Clough Genesis Lesson 54

Justification; the Lord appears to Abraham –Genesis 18:1-15

We are looking at Genesis 18 and we are ready to see the birth of the Messianic seed. This is the promise that had been given for centuries, since actually the Garden of Eden, and it now becomes clear that it will be given through Abraham. In our study in Genesis we have gone through these events: we’ve looked at creation, we’ve looked at the fall, we’ve looked at the judgment/salvation associated with the Noahic flood, and now we are on the call of Abraham. These represent key events in the progress of God’s revelation. Maybe we can do something else here if we invert this list, turn it around so it’s upside down and then you can see how one builds upon the other.

First you have the basic building block, which is creation. That is the foundation stone for everything else that follows in God’s plan. Then we have evil that comes in, almost obliterating the creation, and of course the creation in its form survives by resurrection but evil is a pretty blanket catastrophe that comes in at the time of the fall. Then the Noahic Covenant and flood and that whole bunch of material there is basically stating the God is interested in for a time preserving. So here we have God working to preserve the evil influenced creation. The Noahic Covenant is a preservative covenant where God’s grace is shed on both elect and non-elect for a time in order to allow for a calling process to occur. So this is preservation.

Then on this we have the Abrahamic Covenant or the call of Abraham with the ideas of election and justification. This Abrahamic Covenant is one which is the first time in the progress of revelation that we begin to see God’s redemptive program really get in high focus. It’s here that God begins to show us the means for which he will redeem the creature. Sometimes this is referred to, this period of time, from the time of Abraham up until the next step which will be the Law, that time period is often called the time of the dispensation of promise. That means that it’s not the kingdom of God yet, it’s not God’s full and complete revelation yet, but God is promising to redeem man and He’s busy at work preparing the means by which this redemption is going to occur.

We saw that each one of these events, particularly in the framework that I’ve worked out, has a physical picture and as we’ve gone through Genesis I hope that your mind your soul, has been absorbing, that is, has absorbed these visual pictures because believe me, your spiritual strength, if you’re a believer, is going to come from your ability to visualize in the richness of your imagination these stories because these stories are God’s revelation. And the imagery we now have, a beautiful one of justifying faith, the faith that justifies, the faith that leads we should say more accurately, the faith that leads to justification.

And the image that we associate with this, one that’s very easy, one that anyone, a child can at least appreciate some of it, older people more of it, and that is this image: since in the New Testament people who have saving faith are called, figuratively, “the sons of Abraham” or “the children of Abraham.” We know that this story is very important; the Holy Spirit wants us to study the story hard and really get it worked into our souls. And the core of the story is to picture in your mind’s eyes an elderly childless couple; second you want to picture this couple as having to produce children else their life becomes meaningless. Thinking back to the Genesis mandate, why was mankind given? Why did creation take place? What was the mandate given to man but to “be fruitful, multiply and subdue the earth?” So for mankind to fulfill its own destiny it must multiply it must have children, it must bear fruit.

So here’s this elderly childless couple, they are under the mandate to bear fruit or their life is meaningless, but because they’re elderly they’re past the childbearing age, they are sexually dead. The Bible refers to many kinds of death: physical death, sexual death, and so on. And here is sexual death, the inability to reproduce. So you have an elderly couple under a mandate to be productive in history but in effect they are sexually dead. And so therefore their only hope to accomplish what God wants to accomplish in their lives is to look to Him, to intervene in their lives in a miraculous way. Their entire significance, their entire meaning, their entire purpose for life is contingent one thing: God must bring forth a child. Nothing else can work because they are dead. So you have this picture of the sexual death of an elderly childless couple and the demand hanging to over their head that to maintain their significance they’ve to produce, and yet faced with the impossibility, and so they look wholly and only to God for it. There’s your mind’s eye picture for justifying faith. It’s a simple physical picture. Think of it in its simple physical terms and that will give your heart its own check, its own norm, its own standard to see whether you be in the faith or not, for their sexual death is analogous to our spiritual death.

Let’s draw some conclusions, some pointers from what real saving faith looks like for our own examination. The first thing that we can apply from this vivid picture is that if I believe the way the Bible says I should believe, then I’ve got to acknowledge my total incapacity to produce righteousness. I’ve got to acknowledge that I can’t produce the righteousness that God demands any more than Abraham and Sarah could produce that baby that God’s program demands. Both are equally impossible. And I’ve got to really be convinced of this or really my faith is looking around for some other out, it’s not really saving faith. Real saving faith starts by acknowledging the impossibility of a fallen man spiritually dead, to produce any kind of moral fruit whatever.

