An encounter with God will change you; a lifetime of encountering will bring to pass all God's promises!
The God Encounter
9-16-2012
Genesis 18:10 And He said, "I will certainly return to you according to the time of life, and behold, Sarah your wife shall have a son." (Sarah was listening in the tent door which was behind him.) 11 Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in age; and Sarah had passed the age of childbearing. 12 Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, "After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?" 13 Andthe LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh, saying, 'Shall I surely bear a child, since I am old?' 14 "Is anything too hard for the LORD? At the appointed time I will return to you, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son." 15 But Sarah denied it, saying, "I did not laugh," for she was afraid. And He said, "No, but you did laugh!"
Abraham and Sarah had been waiting on the promise of God for 25 years. God over and over had reminded them of His promise. After twenty five years of waiting the promise to Sarah was now laughable. The circumstances were stacked against her and Abraham. She was past childbearing years and Abraham body was impotent. God had a word for Sarah! Is anything too hard for the Lord? However this was not the first God encounter.
Genesis 17:15 Then God said to Abraham, "As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. 16 "And I will bless her and also give you a son by her; then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples shall be from her." 17 Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart, "Shall a child be born to a man who is one hundred years old? And shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?" 18 And Abraham said to God, "Oh, that Ishmael might live before You!" 19 Then God said: "No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his descendants after him.
God had come and spoke life to Sarah and Abraham changing their names to the Father of nation and the mother of nations. Until this point it was Abram and Sarai. This seventeenth chapter was shortly before our opening passage. What we see is a faithful God at work in Abraham and Sarah over and over again. Here in the 17th chapter we find Abraham laughing and considering the circumstances that surrounded them his own inability of his body and her dead womb. Abrahams request was God please bless our fleshly decision of Ishmael and God emphatically declares the promise to Abraham. The promise must come though God’s divine order, Abraham’s wife Sarah.
Genesis 16:1 Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. And she had an Egyptian maidservant whose name was Hagar. 2 So Sarai said to Abram, "See now, the LORD has restrained me from bearing children. Please, go in to my maid; perhaps I shall obtain children by her." And Abram heeded the voice of Sarai. 3 Then Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar her maid, the Egyptian, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan . 4 So he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress became despised in her eyes.
If you notice we keep backing up in the story! Here in Genesis 16 Sarai and Abram try to make the promise come to pass by manipulation. At this point they had been waiting on God for more than 11 years. Their ill conceived idea brought Ishmael through Sarai’s maid Hagar. God waited until Abraham was in His late nineties before We have recorded that God renewed the Promise of a son through Abraham and Sarah.
Genesis 12:1 Now the LORD had said to Abram: "Get out of your country, From your family And from your father's house, To a land that I will show you. 2 I will make you a great nation; I will bless you And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." 4 So Abram departed as the LORD had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran .
Now we have backed up to the first time God spoke the promise to Abraham! He was 75 years old. Everywhere Abraham went God keep blessing Him; however the promise seemed illusive and out of reach so many times.
Genesis 15:1 After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, saying, "Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward." 2 But Abram said, "Lord GOD, what will You give me, seeing I go childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus ?" 3 Then Abram said, "Look, You have given me no offspring; indeed one born in my house is my heir!" 4 And behold, the word of the LORD came to him, saying, "This one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir." 5 Then He brought him outside and said, "Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them." And He said to him, "So shall your descendants be." 6 And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.
Here in Genesis 15 is the famous passage! Abraham believed in the Lord and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Yet we find Abraham and Sarah doubting, trying to bring the promise to pass in their own strength and finally they are both laughing at God and His promises! What is up with that? It was a good thing it did not depend on Abraham and Sarah’s good performance. Faith in God’s word is more powerful than great performance.
In Genesis 17 Abraham’s faith was restored by the power of God’s word!
Hebrews 11:11 By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised.
In Genesis 18 Sarah laughed within herself and God called her out on it. Abraham why is Sarah laughing in the tent! It was a God encounter. It was not a comfortable encounter but up front expose the doubt encounter. Genesis 18 is about a year before the promised child arrived. Something happened in Sarah’s heart. She was moved from laughing in unbelief to counting God as faithful. It was when she counted God as faithful that her body received the strength to conceive. Is their promises missing and elusive in your life? Judge your God as faithful who has promised. It was faith in the Word that God had spoken that gave birth to strength for her body. When we begin to believe that nothing is impossible with God we will receive the strength we need to conceive seed! We can give birth to the promises of God by what we believe about our God. Imagine that! God was waiting on Abraham and Sarah to believe His word so He could bring about the promise. Can you imagine how Sarah begin to think and meditate upon the word the Lord had brought her? Nothing is impossible with God… Nothing is impossible with God. It was by faith in God that she received strength to conceive seed and she bore a child when she was past the age BECAUSE SHE JUDGED HIM FAITHFUL WHO HAD PROMISED!
Romans 4:17 (as it is written, "I have made you a father of many nations") in the presence of Him whom he believed; God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did; 18 who, contrary to hope, in hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations, according to what was spoken, "So shall your descendants be." 19 And not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body, already dead (since he was about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah's womb. 20 He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, 21 and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform. 22 And therefore "it was accounted to him for righteousness."
WOW! Is this the same Abraham and Sarah of Genesis! Yes, yes it is! God brought Sarah and Abraham through the process making them face their fears and uncertainty. However, God never wavier in bringing them the promises again and again. The cross makes the difference between what we see in Genesis and the Romans and Hebrews passage. Faith in God trumps failure and fear. Faith in God erases the story of failure and assures the success of the believer. Abraham came to the place of not considering the deadness of his own body or his wife’s womb but consider he was serving the God of the impossible. What God has promised He is able to perform! God convinced Sarah and Abraham and now God wants to convince you! God will erase your failure and record your faith! God wants to encounter you and bring faith to your soul!
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