those moments, what will you do? Where will you look? If you look inside of yourself, if you look for inward motivation on the basis of your strength, you will always fall. It doesn't matter if you're someone living in 21st-century Southern California or if you are Abraham living in the 22nd century BC, because the weight is too heavy. The wait is too long.

Left to our own devices, we will come up with every single strategy to avoid bearing this weight of waiting. And the only way that you and I can withstand that kind of waiting—that terrible, quiet, staring-at-a-clock-as-it-ticks kind of waiting—is if you don't bear that weight yourself, but let God bear the weight of our waiting. For God's words to be what you lean on and rely on in times of waiting—that God will do as He said, that He would do what He promised, that He would fulfill His promises at the appointed time that God had told us.

What kind of weight do you place on God's words as you wait? Whatever weight you don't place on Him will inevitably end up on you. That pressure will continue to build. And don't be surprised if you fold under the weight of promises that you weren't designed to carry.

What better way to continue to hang on to God's promises than to come and hear from God's word week after week and try to recalibrate our hearts in light of what God said? That He will hold us fast. That His words are absolutely true. God always comes through on what He says according to what He wills, when He wills.

Abraham and Sarah learned that the hard way over and over again throughout their waiting. They found themselves wanting. And now, at long last, their longing turns into laughter. You can see that in verse 6: Sarah said, "God has made me laugh and everyone who hears will laugh with me." She also said, "Who would have told Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne a son for him in his old age."

Quick side note: I know who told him. God told him. Sarah used to laugh in disbelief; now she gets to laugh in delight. What she thought was impossible actually happens by God's hand. I mean, a 90-year-old is nursing a child, and that is as crazy back then as it would be crazy today. Sarah has been through menopause, yet she's able to nurse children.

Not only nurse, but this child is able to not be nursed anymore—or to be able to be weaned. And that weaning may not carry the same level of significance as we would place on it today. You can see there in verse 8 that it says that the child grew and was weaned, and Abraham held a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. I don't know if you host a huge party on the day that your baby doesn't need milk anymore. That's a huge deal if you understand the culture back then.

In fact, you would understand that this is a huge deal if you grew up in Korean culture. You know, one of the biggest celebrations that happen for children in Korea isn't just right when the kid is born; it's at a hundred days, a giant celebration. You have a bunch of people come in, and the reason why they celebrate at a hundred days isn't because they don't love the kid when they come into the world. It's because in a culture where infant mortality is common, where just having a child born isn't a guarantee that they will stay, being able to hit a hundred days of life means exiting a critical window of high risk.

You can imagine how precious Isaac would be to Abraham and Sarah. And the love that they have for their child probably also expresses itself in anxiety for their kid. But not only is God faithful for this child to be born, he's able to grow. And as a baby grows, the day that Isaac is weaned shows a continued fulfillment of God's promises that this child isn't going to die. And if you knew that, you would celebrate, too. You would host a great feast. And that's when Abraham celebrates to rejoice over what has happened.

And how much greater for those of us who have received an even greater promise. I mean, is anything impossible for the Lord? Won't He do exactly as He promised? Can't we think of example after example of times that God has proven His faithfulness in our lives, His faithfulness in His word? And what greater example do you and I need than the good news of the son of Abraham who was born for us? Not Isaac, but Jesus, born of a virgin.

But nothing is impossible for the Lord—living the perfect life that we could never live, truly trusting in all of God's faithfulness as He Himself was faithful to His Father, bearing the sins of all who would believe on His shoulders, bearing the wrath of a holy God, but conquering death in His victorious resurrection, just as He said that He would, because nothing is impossible for our Lord. You and I have every reason to trust Him, to celebrate that kind of new birth, how we've proved Him over and over, that there's true power in His blood.

And God gives us grace in the example of His Son, who is crucified and resurrected for us to be able to trust Him all the more. If you're not a Christian, that is such good news that's available for you. If you come to know Jesus, I promise that all of heaven will host a celebration, rejoicing over that good news of you turning from your sin and finding new birth in Christ. And we will celebrate later when you get baptized.

But this feast doesn't just result in laughter of joy. It also results in a different kind of laughter—not in disbelief, not in delight, but in derision. Someone is mocking.

