Abram believes but he has to become other than Abram the worldly willing.

The Lord had made a covenant with Abram, saying “to your descendants I give this land …” but Sarai has no children. Out of her distress she reverts to Chaldean culture, inviting Abram to sleep with her servant, with the hope that ‘perhaps I can build a family through her.’ [Gen 15:18 and 16:1,2] Perhaps it was easier for Abram to please Sarai than to reject her.

Now Genesis gives us a time reference – after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years. A long time for Sarai to wait for God’s promise of children [and still 15 years to Isaac]. But then as now we yearn to take the waiting out of wanting. And Hagar does conceive but the child Sarai hoped would make her content becomes her discontent. Hagar begins to despise Sarai. leading Sarai to ill-treat her, causing her to flee. However God saves her and names her child, Ishmael, and then warns her that ‘he will live in hostility towards his brothers.’ [16:12b] When we take action to do what God has failed to do then like Sarai and Abram we set off a chain of dangerous consequences.

Ishmael, who is a teenager when Isaac is born, having been the apple of Abraham’s eye until that time, distresses Sarah in his mocking attitude towards Isaac [21:8f] The enmity God spoke off between Ishmael and Isaac’s descendants was already at work and still lives some 4000 years later in Arab/Palestinian relationships with Jews and Israel and also in Judaism/Islam relationships. And in Islamic attitudes towards Christianity.

In the progression of Genesis, c17 we are told Abram is now 99 years old [so Sarai is 89]. It is only then that God moves to change Abram’s name to Abraham, naming him the father of many nations, and Sarai’s name also, naming her as the mother of nations, from whom will come kings of peoples. And also God reiterates His covenant relationship with Abraham, stressing that this is a covenant Abraham must keep. The grace, blessings and promises of God are to be met by the obedience of His people.

Abraham’s collapse into internal laughter, out-doing Zechariah in Luke [Luke 1:18] represents a resurgence of doubt, possibly even bordering on rejection: Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety? Surely these are words reflecting how life goes in the ‘real’ world. So he says to the Lord, “If only Ishmael might live under Your blessing.” A wish that would completely overturn God’s purposes.

Abraham is tempted. He would rather settle for the living child in his home rather than the promised one in Sarah’ womb. Ishmael fills the hole of being childless in Abraham’s heart. He would take what he and Sarah have done and set aside what God would do. Indeed he hopes that God would decide to do what he Abraham wants to do. How often do we ourselves do that?

But after being strongly told by God that His covenant will be with Isaac, Abraham does accept and obey, circumcising his people as the Lord commanded.

Covenant cuts both ways: it graces us with God’s blessing of life and call for a responding life of our obedience

When the Lord appears to tell Abraham and the listening Sarah that ‘about this time next year … Sarah will have a child He also takes time to share with Abraham His proposed action against Sodom and Gomorrah. In a significant soliloquy we are given an insight into God’s thinking: “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?”

The Lord walks in relationship with us. In the context of grace and obedience He seeks friends not slaves or servants, but companions of love. And in friendship the Lord shares His business with us. Jesus expresses this covenant-obedience-friendship pattern in John 15:14ff

“You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because servant’s do not know their master’s business. Instead I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit…”

Just indeed as the Lord chose Abraham. The fruit He bears being his and Sarah’s descendants and their covenant obedience: “I have chosen him,” the Lord reflects, “so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right.” And that obedience on their part has covenant blessings “so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what He has promised him.”

Here we have a thread that runs through the entire Bible, yet is often not fully seen or followed. God chooses us. A fact that puzzles many who like to think that they to go to church, and to worship, because they chose God. No, God chooses His people, and does so for a purpose. A purpose that is often thought off as enabling us to ‘go to heaven’. But heaven is where God is. And God is with His obedient people, the faithful who live a life worthy of Him, seeking to please Him in every way [Colossians 1:10].

God chooses us, according to His plan, in conformity with His purposes, to live for the praise of His glory. And He achieves that through our being His handiwork, created to do good works which He has prepared in advance for us to do. And so we are prone to ask as people asked Jesus in John 6:28 ‘what must we do to do the good works God requires?’ We might expect in response a welfare duty list; or perhaps an ethical expression as in Micah 6:8 ‘To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.’ [Micah 6:8]

But ‘Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the One He has sent.”'

And belief is not an intellectual affirmation, but a calling

‘to the obedience that comes from faith’ [Romans 1:5,6] which is also a

‘faith expressing itself through love.’ [Galatians 5:6b]

A love that first of all refers to our first love, our love of God. Remember what Jesus said in the last supper:

“Those who love me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” [John 14:23 and 14:15; 21; 30b & 1John 2:3-6; 3:21-24 and 5:3-5].

By faith expressed in love’s obedience we arrive at heaven! If God’s people never fell out of a faith of love lived in obedience to Him, He would never need to move in Revival

In this conversation before Sodom and Gomorrah Abraham comments: Will not the Ruler [or Judge] of all the earth do right! And He does. But sadly for Sodom there are not even 10 righteous people to be found. Lot was righteous [2Peter 2:7] and fled, taking his wife and two daughters, though their husbands would not go with them. However Lot’s wife was overcome by temptation, or curiosity. Stepping out of obedience, she looks back and dies with the city she is looking at. Nor do Lot’s two daughters act very righteously, conniving to get him drunk, so they can sleep with him to gain children. And children they do gain, but they both mother kingdoms, of Moab and Ammon, which will cause Israel much trouble. Our self-determined solutions generate faithless consequences, even anti-God ones.

And just on the verge of Isaac being born …

… Abraham lapses again, as regards Sarah! Once more putting her at risk. And the birth of Isaac. Again God has to intervene to protect Sarah from the wrong bed. Surely we can only marvel at God’s patience with Abraham. May He be so with us also, for we are just as likely as Abraham to put our safety above God’s call to how He save many. Are we not glad when we read how, later that Abraham seeks peace with Abimelech and worships the Lord again

So we come to the testing of Abraham.

This shows that Abraham has come to complete trust in the Lord. As a result of which the Lord swears by Himself, the greatest of all oaths, that because Abraham was willing not to withhold Isaac, his son, his only son, that He will surely bless Abraham with a super abundance:

“I will surely bless you … and through your seed all nations on earth will be blessed, because you obeyed me.” [See 22:15-18]

So we come to ending of Abraham’s faith story, a reality Genesis recognises by recording Sarah’s death, focusing on Isaac’s marriage to Rebekah, telling us that Abraham remarried and had six more children, about whom it says very little for they are not the wife and children of the covenant before moving on to tell us of Abraham’s death, some 75 years after Isaac was born.

There can be no revival of God’s people without a people of God.

Abraham and Sarah have fulfilled God’s purpose – within the whole humanity they are His pro-creators of His personal people, of whom He will be their God and their faith-filled progeny will be His people – ‘for’ as Paul tells us, ‘not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.’ [Romans 9:6b] For being God’s people is not about blood descent but life in the obedience that comes from faith. [Romans 1:5-6]. Sadly God’s people, being also fallen people of a fallen creation are prone to fall away from living a life worthy of the Lord pleasing Him in every way. That reality is the cause of God’s course-correcting activities, in which He moves to restore His people to their calling as His people. That is Revival.