Saving faith, furthermore, realizes there is a sentence that hangs over my head but God wants it… God wants it from you… but I can’t do it… but God wants it from you, God demands if from you and you will answer before His judgment seat if you don’t have it. God demands it! And it’s totally impossible for me to produce. Saving faith, then, receives the promise from God; I will produce it for you. And then, lastly, saving faith looks only to God to produce it like Sarah and Abraham had to look only to God to give them that child. So this would be a mental imaginative exercise to play with your own soul, to work around and think about it often until it becomes vivid in your mind. Now the importance of this justification, what we have said in the past Sundays from talking to several people during the week, it’s obvious I’m being misunderstood still by some people so let me just take a few moments to say what I’ve said in the last few Sundays about justification, regeneration and also to say what I haven’t said so people won’t draw radical conclusions.

What we’ve said is that on the face value of this story you have a sequence where Abraham believed, his faith; God justifies, and then they produce Isaac, the child, which is the child of life, life out of their sexual death which we’re taking as analogous to regeneration. That sequence. This, we believe, is the sequence that Martin Luther taught in the early days of the Reformation. It is also the position that John Calvin appeared to teach, if you read Institutes, Book III, chapter 11, sections 6, 11, 14-15, it appears that he too believed this sequence. However, in the 16^th and 17^th centuries the Reformed people, particularly in Holland, got upset over something which was right to get upset about. I’m not faulting them for getting upset for this, in this they’re right. And that is, that Christians were going around and evangelizing saying that the depraved, fallen man can turn and turn off this faith all by himself; all by the power of his own volition, that it’s sheerly within the power of autonomous man to believe when he wants to believe, that evangelism is no more than a subjective persuasion. Now psychologically that is what it might appear to be. And they recognized, rightly so, that a person dead in trespasses and sin cannot believe in saving faith without God doing some work. It’s God that has to bring this about, not man. And so to protect the truth that it must be God that stimulates this saving faith they took the idea of regeneration, which the early Reformers had placed over here, to the right, they brought it backwards to the left, and they said that regeneration now occurs here, using regeneration as a problem-solving device to answer this question of how can a totally depraved… I mean totally depraved, rebellious creature ever believe to his salvation. They were faced with a problem, and that was their solution.

My point is that they were right in diagnosing the problem. I too believe that; my quibble is I refuse to call that work of the Spirit regeneration for the reason that regeneration is a term that I believe is reserved for a peculiar work in the church age. As a dispensationalist I have a dispensational distinctive that I must maintain. My quibble is not over the problem they identified; my quibble is over the label that they use to pull in here and solve the problem because the moment they did that, since regeneration is the impartation of eternal life and me being put in union with Christ, the next problem that they had to face was this: if we have a person regenerated back here, that is put into union with Christ, that is one who has the life of eternity put into his soul, implantation of this, if that’s the case and he’s not justified over here, then he’s got the problem of the wrath of God still remaining upon him because he’s still legally looked upon as being in Adam and the question they had to resolve, which they did, they had to resolve the problem of how can the Holy Spirit put into union with Christ a sinner who still stands under the wrath of God.

They did so in several ways, one of which Abraham Keiper’s solution to the problem was then to split justification in two parts, so that he brought justification back here to clear the work of regeneration, that is, to give the Holy Spirit legal clearance, if you will, to do His work in the heart of the depraved person. However, the problem in bringing justification over to this position was that Scriptural accounts, like Genesis 15:6, clearly show that justification follows faith. So what was done to save the day was to divide justification into two parts and have what is known as an eternal justification before the throne room of God from eternity past for the elect. And since they were generated… this took place in eternity past and that justification then permitted in time regeneration, faith. And then what did they do with this part? They made that into a psychological justification, that is, the justification of Genesis 15:6 is not Abraham legally being justified, it is Abraham coming to see that he has already been legally justified.

So this is what I meant earlier when I said to me what we’re doing here is we’re theologically interpreting the text to get around certain problems, and I think that it was a premature move in their direction to do this. I think it could also be done having the same results, protecting this problem of the sovereign grace of God without involving this mechanism of regeneration which gets into this dispensational distinctive of union with Christ. The reason that it was done this way, in summary, the reason why they worked this way, I believe, because in 16^th and 17^th century Holland there was a strong tendency to a nascent Docetism. Remember Wednesday nights we’re studying the deity of Christ and the humanity of Christ and when you so emphasize the deity of Christ, be very, very heavy on the deity of Christ, you tend to make His humanity kind of unreal, not really there, not really necessary. And we know that the humanity of Christ is really necessary. Well, the same thing happened here but in another light; you so heavily emphasize God’s plan in eternity and what is on God’s mind with the historical outworking of that plan become almost insignificant. Now most godly Calvinists don’t make this mistake, we admit, but there is that tendency in the 16^th and 17^th century Holland, as one man said: remember, this solution was made in Holland, not in heaven.

