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That's connectwithskip.com. Now let's get into today's teaching from Pastor Skip Heitzig. We're still experiencing the Arab-Israeli conflict, the seed of Ishmael, and the seed of Isaac at war with one another.
With suicide bombings, with problems in the Gaza, with the 9-11 bombings, and America's policies concerning Israel, and it seems that year after year the focus gets back on that. And this is where it all began. Verse 7, the angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to Shur. So she has now traveled all the way down going toward Egypt. She's trying to go back to Egypt where she's from, which is nothing but barren desert on this road. She would have died in the wilderness.
She wouldn't have made it. So she's by a spring of water in the wilderness. And he said, Hagar, Sarai's maid, where have you come from and where are you going?
She said, I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress Sarai. The angel of the Lord said to her, return to your mistress and submit yourself under her hand. Now this is, by the way, the first mention, and I'm trying to give you all of the rules of first mention when we come up to them in Genesis. Here is the first mention in all of the Bible of the term the angel of the Lord. You're going to read about it a lot in the Old Testament. There's conjecture as to who this person is. Some people believe here that it's Gabriel, the one who announced to Mary and to Joseph and to Zacharias all of the events around our Lord's birth. But this is the first mention of the angel of the Lord coming.
Now here's what I love. This is the story of failure. Fumbling, bumbling failure. And yet in the midst of that we see the mercy and grace of God. The overriding, overruling, intervening hand of God in being merciful and just not letting them go through all of this without some movement of His own hand. And so the angel of the Lord said, I will multiply your descendants exceedingly so that they shall not be counted for a multitude. And the angel of the Lord said to her, behold, you are with child. You shall bear a son and you shall call his name Ishmael, which means God hears. So every time she would call out her son's name, Ishmael, come on for dinner.
Time to go to bed, Ishmael. She would be calling out the remembrance of God's mercy in her life. God hears. The Lord intervened down there by that well because the Lord has heard your affliction.
He shall be a wild man. His hand shall be against every man and every man's hand against him and he will dwell in the presence of all his brethren. So rather than just letting her leave the home, maybe die in the wilderness, the angel brings them back to Sarai and Abram and Ishmael will grow up in the household of Sarai and Abram. God overruling. I don't know who said it, but somebody said when God can't rule because we won't let him, he always overrules. I love that beautiful verse of scripture in Romans five. I think it's around verse 20. It says, Where sin has abounded, grace did much more abound.
It overflowed. And here's an example of God's grace to this woman and her son. And she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, You are the God who sees. For she said, Have I also seen him who sees me? Therefore the well was called the Ere-Lahayroi, the well of the living God who sees. Observed, it is between Kadesh and Bereth.
So if you were ever wondering where that well was, now you know. So Hagar bore Abram a son and Abram named his son whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram. Now we have a gap between these two chapters of 13 years.
13 years. By now, Ishmael is a young teenager. Abram is 99 years old, raising a 13 year old teenager.
Have pity on him. Sarai is about 90 years old and they're raising this child. But it's not over yet. Man, it's just the beginning because that son of promise hasn't yet been born into their household and that's coming.
That's Isaac. So Abram isn't going to retire. He's not going to go lawn bowling for the rest of his life.
He's going to have more children. Abram was 99 years old and the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, I am Almighty God. Walk before me and be blameless. Now somebody once said that one of the great things about being 99 is you don't have much peer pressure. Of course, it would be obvious why, right?
You wouldn't have many peers. He's 99 years old and the Lord speaks to him. Now we have the very first mention of this title of God.
God Almighty. El Shaddai. El Shaddai is mentioned in the Bible about 34, 36 times. It means Almighty God or God the Mighty One or better yet God the Most Sufficient One. Interestingly enough, the term El Shaddai is found more in the book of Job than any other book in the Bible. It's around this time frame, same era, patriarchal era. Now El Shaddai, it is thought, is an old Akkadian word from that whole Semitic, Syrio, Babylonian region. An old Akkadian word that means mountain or breast. And the idea is that some of the ancients would, when they would see hills in the distance, it was as if the earth was flexing its muscle.
It represented like a buff muscle coming up out of the earth. So here is God saying, I am God, the eternally sufficient one, the divinely buff one, the one who can do anything that you can't do. I'm strong, you're weak, I'm God, you're not. That's how he introduces himself. Now why does he call himself El Shaddai? Because Abram's 99 years old, that's why.
He's almost 100 years old. If anybody's feeling weak, it would be Abram. And so God says, let me just tell you who I am, buddy boy. I'm El Shaddai.
I have unlimited muscle, man. I can do what no man or no country or no ruler could ever do. It's interesting that the Lord says, I am Almighty God, walk before me and be blameless.
What does it mean to walk before God and be blameless? The idea is this, walk or literally live your life knowing that you're living your life in plain view of me. You know how it's like when you're a child and you know your parents watching? You act differently, don't you? If you're alone in your room, you act one way, but when your dad is watching you, you act a different way. Abram, you're 99 years old.
