Holding The Promise

A story of waiting.

That's what Abraham is. A story of faith. A story of waiting. A story of God fulfilling His promises in the midst of doubt and disobedience. 

One of my pastors recently preached a message on Genesis 22, the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac. He told us that it's good to wrestle with hard texts because wrestling builds our dependence on God.

Waiting does the same.

We wait well and we wait poorly. We have faith and we have doubt. But what I love about the story of Abraham is that we see the faithfulness of God's promise no matter the circumstances of the world or the human heart. And we see what God does with the waiting to strengthen faith.

God breathed new life into this story for me as I saw it for the first time not only as a story of promise--or even one of waiting--but as a story of learning how to hold the promise.

Abram doesn't start in the same place Abraham ends, but as we read through each passage of promise, we see the same God working towards the same good He promised from the beginning.

In Genesis 12, God says, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

This is God's initial promise to Abram, and he steps out in faith. He listens to God's promise and sets off for a new land, but that land is full of famine. From the very beginning circumstances are challenging God's promise. I love what the ESV Transformation Study Bible says about this:

"Abraham had no child but was promised a family. He had no soil to cultivate but was promised a land. He was promised blessing, but he experienced famine in the land. He lived with promise but experienced only toil upon the earth the Lord had cursed. In short, Abraham was forced into dependent trust in the Lord. Then as now, it is the crucible of life, when all hope seems to have fled, that the path is cleared for God to work supernaturally. It is precisely at the moment when we despair and think we have nothing to offer the Lord, that he can truly get to work on our hearts and through our lives."

We need this heart work, which prepares us for the promise and brings us into God, but it takes time. And that time isn't always pleasant. But as time goes on, as Abram goes to Egypt and lies, as he leaves Egypt, as Lot and him take separate plots of land, as Lot is rescued from destruction, Abram begins to look back on the promise with the eyes of his experiences.

When God appears in chapter 15, Abram says, “I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus . . . Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.” 

Years have gone by since the already impossible promise, and God hasn't seemed to move them any closer to its fulfillment. But God is ever faithful; rather than lashing out at Abram for his doubt, He renews the promise. 

God says, “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir," and the text tells us that Abram "believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness."

God did not grow weary with the fulfillment of His promise as Abram did. Time wanes on, and we feel forgotten. But God is still working--just as surely as He was in the moments the promise was first made. And what I love about this is that when God renews the promise, He does so with even greater specificity. God's promise is not through a member of Abram's household, but it will be Abram's very own son.

He restores Abram's hope. And yet the human heart is fickle and time so often leads it astray. After ten years in Canaan, after a renewed promise, after an established covenant, Abram and Sarai still seem no closer to the fulfillment of God's promise. 

Abram started with a barren wife and no hope of children, and he stepped out in faith, trusting God to do as He said even though circumstances said it was impossible. And? His circumstances remain the same. God reiterates the promise, but still nothing changes. 

So Sarai starts to look at the promise with a new lens. Her and Abram hold the promise, and yet they begin to reinterpret the means God will use, picking up their striving, their impatience, and their control and stepping out not in faith but in doubt, trying to help God along. 

The next thing we read in chapter 16 is that "Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children . . . [She] said to Abram, 'Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.'"

Let's not become so desensitized to this passage that we miss their disappointment. 

Abram and Sarai have longed for a child they never thought they would have, and in the midst of their disappointed hopes, the God of the universe makes a covenant with them. He makes a promise, and they step out in an abundance of faith, upending their whole lives. And yet the circumstances in their lives, which keep them from the promise, continue unchanged, beating against their hopes day after day. 

But then God restores the vision, renews their hope, and leads them deeper into the promise. Can you imagine that moment? Can you imagine the excitement? The anticipation?! And then the level of disappointment when they remain still childless? It's been ten years! Ten years and God hasn't made good on His promises!

What if?

What if we misunderstood? What if God is waiting for us to act? What if [fill in the blank]? Abram and Sarai's actions were wrong, they were driven by doubt and fear and self-reliance, and they did damage to another human being, but they weren't all that hard for us to understand. 

Abram and Sarai never spoke against the promise, but as the waiting ticked ever on, they began to equivocate on it. I know I do the same. And how easy would this be? God promised Abram a son, not Sarai. And yeah, Abram probably assumed that son would come through his wife, but God didn't actually say that. So maybe the child would come through someone else. It makes sense. It's our kind of logic. It's the nature of humanity, second guessing. Trusting God is not the natural state of our broken instincts.

But even though their actions lead to real consequences--the abuse of Hagar, strife within their home, separation of family--God still works in both families, staying faithful to His promise towards Abram and to Hagar as the God who sees her.

The next time we see God speak is 13 years later. 

In chapter 17 He renews His covenant yet again, He reiterates the promise, and He creates circumcision as the sign of the covenant. But God does more than that; He actually again adds greater specificity to the promise. 

In chapter 12 God tells Abram he will be a great nation, in chapter 15 He specifies that this promise will come through Abram's very own son, and now in chapter 17, He says, “As for Sarai your wife . . . 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.” 