Faithful in the Famine

Point number two: faithful in famine. Read with me from verse 9.

But Sarah saw the son mocking—the one Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham. So she said to Abraham, ‑Drive out this slave with her son, for the son of this slave will not be a coheir with my son Isaac!‑ This was very distressing to Abraham because of his son. But God said to Abraham, ‑Do not be distressed about the boy and about your slave. Whatever Sarah says to you, listen to her, because your offspring will be traced through Isaac, and I will also make a nation of the slave’s son because he is your offspring.‑

— Genesis 21:9-13 (CSB)

Ishmael must be feeling pretty awkward during this celebration for his half-brother, thinking to himself, "I've been here the whole time." So, he laughs, and his laughter isn't just like an innocent kind of laughter. This laughter is a condescending mockery of what's happening. I mean, if you want to completely invalidate someone's existence, don't be upset at them; make fun of them. Laugh at them. Sometimes it isn't bullets or fists that inflict the most amount of damage, but laughter, mockery, and belittlement.

You know that Galatians 4:29 says that Ishmael, the child born as a result of the flesh, persecuted the one born as a result of the Spirit—that Ishmael laughed at his brother. Then Paul looks at that and says that he persecuted the child of the promise. Because while mockery doesn't inflict any physical damage, it damages the worthiness of the subject. It's the opposite of worship. If worship exalts, mockery rejects; it ridicules, it lowers.

It is no wonder that when Jesus is crucified, His persecutors don't just kill Him; they scoff at Him. They mock Him. They try to belittle who He is. It's no wonder that the psalmist says in Psalm 1 that how happy is the one who does not walk in the advice of the wicked or stand in the pathway with sinners or sit in the company of mockers. The climax of that progression isn't just the wicked, isn't just the sinful—it's those who mock, those who belittle the righteous, those who make a mockery of God's promises.

You see, Ishmael isn't just playfully bullying his little brother. He's making a mockery of God's promises. He's taking God's everlasting promise and putting a big, giant clown nose on it. And Sarah is having none of it. It's not just that she's offended on behalf of her son, even though that's certainly true. It's that she knows that Ishmael is diametrically opposed to everything that Isaac stands for. He can't even celebrate his brother surviving infancy. And she knows that Ishmael will be a thorn in Isaac's life, trying to intrude on all the promises that are offered to him. And so she tells Abraham, her husband, "Get rid of this guy. Get rid of Hagar and Ishmael."

As you can imagine, Ishmael's father is quite distressed. This was very distressing to Abraham because of his son. But God speaks; He intervenes. And it turns out that it's not Sarah who is heartless; it's that Abraham is wrongfully heartful. It's possible for your compassion to extend to someone in such a way that it overrides your conviction. And when our love for someone surpasses our love for the Lord, you rightly need to cast that thing out. For Abraham, it's as tangible and as clear as even casting out his own son, because saying yes to the Lord's promises means saying no to anything that stands opposed to Him.

Now, I'm not saying that God is instructing you to disown any of your kids. That's not what I'm trying to say. First Peter 3 tells wives of unbelieving husbands to stay in their marriage to witness Christlikeness to them and thereby save them by extension of their godly living and love. And Paul instructs the same thing in 1 Corinthians 7: if you're married to an unbelieving spouse, stay in the marriage unless that person decides to leave.

Genesis 21 is not giving you instruction on whether to cut off or not cut off toxic family members. It does, however, give us instruction on how to cut sinful ones from our spiritual family. The biblical term for that is church discipline: church discipline.

Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 5:11 not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister and is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or verbally abusive, a drunkard or a swindler. Don't associate with anyone like that. That includes mockery, being verbally abusive. Don't associate with anyone who calls themselves family but does not act like family, because sentimentality doesn't cover sin, and you can have affections for the wrong thing. When you're the family of the promise and you have someone who is outside of the promise based on the way that they live, you are to remove the evil person from among you.

That's why Paul, looking at Genesis 21, is able to say in Galatians 4:28-31:

Now you too, brothers and sisters, like Isaac, are children of promise. But just as then the child born as a result of the flesh persecuted the one born as a result of the Spirit, so also now. But what does the Scripture say? ‑Drive out the slave and her son, for the son of the slave will never be a coheir with the son of the free woman.‑ Therefore, brothers and sisters, we are not children of a slave but of the free woman.

