Chuck Larsen

I love the question that God asks in Genesis 18:14, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” Some questions in the bible are worded in such a way as they expect a positive answer! Others are worded in such a way that the answer could be yes or no, but this question is worded in such a way that God expects Abraham to answer it with a resounding “NO, nothing is too hard for God.” In the last chapter God had revealed himself to Abraham with the name “El Shaddai.” That name means “God Almighty.” There is nothing too hard for God. We can’t miss the parallel here with the miraculous birth of Jesus. Hughes notices this and writes, “There was no way that Sarah could give birth apart from God’s power—which was precisely the situation that later faced Mary, the mother of our Lord. Her response to Gabriel’s announcement was, ‘How will this be, since I am a virgin?’ (Luke 1:34). And Gabriel’s answer—’the power of the Most High will overshadow you’ (v. 35)—was parallel to what God said to Sarah. But whereas aged, barren Sarah became pregnant by Abraham, young Mary would be with child without ever knowing a man sexually! Why? Because nothing is too hard/wonderful for the Lord!”¹

Even the Prophet Isaiah, prophesying about the coming of the Messiah made an allusion to this question about anything being too hard for God. Guzik catches that and writes, “Hard is the same word for wonderful in Isaiah 9:6: For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given … And His name will be called Wonderful. Jesus is our “wonderful” One, and He isn’t too hard or wonderful for God to give unto us.”² When the Angel Gabriel announces the birth of Jesus to Mary he appears to be quoting from this verse in a loose way. He says to Mary who asks him how it can happen since she’s still a virgin. He say in Luke 1:37, “ For nothing will be impossible with God.” My favorite Prophet in the Old Testament, Jeremiah, echos the same idea when Jeremiah speaks back to God and says in Jeremiah 32:17, “Ah, Lord God! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you.”

Believing that nothing is impossible with God is an easy thing to say but when it involves something that’s readily perceived as impossible by all human standards it become a little more difficult to have faith. You have to admit that when Sarah laughed when she heard the Angel say at 99 years of age she was going to have sexual relations with her 100 year old husband and they were going to conceive a child we can understand it. I’m 75. My wife is 70. We would laugh if we heard that we were yet to conceive and have a child! Ross and Oswalt observes, “The Bible is filled with stories of how God did the impossible, worked miracles, overcame seemingly great odds, and finally conquered death. And God expects the believer today to take him at his word, even though it may seem to be laughable folly.”³The resurrection of the dead and life beyond the grave from all appearances is a laughable suggestion. Yet, that’s what God promises to all believers in Jesus.

¹ R. Kent Hughes, Genesis: Beginning and Blessing, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), 258.

² David Guzik, Genesis, David Guzik’s Commentaries on the Bible (Santa Barbara, CA: David Guzik, 2013), Ge 18:13–15.

³ Allen Ross and John N. Oswalt, Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: Genesis, Exodus, vol. 1 (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2008), 125.

The first couple I married 35 years ago are named “Laden.” When they were expecting, I suggested that they name her “weary” or possibly “heavy.” I once new a man named Meek who was always asked if he had inherited the earth. Donald Grey Barnhouse told of a man he knew by the name of Wrench who divided his acquaintances into two classes: Those who did not make wise cracks about his name and those who did. He was often asked “are you related to Monkey?” God likes to change names. in Genesis 17:4-5 he changes Abram’s name to Abraham. The passage says, “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.” He also changes Sarai’s name to Sarah. He changed Jacob’s name to Israel. Simon is changed to Peter and Saul in the New Testament is changed to Paul. One of the promises God had given to Abram was that he would make “his name great.” He certainly did that literally. He added a syllable to Abram’s name which is seen both the Greek translation of the Old Testament and in the Hebrew. It’s also obvious in the English. But I don’t think that’s what this is all about.  One of the promises God had given to Abram was that he would make “his name great.” He certainly did that literally. He added a syllable to Abram’s name which is seen both the Greek translation of the Old Testament and in the Hebrew. It’s also obvious in the English. But I don’t think that’s what this is all about.

Can you imagine being named “Abram” which means “father of many” when you didn’t have any children at all? Every time you introduced yourself you’d wait to be asked “how many children do you have?” Whatever response you would come up with, you’d be secretly embarrassed. I suppose that Abraham got used to the smirks on people’s faces when he would answer. Even after Ishmael was born you sure couldn’t call Abram a father of many! But before God changes Abram’s name he introduces himself again to Abram by His own name. He calls Himself “El Shaddai” which means God Almighty. He is able! Then he changes Abram’s name from father of many children, to father of many nations, “Abraham.” He says “I will make you exceedingly fruitful.” Can you imagine what everyone thought when Abram informed them, at 99 years of age, that he didn’t want them to call him “Father of many” but now he wants them to call him “father of many nations.” Everyone must have burst out with laughing. From the human point of view that would seem ridiculous. Of course it would be if God’s name wasn’t “El Shaddai.”