And when Abraham questions and pleads for the promise to be made through Ishmael, through the means he can see working, God says, “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." God promises to bless Ishmael, but even as He does He repeats the promise, saying, "I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year.”

When circumstances seem just as hopeless and just as impossible as they always have, God reminds Abraham that He is faithful to His promises. That He is bigger than the promises or the circumstances around them. 

In this moment God gives the greatest detail to the promise, and He emphasizes those details through repetition. Sarah's womb will bear the fruit of the promise, Sarah's womb will bear Isaac, who God will establish His covenant with, God will establish His covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear. And if that repetition wasn't enough, He comes back and makes the promise in chapter 18. Once again to Abraham--now with the timetable of one year--and then to Sarah, who has already overheard it.

"At the appointed time I will return to you, about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son.”

The time of promise is here. The circumstances never changed, only growing more impossible with time, but they didn't matter. Because as verse 14 shows us, nothing is too hard for the Lord. No circumstance, no impossibility, can keep Him from doing as He said. 

And this is finally what Abraham and Sarah find to be true in chapter 21 when Isaac is born. The waiting was long, but God did what He said He would do. God was faithful in every circumstance. God is a God who keeps His promises no matter what we do in our flesh. He keeps coming back, He keeps restoring, He keeps working the promise together for good, He keeps His covenant.

In chapter 22 the circumstances yet again call the promise into question, but by now Abraham has learned how to hold the promise. 

In verse verse 5 Abraham tells the men with him, "Stay here with the donkey; I and [Isaac] will go over there and worship and come again to you." He says this after God tells him to offer Isaac as a burnt offering. Abraham steps out once again in faith, trust, and obedience, yet His words seem to contradict the very circumstances God has commanded.

Hebrews 11:19 gives more context, saying "[Abraham] considered that God was able even to raise [Isaac] from the dead," but what do we do with this? Did Abraham just have blind faith, hoping God would raise Isaac?

No.

For the first time in my life, this passage has started to make sense to me. Because unlike with Hagar, Abraham has finally learned how to hold the promise. And that's key. 

For years Abraham has been believing God for the promise, and yet he's been trying to fit God's promise into the circumstances around him. Finally though, Abraham has learned the faithfulness of God's promise. Finally, Abraham has learned that God's promise transcends the impossible. Finally, Abraham has learned to fit his circumstances into God's promise instead of the other way around. 

God has asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac--that looks pretty bleak--but God has also promised and reiterated multiple times that the nations will come through Isaac. The circumstances God has asked Abraham to walk into cannot undo the promise He has already made. Isaac will return with Abraham. Abraham has finally learned that God is faithful to His promises even when the circumstances are more impossible than they have ever before been.

In Romans 4:19-21 we remember Abraham as one who "did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised."

God brought Abraham on a journey of faithfulness, and through him we now know God more. God's promise was unchanging no matter the waiting or circumstances. When Abraham sinned, taking the promise under his control, God did not cut him off. He continued to work towards the promise. He still allowed Abraham to hear His voice and be His vessel to bless generations. When time passed without fulfillment, God was consistent in reiterating the promise, often with even greater detail, renewing Abraham's hope and steeling him for the wait ahead. 

No matter the twists and turns of the journey, Abraham is remembered as a man of unwavering faith, but the real story is a of a God of unwavering faithfulness. 

A God who shows up time and time again through all our faults and pitfalls to make His ways known in and through us.

A God who knows when to answer us, but whose silence never means His absence.

Do you notice how the promise grows over time? How God adds greater specificity the closer they get? How He waits to give the greatest detail until the promise is practically upon them? Until they could see it played out for themselves in just a few more months? God waited to give them the details until they had the strength to hold them. All throughout the story God chose to give them assurance. God chose to testify to His word. And though they didn't know it then, the specificity of the promise in the last year of waiting would be needed to sustain Abraham through the testing with Isaac.

But even in that testing, we see God's character. That it wasn't enough for God to give Abraham the son he had longed for. God actually kept Isaac from becoming an idol in Abraham's life. He fulfilled the promise, and He kept the promise good.   

Abraham learns to wait. He builds up his stones of remembrance. He receives the testimony of God's faithfulness. He believes, but as time goes on, he truly learns to trust that belief even in his distress. To depend on His God when it all feels like it's going wrong.

Abraham is a story of how to live for the vision, of how to live in the promise, of how to trust in God's faithfulness. Every success and every failure testifies to the character of God in our seasons of promise and waiting.

God is making us new in the waiting, but He's also present with us, fulfilling what He promised.

And when the promise comes with adversity, God trains us to hold the blessing. He carries us into deeper understanding, deeper dependence, and deeper trust. And it's in that place that the promise invites us into the nature of God and into intimacy with Him.

The promise is always meant to cast our eyes towards heaven.

And whether we wait 25 years like Abraham or one like Zachariah, whether our circumstances seem to be leading to the promise or when they contradict it, we can always rest within the promise of God. He will see it through, and He will be with us every step along the way, renewing our spirit and working towards our good. 

"The Lord is faithful in all his words
    and kind in all his works."

~Psalm 145:13b