— Galatians 4:28-31 (CSB)

I want you to understand what Paul is depicting here. You have people in the church—you have Judaizers that are claiming that you need to be circumcised in order to be part of the body, and they're persecuting the Gentiles, right? They're ostracizing them; they're pushing them out. And Paul is actually telling them to do the exact opposite thing: go after these people because they are not children of the promise. Because you cannot bear the name of Jesus and hate your brother and sister in Christ.

More importantly, if you are behaving in such a way that's out of step with the gospel of Christ, you rightly need to disidentify from those people. Think about how many churches are plagued with people that are wreaking havoc with unaddressed sin, with people that feel paralyzed and unsure with how to handle it. That does not serve a church body; it actually harms them. Imagine if Isaac had to live the rest of his life with Ishmael continuing to torment him week after week.

What church discipline does isn't us hating a person. What it does is create a clear line of delineation between what right Christian living and wrong Christian living looks like. We don't discipline because we want to persecute the sinful person; we discipline because we want someone who's walking in unrepentant sin to be able to know that they are not right with God unless they repent, unless they're able to walk rightly with Him. Because we have a responsibility as a church to clearly demarcate between those who are walking rightly with the Lord and those that are not. We are not children of the flesh, but we're born children of the promise.

Abraham is greatly distressed because of that. I mean, you could imagine how hard it is to look at someone that you love and to push them out. I pray that none of us ever have to experience something like that in our lives, and that if we do that, we only do that with tears. But the Lord tells him to do the right thing. To Abraham's credit, he wastes no time in obeying the Lord. You see that in verse 14.

Early in the morning Abraham got up, took bread and a waterskin, put them on Hagar’s shoulders, and sent her and the boy away. She left and wandered in the Wilderness of Beer-sheba. When the water in the skin was gone, she left the boy under one of the bushes and went and sat at a distance, about a bowshot away, for she said, ‑I can’t bear to watch the boy die!‑ While she sat at a distance, she wept loudly. God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, ‑What’s wrong, Hagar? Don’t be afraid, for God has heard the boy crying from the place where he is. Get up, help the boy up, and grasp his hand, for I will make him a great nation.‑ Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well. So she went and filled the waterskin and gave the boy a drink. God was with the boy, and he grew; he settled in the wilderness and became an archer. He settled in the Wilderness of Paran, and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.

— Genesis 21:14-21 (CSB)

Abraham gets up and doesn't wait to follow the Lord's instructions. He doesn't delay. He gets up early in the morning, puts bread and a waterskin on Hagar's shoulders, and sends them out. And now the camera shifts to Hagar with the weight of the world on her shoulders, reentering a wilderness yet again. And this time, she runs out of water, abandons her boy, and she weeps. And can you just imagine how hopeless of an experience that would be for Hagar?

While the Lord doesn't show up immediately, the Lord hears and He sees. And the Lord speaks to her. God has heard the cries of Ishmael, and He meant what He said earlier when God told Hagar in chapter 16 that He would make Ishmael into a great nation. He meant it, and so Hagar is able to see the well and, by extension, stay in the wilderness.

God said in Genesis 16 that Ishmael would grow up to be a wild donkey of a man—those are God's own words. And Ishmael ends up growing exactly where you would expect a wild donkey to grow up: in the wilderness. It's not just that he's in a wild environment, but he'd be wild in heart as well. Hagar grabs a wife for him from Egypt, so it's not just that Ishmael is outside of the line of the promise, but that he's wed to the city of man rather than the city of God. He is outside of the territory.

And while Ishmael the man is no longer in the story, his shadow will loom through the rest of this book. You may know the story of Jacob and Esau: how Jacob deceives his dad and receives the blessing instead of Esau. When Esau finds out, he's so upset. You know who he goes out to marry? He marries an Ishmaelite. When Joseph is sold into slavery, before he goes to Egypt, he is sold to Ishmaelites. Ishmael's line continues to be an ever-present obstacle to the people of God at every single step of the way. And yet, God is still faithful to them.

Hagar's eyes are opened, and there's a well. I love that. I love that He didn't create a well right there; He opens her eyes, and she sees it. Turns out that Hagar's misery was both a reality—she didn't have water—and a mirage; she couldn't see the well that was there the whole time.