Kent Hughes wraps up his discussion about “El Shaddai” by saying, “Christians, it is the same for us. The way we live is determined by what we think of God. If our God is El-Shaddai, the awesome, mighty God of this account, then our lives will live out the fullness of God’s promises to us. What you truly believe about God is the most important thing in your life. Any thoughts of a God less potent than the God of Abram will shrink your soul and neutralize your faith.”¹

¹ R. Kent Hughes, Genesis: Beginning and Blessing, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), 246.

Even the most stupid of us (and I count myself amongst them!) have 20/20 hindsight. After it’s said and done we often see the mistakes we’ve made and wish we could do things over. Most often, I’d do things differently. Well, as Alexander Pope said, “To Err is human.” But to “make matters worse” is another human specialty. I can do that well. This is especially true in how I treat people. Sarai and Abram learned all about making mistakes and then making matters worse. There is an ominous beginning to Chapter 16 of Genesis. If you had never read the story before or heard it told you have a pretty good hunch as to what was going to happen next. Verse 1 says, “Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar.” Yep, we all know what’s coming!

Giving Hagar to Abram to take to bed and bring forth a child into the world was one of the biggest mistakes that Sarai made. But Abraham listened to her! He was just as much to blame for that mistake as Sarai. Adam had once listened to his wife also and made a mistake by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But that didn’t relieve him of his responsibility at all. The story goes on and Sarah gave her maiden, Hagar, to Abram as a sort of surrogate mother. Big mistake! As a side note here it’s interesting to study the idea of surrogate motherhood as it was practiced in the near east in ancient times. Guzik says, “Some believe that the phrase refers only to a symbolic placement of the child on the knees of one who adopts it. Others believe that it refers to the surrogate sitting on the lap of the adoptive mother during both insemination and birth.”¹ Hagar, as soon as she conceived, couldn’t resist the temptation to look down on Sarah with contempt. Sarah makes matters worse by treating Hagar so harshly that she runs away. Notice that neither Abram nor Sarai made any attempt to go after her. Don’t you think that they were having regrets for making the decision to begin with! Another side note here is that Hagar’s son, Ishmael, becomes the father of all the Arab nations that have been Israel’s enemies to this very day. Oh, that we could do some things over again!

God cares about all His children; slave girls and unborn children alike. He intercedes on her behalf at a place named “Beer Lahai Roi.” That means “God sees.” He speaks to her, comforts her, promises her a son and instructs her to name him “Ishmael” which means, “God hears.” God then sends her back to Abram and her mistress Sarai with a story to tell. All three of the members of this cast got the message. God sees all our mistakes and how we often make matters worse in the way we treat others. God hears the cry of the abused and will always intercede on their behalf. All of us should remember that God sees and hears everything we do and say to others! The worst regrets in my life deal with relationships and how i’ve misused or abused them. There are things that i’ve said and done that cannot take back and the consequences continue with me to this day! I know I’m forgiven, but like the drunk who lost his arm in a knife fight and later becomes a Christian. He is forgiven and so am I. But he still lives without an arm!

¹ David Guzik, Genesis, David Guzik’s Commentaries on the Bible (Santa Barbara, CA: David Guzik, 2013), Ge 16:3–4.

Abraham goes to war with five surrounding nations to save his nephew Lot. When he returns from the battle, I wonder if he had fears of retaliation by some of the other tribes around him. I think he might have been afraid of something like that happening because as Chapter 15 opens we read, “After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: ‘Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.’”¹ Why would God tell Abraham “not to be afraid” if he wasn’t afraid? But God promises to be a “shield” for Abraham. Boice reviews the battle that Abraham had against the four kings and concludes, “He (Abraham) had attacked with a small force, but he had won and recovered the spoils. They must have been furious, and Abram must have been wondering about the consequences of his heroic rescue of his nephew. While he was wondering, God came to him with a promise of protection, precisely the promise he needed.”¹

The image of God as a shield appears eleven times in the Psalms.

3:3 – But thou, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head.

5:12 – For thou dost bless the righteous, O Lord; thou dost cover him with favor as with a shield.

7:10 – My shield is with God, who saves the upright in heart.

18:2 – the Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

28:7 – The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts.

33:20 – Our soul waits for the Lord, for he is our help and shield.

84:11 – For the Lord is a sun and shield; he bestows favor and honor.

91:4 – He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.

115:9 – O Israel, trust in the Lord! He is their help and their shield.

119:114 – Thou art my hiding place and my shield; I hope in thy word.

144:2 – My rock and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield and he in whom I take refuge, who subdues the peoples under him.

God promises to protect Abraham on his journey through life. One translation says, “I will block anything that might hurt you.” God will be present with Abraham and will never desert him even in times of trouble and distress. This image is repeated for us in the Psalms and elsewhere that God is a shield for his people. He will secure us from all evils, always coming between us and harm. If this is the case, and it is, it should silence all perplexing, tormenting fears that Abraham could have. It should silence our fears also. Janzen wrote, “Life continuously leads us beyond what we know and can deal with familiarly. At each stage, with its accompanying anxieties, the word of God comes: “fear not.” Thus the whole of one’s life, and of a community’s life, is a process of learning to trust in the deep assurances of the God who gives life and who calls and promises in the face of what threatens life.”²

¹ James Montgomery Boice, Genesis: An Expositional Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1998), 528.