It's time for you to grow up. Time for you to learn how to walk, buddy. Finally, walk before me, live your life knowing that I'm watching everything you're doing. And be upright, be blameless, be pure, be a man of integrity. I think God tells him this because of Abram's history. When Abram went to Haran for 15 years and waited before he went into the land God told him to, he wasn't walking before the Lord. He was walking before his father and his family. When he went down to Egypt because of the flood, he wasn't walking before the Lord. He was walking before his 318 servants who needed food and water. When he pulled the Hagar stunt in chapter 16 with Sarai, he was walking before his wife, not before the Lord.
But here's what's cool to me. He's 99 and God still comes to him and says, you can still walk with me. You know, a new walk with God can begin for you at any age.
Doesn't matter who you are, what you've done, how old you are, what you've been through. This tonight could be the night of a brand new relationship with him, a relationship of obedience, a relationship of love. A walk with God can begin at any age. Verse two, and I will make my covenant between me and you and I will multiply you exceedingly. And Abram fell on his face and God talked with him saying, I love that thought, just humbly before the Lord, down on his face wanting to hear from God.
As for me, behold, my covenant is with you and you will be a father of many nations. Now watch this, no longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. I've always supposed that the name Abram was embarrassing to him. Abram means exalted father. How many children did he have while he was called that?
Zip, zero, zelch, nada, none. So imagine what it would be like as the caravans would come through and he'd get out of his tent and they'd go, hello, and he'd go, hello, and they'd say, what's your name? And he'd say, I'm exalted father. Oh, wonderful, they would say, how many kids do you have?
None. Oh, sorry about that. It was embarrassing to say the name. That was his name.
And he tried to have children with his wife way back in Haran unsuccessfully. You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before we return to Skip's teaching, the question of God's existence has serious implications from his presence and participation in our lives to the reality of life after death, to the basis for human morality. And in his book, Is God Real?, Lee Strobel, former atheist and legal editor of the Chicago Tribune, weaves together the latest evidence from a range of brilliant scientific and philosophical minds to answer the most consequential question of all time. This resource will equip you to address your own doubts and respond to others questions about God with confidence. We'll send you a copy of Is God Real?, along with two messages Strobel preached on this topic at Calvary Church as thanks for your gift of $50 or more to reach more people with God's love through Connect with Skip Heitzig.
Go to connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888 and request your copy when you give. Now let's get back to Skip for more of today's teaching. Then, through Hagar, one day Ishmael was born and he thought probably, all right, now when somebody says what's your name and I say Exalted Father, I'll feel good about it. And now he's got one son and God says, I'm changing your name. I'm not going to have you be called Exalted Father anymore. Now your name will be Father of a multitude. And you can just see Abraham going, no, please, Lord, not that. Because that would denote that he would have many children.
Again, it could be embarrassing. Why is God naming him this before the Son of Promise comes? Why wouldn't God name him that after Isaac is born and he has other children and grandchildren? Then I say, okay, I'm going to name you Father of a multitude.
Because God will often declare his purpose before he does it. And he will do it to stretch the person into using their muscles of faith. Abram, you believe me.
Remember that? A couple chapters ago, you believed me. When I said that I was going to make your descendants like the stars of heaven, you believe me and I countered it to you for righteousness.
You believe that. Do you believe it enough for me to change your name even at ninety nine to being Father of a multitude? So God before the effect or the event calls him this name to stretch him. Verse six, I will make you exceedingly fruitful. I will make nations plural of you, not a nation. Notice nations of you and kings shall come from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you in their generation for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and your descendants after you. Also, I give you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan as an everlasting possession.
I will be their God. Last week, when we were back in Chapter 15 and I skimmed through the last part of that, the borders of the land were given. Do you remember that? From the river of Egypt, which is Wadi al-Arish, all the way to the Euphrates River. And the borders were outlined in that chapter and it's up on the map. There it is. What you're seeing outlined in yellow is three hundred thousand square miles God promised them. Now they have never ever occupied all that God gave to them. They have only at the peak of the kingdom under Solomon occupied thirty thousand square miles. And we'll show you what they have in comparison to what God promised them.
There it is. Okay, so that is their land. That's what they occupy. That's where they live. The yellow is what God promised that they have never yet occupied. Now, they wouldn't have much luck going to all these neighboring countries now like Egypt and Jordan and Syria and Saudi Arabia and Iraq and Iran and saying, Oh, this is our land. God promised it to us.
Kindly move out of here. But what I want you to see is this. What God said they would have, they only took one fraction, one tenth of all that God said he would give to them. And what God told them is this. Every place that your foot walks is yours.
That little portion that you saw on the map, that's the only place their foot walked. They obviously evidently didn't believe God for all of it. So even at the peak of their kingdom under King Solomon, when he expanded the borders, one tenth of all that God promised, they enjoyed. Does that at all sound familiar to you?
You think of all the promises that God has made you. How many of them are you enjoying? All of them? Half of them?
A small fraction of them? What kind of victory are you living in? What kind of a cache of God's promises are you enjoying?
I tend to believe we're just living on a small fraction of all that God has for us. Now God one day will allow them to enjoy all of that border that he promised them. And that will be in the earthly kingdom outlined so often in the Old Testament called the Millennium in the New Testament.