So we then take the act of justification in Genesis 15 to be a real justification. It’s not Abraham just perceiving that he was justified but that he truly was justified at that point in time. So to sum up, I’m not disagreeing with where the Reformers were going. I am quibbling about their particular solution to the problem; I just don’t buy that solution to the problem.

Now let’s go to Genesis 18:1. Now we have the coming into historic existence the promised seed and it occurs at a place, “the oaks of Mamre,” not “the plains of Mamre” as some of you who have the King James translation see, but “the oaks of Mamre.” To once again drill into our minds that this is a real thing that occurred in a real place at a real time, let’s look where it happened. Mamre is still there. [He shows slides]. Here is a large map of the Palestine area. There’s some interesting features of this map that I’ll point out that help you get a feel for the Genesis story. There’s a line of hills that extends north/south here through the Palestine area and that highland has a main travel route on it. You can see a small thin red line; that red line is a major highway from northern Israel into Egypt. It was a main trade route of the time and it’s on that trade route that Abraham had his ranching business.

Almost all the stores in Genesis on Abraham have to do with that road. For example, he comes, later on in Genesis 22, to a place which then becomes later Jerusalem and it’s there that he sacrifices Isaac. In fact, if you go to Jerusalem today you go to the temple site, it’s interesting, the site of the temple is not just the site of Solomon’s temple but the Muslims have erected their mosque on that temple ground and they believe that the rock, and you see a rock when you walk into the temple, take your shoes off and go in and there’s this large bar around it and in the center there’s this rock, that’s all it is, it’s a temple built around the top of this Mount Moriah. And on that rock not only Mohammed go to heaven but earlier Abraham offered Isaac there. So its’ a small place where a lot of Bible stories in the same place.

So right there on the north/south road you have the sacrifice of Yitzhak. South of that point is Bethlehem; south of that point is Hebron where the oaks of Mamre are that we’re talking about today. Further south on the road is a place called Beersheva, or Beersheba as most of us pronounce it, there in the south. So along that road these things occurred. Here is Hebron as it looks today, looking south/southwest and the cities, an Arab city on what is called the West Bank, it’s an occupied territory, not many Jewish people are there, it’s mostly Arabs, there’s an Arab community.

Here’s the place where Mamre is; the oaks are gone but at least the place is there and I just show you that to emphasize to your mind’s eye that this story you’re about to read is real. It involves some spooky things but it’s a real story; it happened in a real place.

Genesis 18:1, “And Jehovah appeared unto him in the oaks of Mamre: as he was sitting in the tent door in the heat of the day.” The author of Genesis 18 delightfully supplies us with lots of neat things for imagination. The author of this book, when he wants us to see things that are dependent completely on you visualizing what happened, will give you little details. Now I want you to, as you read the text here and we follow through, I want you to notice how he keeps tipping you off to what’s happening. In verse 1 the verb “sat” in the Hebrew is a Hebrew participle; it’s not sat, it means he was sitting there in the tent door. The Hebrew participle has the imagery of a motion picture. In fact some people often call it the motion picture verb form in the Hebrew language. Today it’s used for the present tense, in modern Hebrew, but in Biblical Hebrew it was used to just indicate continuous action that goes out of sight from the observer both to the right and left; he doesn’t look at when it starts, he doesn’t look at when it stops, he just sees it happening.

The picture is this old man, sitting in his tent that’s pitched near these trees for shade. And he’s sitting and he’ looking down; looking down at something, all we know is his eyes are looking down at the ground; maybe he’s doing tic tac toe or something in the ground or tying his shoes or something but his eyes are down. Then something happens and with great vividness the Hebrew writer says, Genesis 18:2, “And he starts to lift up his eyes, and he kept looking, and, lo, there were three men standing there.” And the verb “stood” is another Hebrew participle and it’s a picture that they were standing, they didn’t come there, they didn’t walk up to Him, suddenly he just noticed they were standing there. It reminds me of a thing that happened one time two years back in the church; one of the people that was involved in cleaning the church building came into my office and he had the vacuum cleaner, he was vacuuming and I had my boots that I use for baptism, the fishing boots there that ministers are supposed to use to keep them dry, and these things I had hanging up alongside the wall with the boot out and the person was in there vacuuming and looking completely down at the floor and all of a sudden out of the corner of his eye he saw those boots and the boots look like there’s a person in them because they don’t collapse, and he eyes started going up and he later said it was just to a shock to suddenly see these two boots, this person suspended here right in my office, what’s going on, until he realized that that wasn’t true.