I think it's so true for all of us who are seeking to follow the Lord that in times of hopelessness, when things feel hopeless, on one level that experience is absolutely true. It's okay to feel the weight and the reality of what we go through walking through this broken world. And yet, at the same time, God hears and He provides. In fact, God is doing a thousand things that we can't see, that we don't know. We don't know how this well got there. We don't have the history; we don't know who built it. And yet, God orchestrated all of reality to be able to provide this well in this moment for Hagar and Ishmael to be able to rejuvenate themselves and continue in their lives.

The Lord hears. The Lord provides. There will be times in your wanting and your waiting where all you want to do is weep and die. But just because you don't see doesn't mean that the Lord doesn't care. Pray and ask that the Lord will open your eyes to be able to see what you can't see, and even if you can't see, trust in what the Lord is doing. I love what Charles Spurgeon says: "When you can't see his hand, trust his heart."

But this isn't the only well in the story, and it's not the only example of God's faithfulness.

Faithful in Foreign Lands

Let's close with our last point here: faithful in foreign lands. Look at verse 22.

At that time Abimelech, accompanied by Phicol the commander of his army, said to Abraham, ‑God is with you in everything you do. Swear to me by God here and now, that you will not break an agreement with me or with my children and descendants. As I have been loyal to you, so you will be loyal to me and to the country where you are a resident alien.‑

— Genesis 21:22-23 (CSB)

At the very end of our passage, we see King Abimelech come back into the scene. And this time, it's not because Abraham gave him his sister; it's because of what Abraham can do for him. He tells him, "I know God is with you." So, he wants to secure a covenant, an agreement between him and Abraham. He wants to make sure that the loyalty that he's shown will also be returned.

Now, last week we talked about how Abimelech had a very quick repentance. God confronts him on his sin, and he turns around right away to make things right. And here we see Abimelech not just show quick repentance but earnest faith. Notice the way he talks: he doesn't give Abraham very much credit; he credits Abraham's God. He believes that God has blessed Abraham and that by blessing Abraham, he's banking on this promise that if he blesses Abraham, he will also be blessed. And that's why he wants a covenant, because he knows that a covenant with Abraham is a covenant with Abraham's God.

But Abraham doesn't seem concerned about God at all. Instead, he's focused on the logistics of a well. You read that in verse 24.

And Abraham said, ‑I swear it.‑ But Abraham complained to Abimelech because of the well that Abimelech’s servants had seized. Abimelech replied, ‑I don’t know who did this thing. You didn’t report anything to me, so I hadn’t heard about it until today.‑ Abraham took flocks and herds and gave them to Abimelech, and the two of them made a covenant. Abraham separated seven ewe lambs from the flock. And Abimelech said to Abraham, ‑Why have you separated these seven ewe lambs?‑ He replied, ‑You are to accept the seven ewe lambs from me so that this act will serve as my witness that I dug this well.‑ Therefore that place was called Beer-sheba because it was there that the two of them swore an oath. After they had made a covenant at Beer-sheba, Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, left and returned to the land of the Philistines. Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beer-sheba, and there he called on the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God. And Abraham lived as an alien in the land of the Philistines for many days.

— Genesis 21:24-34 (CSB)

Just to make that clear: an alien is a sojourner. Have you ever seen videos of people fighting over lawn space next to their house? I love watching these videos of just petty neighbors duking it out over like one foot of horizontal space as they mow their lawns or as they pitch fences next to each other. I saw some videos on social media of a man fighting with his neighbor to the point where they would even tear down the fences that the other person would put up as they're arguing over twelve inches of territory. Petty stuff.

And that is the energy that Abraham is bringing to this function. It seems like Abimelech's servants have claimed this well by eminent domain. It's their land, it's their king, and Abraham is bothered by it. He has a problem with it. He can't get over it. It's bugging him so much that he calls the mayor, and so he complains to Abimelech. And Abimelech has no idea. You can see his response: he's like, "I didn't know anything about this well."

And Abraham is so caught up in this petty well-beef that's going on that when Abimelech presents the covenant for mutual loyalty—one of the most obvious examples of God's faithfulness to him in blessing the nations and people blessing him by extension—Abraham is focused on seven lambs. And Abimelech is like, "What are these lambs for?" And Abraham says, "It's for the well!"