A thousand year reign of Christ upon the earth. It will be then that their borders will be expanded to all that God gave to them. Well that's just the land. That's part of the covenant God says. The land that he promised Abram. But not just that.
Not just property. Notice the promise includes posterity. Notice the plural nations. You know we often think Abram is the father of the Jewish nation. He is but he's the father of many more. There's 13.3 million Jewish people on the earth.
There's 22 Arab nations with 300 plus million people. All of them trace their lineage back to Abram. That means that today five percent of the earth's population can trace their genealogy directly to Abraham. So now you know why God says I'm changing your name to father of a multitude. God has made good on his promise. Verse 9, God said to Abraham, as for you, you shall keep my covenant.
You and your descendants after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant which you shall keep between me and you and your descendants after you. Every male child among you shall be circumcised. And you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins.
It shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. Circumcision was not something invented here. Understand that circumcision had been for generations practiced by nations all around that part of the world in the Middle East. The ancient sixth dynasty of Egypt practiced circumcision. Even into the Roman Empire, the priests of Rome and their offspring were circumcised.
The Ammonites and the Moabites. So here you have God taking a social practice and turning it into something with spiritual meaning. I love that. It's a social practice. It's something that had meaning to other cultures but God is sort of redeeming that and letting it apply to a sign of the covenant. Now he will do that with baptism. Baptism didn't begin with Christians. Jews had practiced ritual baptism for generations. Being purified before they would go up to worship. And then John the Baptist did that in a river down in the Jordan. And then later on they took that symbol of being cleansed for worship and that ritual purification.
And we know it now as Christian baptism, the immersion in water. But it's symbolic. It's an outward sign of a covenant. Now we discover that whenever God makes a covenant, he then provides some kind of a sign, an outward indicator. So when you see the indicator, you're reminded of the agreement that God made with people. And so what was the sign of the covenant God made with Noah? A rainbow.
Beautiful, colorful. You look at it, it brings a smile to your face. Everybody goes, oh it's a sign of a deal that God made with Noah. And God made a covenant with Moses and the children of Israel through the law of Moses. What was the sign he gave them? It was the Sabbath.
The day you rest, it's restful, it's peaceful, it's wonderful. Now to the church it was the symbol of baptism, the outward sign of an inward reality. Now God makes a sign with Abraham. I'm sure that Abraham was not having this in mind when he's thinking God is going to ask him to provide some kind of an outward sign. Remember he's 99 years old.
So just let the impact of this fall in your ears. 99 year old man and God says, it's time to get circumcised. Abraham's going, what is this walk of faith all about?
I didn't sign up for that. This is my covenant which you shall keep between me and you. Every male child among you shall be circumcised. And you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins. Verse 12, he who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male child in your generations. He who is born in your house or bought with money from any foreigner who is not your descendant, he who is born in your house, he who is bought with your money shall be circumcised. My covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. And the uncircumcised male child who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that child shall be cut off from his people. He has broken my covenant.
Wow. Why the eighth day? Interesting, the science tells us that on the eighth day of a child's life, all of the vitamins, all of the nutrients, all of the antibodies, protrombrane is present in the bloodstream that causes the clotting of the blood. If you were to circumcise a child, say, at three days old, there would be hemorrhaging. The clotting elements aren't there until the eighth day.
That's the perfect day. Verse 15 is the change in his wife's name. Oh, by the way, something just about circumcision. The whole idea behind circumcision is that the life of the flesh that once dominated you is not to dominate you any longer. The symbol of the cutting of the flesh is the repudiation of the fleshly life because the foreskin of the male, this was the organ that generated life, is cut showing that, like the Bible says in Psalm 51, in sin my mother did conceive me. I was born in iniquity. But I'm making a covenant with God that the life of the flesh will be pushed back, repudiated, and it will be something that I live now by faith in the Spirit. I'll live in the Spirit, not in the flesh.
That's the whole idea behind it. It was a symbol. What happened, unfortunately, among the Jewish people, and it has likewise happened among Christian people with baptism, is they turned it from a symbol into a sacrament. If you perform this sacrament, it will confer some grace, some merit to you, and you will have a right relationship with God. So all you have to do is be circumcised, or all you got to do is be baptized, or all you have to do is keep this ritual. They made a symbol into a sacrament. All along the Lord said, no, it's inward, not outward. Deuteronomy chapter 10, God says, Circumcised therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be stiff-necked no longer. That's what it meant. It was inward, not outward. It was simply symbolic.
They turned it into a sacrament. We're glad you joined us today. Before you go, remember that when you give $50 or more to help reach more people with the gospel through Connect with Skip Heitzig, we'll send you Lee Strobel's book, Is God Real?, and two of his sermons on the same topic preached at Calvary Church to help you answer life's most consequential questions about God's existence. To request your copy of these resources, call 800-922-1888.
That's 800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate. For more from Skip, be sure to check out the many resources available at connectwithskip.com slash store.
Come back next time for more verse-by-verse teaching of God's Word here on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Make a connection. Make a connection at the foot of the crossing. Cast your burdens on His word. Make a connection. Connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.