That’s the kind of thing I’m sure that the author is trying to get to us in verse 2. Abraham is sitting there, maybe half asleep in the heat of the day and he’s not paying attention and all of a sudden he sees three pairs of legs standing there and he start looking up and it says “Behold,” look what’s here, three men are standing there. They didn’t come in any human way. Remember, Abraham’s tent is the ranching headquarters of his business. It’s highly unlikely three people would have walked up without being noticed, somebody would have tipped him off. The fact of the matter is, the author of the text is saying they suddenly appeared there. These are supernatural beings that suddenly materialized in his presence.

“…and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and he bowed himself to the ground.” Now another delightful detail of this text, something to challenge us and make us think a little bit, is how Abraham responds to God’s Word. He’s always quick to obey. Abraham’s not a perfect believer by a long shot but he at least is not a procrastinating believer. He’s not one of those who says well that’s great, I’ll think about it tomorrow, the mañana complex. There’s nothing like that in Abraham’s soul. Abraham sees what God wants him to do and he does it. Remember, even when he was called to sacrifice his son he gets up very early in the morning and gets it over with. And this is basically a good healthy attitude to take in life is to get the thing over with that you have to do. That goes particularly for you students; you postpone things, postpone things, postpone things, you postpone your papers, you postpone this and then you go bananas at midterms or you go bananas in the finals; it’s the same old thing, you don’t get it done when you’re supposed to get it done. And it’s just that early habit pattern. So why don’t you use your vexation of academics to train your soul to get out of your procrastination and learn to do something and get it over with so then you can have time to enjoy yourself.

Abraham, in Genesis 18:2 runs, he sees them standing there and he runs, a quick response. Notice further on in the text, in verse 6, “he hastens to the tent to Sarah, and said, Make ready quickly three measures of fine meal.” And then in verse 7 “Abraham ran into the herd,” and he said to the “young man, and he hastened to dress it.” You see the speed; Abraham gets it over with. The obedience is necessary, well let’s do it, let’s finish it, let’s not just drag our feet and drag our feet and drag our feet perpetually. So he see the three men and he runs to meet t hem and he bows himself toward the ground. The act of bowing does not necessarily prove that he’s worshiping them because if you’re honest the Hebrew word to bow often occurs with an inferior bowing before a superior and the superior can be just a normal human being of, say, high office. But at least it shows that Abraham recognizes something peculiar about these three people that are standing by his tent.

He addresses them in Genesis 18:3 as “my Adonai,” and commentators have wondered about why he did this. In fact, they wondered so much and it goes back so many centuries that the Hebrew text even has added readings here because later on, in Genesis 19:2 if you’ll notice, two of them appear to Lot and Lot looks at them and he says in Genesis 19:2, “Behold now, my lords,” plural, “my Adonais.” So the question, why is it then in Genesis 18:3 doesn’t Abraham put “my lords?” And some of the Hebrew manuscript men who copied this manuscript thought so hard about this that they wanted the plural in there, they put it in there. And that’s why to this day some of our Hebrew manuscripts have “lords” in verse 3. But the best text is “lord,” singular. That is, apparently because he perceived God to be either in the three collectively or in one of those three. As Christians, having the benefit of extra revelation of the New Testament I don’t think any of you need too many hints as to the significance of why three men appeared to Abraham. You have here an nascent Trinity type thing. But yet having said all that, that wasn’t clear back then and back then Abraham looked at them and he calls them “lord.”

If you’ll notice carefully in the conversation, like in verses 9-10, there’s an alternating between the singular and the plural. You want to notice this. Genesis 18:9, “they say unto him,” all three of him, “Where is your wife?” In verse 10, “And he said,” one of the three. Probably the best thing, in spite of the Trinitarian overtones of this theophany, probably the best thing to do with it is to visualize three of these people standing there, probably in very much like the same kind of clothes, one of them standing a little more clearly for God than the other; the other two angels, the third one being the Son of God in His preincarnate form appearing to Abraham. And Abraham, as he looks from face to face picks out one and he focuses his conversation on that one of the three and talks to him. This will be our explanation of why there is a singularity and plurality as you go back and forth through the text.