²J. Gerald Janzen, Abraham and All the Families of the Earth: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 12–50, International Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids; Edinburgh: Eerdmans; Handsel Press, 1993), 36.

Genesis chapter 12 begins the greatest adventure ever experienced. Verse 1 introduces it to us, “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.’” It’s God’s call to Abraham to forsake his life in Ur of the Chaldees to follow God’s call to a new place that he cannot see. The rest of the chapter contains the specifics of that call to leave it all and walk forward in a life of faith. He promised to bless Abraham. To make Abraham prosperous. To bless his descendants. To make him famous in the entire world in every generation. To bless everyone who blesses him and to curse all his enemies. All Abraham had to do was trust God! As the story of Abram, who becomes Abraham continues, we learn the most important lesson in life: We can trust God.

This account has long range effects on all the writers of the New Testament. The call of one man who will become the nation of God’s people as well as the father of all who have faith is a story that headlines the three major religions in the world. Judaism, Islam and Christianity all look back to Abraham as their father. Strassner observes, “When we read about God’s calling of Abram, we are not simply given a lesson in history. We are actually tracing a story line that takes us all the way to the Lord Jesus himself. So the calling of Abram—the beginning of the nation of Israel—is a story of tremendous significance.”¹

God’s promises to Abraham are all unconditional. The phrase “I will” that God uses is in direct contrast to the previous story concerning the tower of Babel. There it was all about what man would do! Here it’s all about what God will do. There are at least seven of them.

1. I will give your offspring this land
2. I will show you a land.
3. I will make you into a great nation
4. I will bless you.
5. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing.
6. I will bless those who bless you.
7. I will curse those who curse you.

Here is the message of Genesis. God is worthy of our trust. Adam and Eve failed to trust God. Cain failed to trust God. Lamech failed to trust God. The whole world in Noah’s day failed to trust God. Since they did not find God trustworthy, they disobeyed. God would now show the world how trustworthy he is as he calls Abraham, the father of those who trust God. Abraham hears God’s call, trusts God to keep his promises, and obeys by following God’s directions. The rest of the book of Genesis will show us how God keeps his promises to Abraham and his descendants. The message of Genesis is God is trustworthy! He will keep his promises. By the way, God hasn’t changed. You and I can trust him also. He will keep his promises!

¹ Kurt Strassner, Opening up Genesis, Opening Up Commentary (Leominster: Day One Publications, 2009), 60–61.

Beginning in verse 10 of Genesis chapter 11 we have another long list of genealogies. Verse 10 begins the refrain by introducing it, “These are the generations of Shem.” You can’t help but remember the long list of names given back in Genesis chapter five. But There are two fascinating distinctions between the genealogy of Genesis chapter 5 and Genesis chapter 11. First is the mission refrain, and the second is the length of life. Back in Genesis chapter five every birth recorded is followed by a recorded death. Remember? “And he died… and he died…and he died,” over and over! It was a dramatic reminder to us all of our mortality. This was even more remarkable in the fact that these men who all died lived to be hundreds of years old. Shem lived nearly 700 years. Eber lived nearly 500 years and of course Methuselah lived nearly 1000 years. But they all ended with the refrain “and he died.” Notice that in the genealogy of chapter 11, no mention of death is made. Why? How strange is that since Shem’s son Arphachsad’s life is only 2/3rds the length of his father’s. Peleg’s 239 years is about half of his father Eber’s life. At the end Hahor’s life span is only 138 years. You would think death would be even more prominent in this genealogy, but it is completely absent. Why?

This genealogy is moving towards great hope for mankind. It’s introducing us to Abraham. The genealogy of chapter five ended with Noah, the man with three sons. All life died. The genealogy of Genesis 11 ends with Terah, the father of three sons. One being Abraham, through whom everyone who trusts God will live. The man who teaches us how to trust God did so by obeying God’s command to sacrifice his son. The Angel stopped this sacrifice and in keeping with Abraham’s prophetic answer to his son’s question, “here is the wood, here is the fire, but where is the sacrifice,” God, himself, “provided the sacrifice.” God took death in the person of his son Jesus Christ and destroyed death itself for everyone who believes. Thus, even though our life spans are so much shorter than even the shortest (138), to us, death has been destroyed. God so loved the world that he sent his only son, so that whoever believes in him, will not perish (read “die”), but will have everlasting life.

I’ve heard many sermons, and I’ve preached a few, suggesting we have the faith of Abraham. Abraham had enough faith to offer his own son on the altar in obedience to God’s call. We too must give up the most precious thing to us if we are to follow God like Abraham did. Most of us aren’t there! I know i’m not there. But I’m convinced that it’s not what I give up that matters but what God gave up for me, His only son. He did not require Abraham’s son. He was pointing to the fact that what he would not require of Abraham he would do himself. That’s encouraging to me. I like how Guzik said it, “If you despair in knowing you do not have Abram’s faith, take comfort in knowing you have Abram’s God.”¹

¹ David Guzik, Genesis, David Guzik’s Commentaries on the Bible (Santa Barbara, CA: David Guzik, 2013), Ge 11:26–28.