I mean, can you imagine that? Imagine if a pagan king comes to you right now and wants to pledge mutual loyalty because of your God, and you want to say, "Yeah, but my plumbing is off." We do that all the time, don't we? We take up all of God's blessings and tunnel-vision on that one thing that seems to have a vice grip on our hearts. You could live in the Garden of Eden and fixate on one fruit, and we can look at all of God's blessings that He's given us and focus on one well—focus more on obtaining justice for ourselves and what we think we deserve rather than being overwhelmed with gratitude at the blessings of a faithful God.

After all, the only reason why Abraham has any of these things is because of God's faithfulness. The only reason why Abraham has his wife instead of Abimelech is because God intervened in the last chapter. The only reason why Abraham can rightly dismiss his son in the flesh so that he can focus on his son of the promise is because God provided that son. And even now, the only reason why Abraham even has the opportunity to strike a covenant with Abimelech is because of God's faithful presence with him in everything that he does.

It is so easy to focus on everything God hasn't done yet. And for Abraham, it's true. I mean, think about the promises that God gives Abraham in Genesis 12 of a people, a place, and power. He receives a people: he has his son. He gets to see the power expressed in the blessing that Abimelech wants. But you know what? He doesn't have a place. He doesn't have property.

In fact, the text seems to repeat over and over again that Abraham is an alien—a resident alien, a sojourner, a foreigner. In other words, this is not where he came from, and this is not where he's necessarily allowed to be. He can't have a place that he calls his own. And that promise that hasn't been fulfilled yet, that waiting, fuels Abraham's anxiety.

And that anxiety then pours out of Abraham in unbridled intensity—his desire to make sure that he can make good on God's promises that were made to him, to make a space for himself, to make sure that he feels safe even after all that the Lord had done for him. He still feels that nagging itch of having to wait.

And yet God is still faithful to him. He does have a land. He has a well. He has a place in Canaan that he can dwell in—a land that's so secure that the owner of that land comes out to him to try to establish a peace deal. See, Abraham struggles in the tension of the "already" and the "not yet." He's in the land, but he's a foreigner. He trusts God; at the same time, he wants security.

And the same is true for us, isn't it? You can have so much, and God has already given us so much. He literally gave us His only begotten Son to die for our sins and to rise from the dead. He has given us precious gifts over and over and over again. I'm sure all of us can spend hours listing all of the different ways that God has come through and demonstrated His faithfulness in our lives. And yet, when we come to our well, we will still find our hearts struggling just as much as Abraham did. And if you try to resolve that tension within yourself, when God is orchestrating all things for His own glory, you will be clutching seven lambs.

See, Abraham had nothing to worry about—not because of the deal that he struck with Abimelech, not because of the promise that he was able to strike up or the assurance of what Abimelech had to say, but because of the promise that he received from a great God, an everlasting God, an unchanging, faithful God who always does exactly what He says.

See, whatever you go through, God will always be faithful. Whatever circumstances change around you, you worship a God who will never change. And if you ever doubt His ability to be faithful to you right now, look back and see His faithfulness to you back then.

Abraham plants a tamarisk tree in Beer-sheba. It's an act of faith. If you buy or plant a tree, that means you're planning on being there for a while. When the dust settles, Abraham is finally able to lean back and breathe. He's able to trust and worship the Lord where he is. Even as an alien in a foreign land, Abraham trusts in the everlasting God—the God who kept His promise 25 years in the making, the God who hears the voice of a slave in the wilderness, and the God who is able to show His faithfulness in the paradox of the "already" and the "not yet."

God will always be faithful to you. Are you willing to trust the Lord where He's placed you? The only way that you can do that is if you truly believe that God will do as He said. The faithful God who speaks His faithful words will continue to faithfully act. And that kind of faithful God is worth calling on and worth trusting in. Let's pray.

Lord, we do pray as we think about your faithfulness. We're so easily reminded of all the ways that we have been faithless. We ask, Lord, that you would help us to be faithful to you because you have been so faithful to us. We can only do that by your strength. We ask that you would give it. In Jesus' name, Amen.