So in Genesis 18:3 when we read “my lord,” Abraham on this view would be focusing on that one that seemed to stand out from all the others. “…if I have found grace in thy sight, don’t pass on away,” idea is don’t go on your journey without stopping here, “I pray you, from thy servant,” stay with me. And here you have one of the most famous instances in all of history of hospitality. So famous is this incident of hospitality that it’s singled out in Hebrews 13:2 by that phrase that you’ve read “and thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” The author of Hebrews remembers this incident.

Let’s think a little bit about this hospitality that Abraham is showing. As we go through Genesis 18:4-7 you’ll see increasing emphasis on the hospitality-ness that goes on here. The hospitality is shown once again in Genesis 19 with Lot; Lot opens his home to a Theophany. Two other instances come to mind of a similar matter; in Judges 6 you have Gideon and he exercises hospitality to a Theophany. A Theophany is an appearance of God in the Old Testament. In Judges 13, Manoah, who is the father of Samson, he exercises hospitality.

Now we have to ask something. When the Holy Spirit works this way in history and He keeps telling us these stories of hospitality, physical hospitality, opening one’s home, meals and so on, what is He getting at? Well, this figure of hospitality is used by the New Testament writers. It occurs in two very vivid New Testament passages; in Ephesians 3:16-19 it says: “Let Christ be at home in your heart,” and the picture there is be hospitable to Jesus Christ, open your home to Him and it’s a picture of opening your soul to Him. In Revelation 3:20 there’s the context of that verse, “Behold, He stands at the door and knocks, if any man open…” and so on. The context there is the hospitality to Jesus Christ. So hospitality shown in a physical way here, and particular to a Theophany, points to our mental attitude toward letting Christ reign in our lives, soul’s hospitality to Jesus Christ. It’s a mark of Christian maturity.

Let’s think a little bit further about hospitality. What did it cost? What did it cost Abraham at this time? In the ancient world, particularly when you had no department of public safety and no sheriff with a CB radio around, it was dangerous. Hospitality was danger; you opened your wife and your inner home up to some stranger. There was an element of fear involved in hospitality and therefore there had to be an element of trust. So analogously, when hospitality is applied to your heart and to mine regarding the Lord Jesus Christ, there too is an element of ear, isn’t there? What is He going to do? If I really let Christ have reign in my life what will He do? Will He take the one I love away? Often times that will be a tempting thought. Will He destroy my career if I let Him have full reign? Will He destroy my wealth if I let Him have full reign? All the things I hold dear, will He take them away? Always there’ll be that insidious whispering…don’t trust Christ fully because if you do you’re going to lose something very dear to you. And you have to confront it and say in spite of the fact I will do this. I’ve agonized over this myself and I know many of you have so it’s a very real type thing, the struggle of the faith, to let Christ be open and at ease in your life. That’s one costly thing of hospitality.

There’s another more mundane thing, it costs in time. This is an interruption in Abraham’s schedule. He has to re-plan his activities, re-schedule his meals, re-schedule his whole afternoon what he’s going to do. It costs in time. So also being hospitable to Jesus Christ and letting Him reign is costly in time because often times He amends your schedule and He provides (quote) “distractions” (end quote) that don’t turn out to be distractions in eternity but they seem to be distractions to us. And it’s often costly in money. Abraham put out here, I’ll show you how the text says it later, but Abraham put out money for this Theophany, to provide for them. And if we let Christ have reign in our hearts it’s costly that way too.

You may wonder how in the ancient world they policed hospitality. How did they protect themselves from the habitual panhandlers and the free loaders, the kind of people that go from church to church, for example, giving the same sob story 25 times and there are enough churches in Lubbock, there are some 400 of them that you can do this and never repeat for maybe 2 or 3 years and by that time you hope the guy forgot your story. Fortunately in our church we have a deacon system of interviewing these kinds of people. There was one situation where one of our board members sat in the guy started telling a story and he just started completing it for him because he’d heard it before from the same person. So how in the ancient world did they police it? They had ways of policing hospitality.

Here’s a humorous except from The Didake, this is a Christian document written from the 2^nd or 3^rd century; chapter 11, verses 4-6, it’s not Scripture, it’s just a comment of what the early Christian church did to handle this problem of hospitality in a very practical way. “Every apostle,” now the word “apostle” is not being used for the eleven here, it’s being used as a messenger, “Let every messenger who comes to you be received as the Lord Jesus Christ, but he must not stay more than one day, or two if it is absolutely necessary. If he stays three days he’s a false prophet. And when an apostle leaves you let him take nothing but a loaf until he reaches further lodging for the next night. If he asks for money, he’s a false prophet.” So that’s how they inferred, that’s how they handled and policed themselves. So the hospitality was not a naïve hospitality; it was there but it was policed. So Abraham is hospitable and we then see now the details of his hospitality.

In Genesis 18:4 he cares for their need, “Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree.” So he takes care of their immediate needs and allows them to relax. Now begins the action. In verse 5-7, while they’re resting he gets going. “And I will fetch a morsel of bread,” now this is the irony of the offer. The word “morsel” here means fragment, it means a tiny little piece, just a cheap little peace, not even the bread of one hamburger bun; that’s what “morsel of bread” here means. Now it’s all irony, it’s all the humility of Abraham for his hospitality because we’re going to see all that he provides. “I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts;” and please notice the word “heart,” that’s the usage that most people forget. In the Old Testament, the Old Testament doesn’t speak of “heart” in immaterial terms. “Heart” there means, in this case, hunger; it has a physical side to it, not just an immaterial side. “Comfort ye your hearts, and after that ye shall pass on: for therefore are ye come to your servant. And they said, So do, as thou has said.” Notice in verse 5 he uses the word “servant.” In other words, God, you have come and you have challenged me to be hospitable to you and that’s my role as a servant. The servant’s role is to be hospitable to the Lord and therefore he says that’s why you’ve come here, to give me, your servant, a chance to serve you. What an attitude. See why Abraham’s a model of faith.

Let’s go further. Genesis 18:6, “And Abraham hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said, Make quickly three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes upon the hearth.” And then he runs in verse 7 and he goes and gets the meat. [“And Abraham ran unto the head, and fetched a calf tender and good, and gave it unto a young man; and he hastened to dress it.”] Notice in verses 6-7 something men; it shows you that Abraham had control of his home. It shows you that Abraham basically ran his home in an orderly way, but yet in verse 6 one correction. It looks, if you read verse 6 on the surface of it is that he walked in and told his wife “DO IT!” and she kind of salutes and says “Yes sir,” but that’s not what is meant here. The idea of verse 6 is more like the fact that he takes direction for the situation. Notice what he does: yes, he tells her to make quickly the three measures of fine meal but the idea is that he is directing here, he is giving her instructions on the meal, what he wants served and he also, the fact that he does what he does in verse 6 before he does what he does in verse 7 shows you he has an awareness of what it means to operate in the kitchen because it’s going to take Sarah longer to do her job in verse 6, get this meal all settled and kneaded and baked than it’s going to for him to get that calf dressed.

And so there’s an awareness on his part that in this emergency situation it’s not wrong for the man to get involved in the process. One man was telling me that it was verses 6 and 7 that settled for him one time when his wife was very sick and he found himself having to diapers and having to do things in the kitchen and this just galled him because like many men he thought that he would lose his masculinity if he got his hands wet in dishwater. Of course this is the wrong place to have one’s masculinity but nevertheless, this is what some men think. So therefore this verse convinced him that it wasn’t wrong in these situations to get involved; this is a pressure situation and the wife needs help so he does it.

Notice what he does; “three measures of fine meal,” if you look in your concordance and look up the word “measure” here, the Hebrew word for it, it turns out each one of these measures is three and a half gallon. You can imagine the amount of flour he’s ordering here and three of these, he probably thought big God, big appetite. Then he went on and it said he “ran to the herd, and fetched a calf,” we would say he ran to the supermarket but in those terms he ran to the herd. Now imagine this, he runs to the herd; again the quickness of his obedience, the willingness for him to be hospitable to God. And tongue in cheek in verse 5 he said I’m going to fetch you a little morsel of bread. But notice what the morsel of bread turns into—only about ten gallons of flour in verse 6, then an entire calf in verse 7, and he has one of his ranchers dresses it, and then he takes butter, and the word “milk” there is not our milk, it’s kind of a sour type of milk, in fact, I think you can get it under the name kefir still in the health foods store, [Genesis 18:8] “And he took butter, and milk,” or kefir “and the calf which he had dressed, and he set it before them,” that’s the “little morsel of bread.” What a meal, a fantastic meal. And it winds up in verse 8, and you miss it unless you visualize the picture. You’ve got to see this happening in your mind’s eye, with a black tent, with the old man, with the three men there, him running around, Sarah in the kitchen working, and then you’ve got to see this last one, “and he stood by them under the tree….” The word “stood” there is a Hebrew participle, it means standing there. What is he standing there for? He’s acting as a waiter on their table. So it’s a complete picture of the perfect servant; he provides everything and then he waits for further orders and requests.

So much for the first part of the story, the hospitality of Abraham to the Lord Jesus Christ in His preincarnate form. And incidentally, it says in conclusion in verse 8, “and they did eat.” That shows you that though these angels were spirit beings, there is living proof right here in the text that when the angels can materialize they can consume food, which is my answer to those who have the problem of why can you have angels having sexual intercourse with human beings in Genesis 6. Why not? If we’re talking about materialization we’re talking about a fake but nevertheless a materialized human body. These beings don’t glow with any strange glow; they stand there and they look for all the world like normal people, hands, food and they sit there and they eat but they are not normal people; they’re a strange materialization phenomenon. The Bible never tells us details of this phenomenon, it just tells us that demon powers and angel powers have this strange capability. They can under conditions materialize and be utterly unidentifiable as a unique being. They can blend right in; a person sitting next to you me an angel just materialized, watch out….

Genesis 18:9 talks about the incident with Sarah. Again, the author is very careful to feed our imaginations with just enough goodies so we can work this around our minds and really live it. Notice what he says. “Where is Sarah, thy wife? And he said,” Abraham said, “[Behold,] she’s in the tent.” But notice in verse 9 something that is maintained throughout the text. The conversation, except for one verse, never starts between Jesus Christ or the preincarnate Son of God, and Sarah. It is always about Sarah but it’s through her husband. Notice even in verse 10, it says, “I will return unto thee,” and the word “thee” is masculine pronoun, not feminine. He’s not returning to Sarah, he’s returning to Abraham, showing that when God works in this marriage situation he works through the male, He works with the man in charge. In verse 9 even, He doesn’t say Sarah, where are you, woman! He doesn’t say that. He talks to Abraham, where’s your wife; Abraham, you ought to know where she is and what she’s doing, that is your business. So where is she? He knows and that’s enough, the angel never pursues the conversation he begins in verse 9 any further because he knows exactly what he wants. You know in omniscience, obviously God knows but He carries on a real conversation here in verse 9.

And He knows that Sarah is within an earshot of what’s going to take place. So let’s draw a little cross section of the tent opening; Sarah is inside. The angel of the Lord, for reasons I’ll show you in a moment is faced away from her, his back is to her, and Abraham at this point is apparently facing somewhere off here but at least we know that the angel of the Lord is facing away from that tent flap. All this is a setup so you can picture what’s happening here. So the angel at the end of verse 9 realizes Sarah is going to listen. He doesn’t have to know any more, He knows women, He knows all women are curious and He knows no matter what happens, when He’s going to carry on a conversation with her husband only feet away the woman is going to do what any woman would do, and that is listen in to see what’s going to be said. So He says, “I will return to you according the time of life,” we have a little problem here because in Genesis 17:21, the previous chapter, it said I will return to you one year hence. Since we’ve got 12 months from Genesis 17:21, from the time of chapter 17 and since the boy is not yet conceived here, we’ve got to be in this three month interval between Genesis 17; Genesis 18 has to occur somewhere in that interval of time. Notice it doesn’t say the same time as verse 21, it says “the time” literally “of the living.” And people have pondered, and I confess that this is a hard phrase. The best guess, and that’s what it is, the best guess is that the phrase refers to springtime and he’s saying at about spring time I’ll return, “and Sarah, your wife, shall have a son.”

Now the commentator adds this little comment at the end of verse 10 and all of verse 11 to give you the incident. “And Sarah heard it behind the tent door, which was behind him.” The last pronoun “him” there refers to Jesus Christ, so that’s why we know Jehovah is facing this way. Significant to that being that by this time without saying so much the author has said Sarah has head this, her womanly curiosity has been really aroused and she starts to look out the tent door flap to see who this character is that’s talking to her husband, but she can’t see his face, she can only see the back of him. So she still, apparently as yet, doesn’t realize that He is Jehovah. [Genesis 18:11] “Now Abraham and Sarah were old and well stricken in age; and it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women.” There’s the confession of the sexual death; this becomes a tremendous thing for Paul in Romans 4. He picks the theme of death from verse 11 here and he points out in Romans and later on in the New Testament that Abraham believed that God was able to bring life out of that which was dead. Now in the context it’s not spiritual life from spiritual death, it is a boy, physical life from that which is sexually dead. But it becomes an analogy or type of bringing forth Christ-ness, His righteousness, out of dead, flesh dead in trespasses and sins, spiritual death.

Genesis 18:12, “And Sarah, therefore, laughed within herself,” the word laugh is Yitzhak, she “laughed within herself, and she says, After I am old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?” You know, that’s a phrase that’s repeated in the New Testament. The apostle Peter says that Sarah called her husband “lord” and he addresses Christian women in 1 Peter 3, if you have the attitude that Sarah has then you are her daughters, again a figurative use of these stories. But the point is that verse 12 is about the only place that Sarah ever does call Abraham “lord.” So Peter, in 1 Peter 3 when he’s discussing the issue of submission, has most on his mind this act that Sarah did.

Now what is so significant about calling Abraham “lord” in verse 12? Here it is and here’s a very interesting side note on the spirituality of the wife. Here the Lord is, addressing her husband. Individually, Sarah, as the lone solitary woman doesn’t really buy it; that’s why she’s laughing in verse 12, she really has no faith to operate that God is… this thing out here is going to tell me that I’m going to have a child, now come on! So individually she has minus faith in that particular point in her life; she can’t really trust him. But she has something else that makes up for it and that is the idea that she calls her husband “lord” means she is willing to follow his faith. So though the woman’s faith may be weak she can track with her husband’s faith and the result is recorded later; Heb 11:11 commends Sarah. Well, if that’s the case then Sarah’s faith, though it looks weak because she’s laughing in verse 12, is commended in the New Testament because at least she saved the day by saying well I can’t believe it but I know that my husband believes it and so therefore we’ll act according. So you might say her husband’s faith is proxy for his wife’s faith in handling this little problem. And now Sarah, all of a sudden is going to quickly realize who it is that outside her tent door, even though she can’t see His face.

Genesis 18:13, “And the LORD,” Jehovah, “said to Abraham, Why did Sarah laugh? Now visualize this whole thing again outside the tent door. Imagine you are the dramatist and you’re going to run a film or a play, you’re writing a play on this and you have to position the actor and the actress just right to make this come off. You’ve got the actor that plays Jehovah, the Theocratic angel and he’s away from Sarah like this and he’s talking to Abraham and you zero in on Sarah’s face as she suddenly hears this person, and it says… remember in verse 12, it says she “laughed within herself.” So she did not laugh out so any audible sound was heard. Then in verse 13, here the Lord is talking back to her, back to her still, and he says, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying…” and read her heart. Now all of a sudden we come in and watch Sarah’s expression; here’s this guy that she doesn’t quite know what he is but all of a sudden He just read her heart. Now she knows who He is and she begins to fear and this begins to work in her soul.

Genesis 18:14 is one of the classics in all of the Old Testament; literally in the Hebrew it reads this way? “Is the thing too marvelous,” or “more marvelous than the LORD?” That’s a literal translation, “Is the thing more marvelous than the LORD?” That ought to be our memory verse. What it’s saying is do you have a problem, do you have anxiety that is bigger than God’s character. Do you really now Sarah, have a problem that is too big for Jehovah? At the time… and notice in verse 14 he dogmatically repeats it, “At the time appointed,” that is one year from the previous date of chapter 17, “I will return [unto thee], according to the time of life,” which we are interpreting as spring, “and Sarah shall have a son.”

Now by verse 15 the conversation opens, Sarah has come to the tent flap, she’s watched Him, He’s read her heart; she starts to fear, and she denies. She’s talking to Him now, so it must be that the angel of the Lord suddenly has turned around and confronts this woman face to face. That’s why she’s afraid, and she says, I didn’t laugh, [“Then Sarah denied, saying I laughed not”] and the conversation with her closes, you did [“And He said, Nay, but you did laugh”]. End of the story.

What a powerful story. What a powerful revelation of a believer, hospitable to God, of God working with the unbelief in the family, and out of it all we get these things. We get the analogy, powerful, recapitulated in the New Testament between their overcoming the sexual death by a miraculous work of God and us overcoming spiritual death by the miracle of regeneration producing the character of Christ in us. We see two laughs associated with Yitzhak and the boy’s name means laughter. Abraham laughed because he’s joyful; Sarah laughed because she’s doubtful. And the fruitfulness follows in these stories because everybody’s in the right place. It took three people to pull t his stunt off and every one of them is right on. First you have Sarah, and Sarah struggles with her own doubts; she has faith, she doesn’t faith in this [taps on overhead] but she says okay, whether I believe it or not I’m going to stand on my husband’s authority. So here’s Abraham, Sarah is under him and Peter thinks so much of this that in I Peter 3 he singles that incident… that incident to be a model for the woman.

And then here’s Abraham; Abraham is working here and he says I’ve got to be hospitable to the Lord. So you have hospitality, opening himself up to the risk, in terms of cost of time, cost of money, and the cost maybe of amended plans. And then you have the Lord doing His part, I will visit you both and I will bring it to pass; the child of the promise, the elect seed, will sovereignly be produced in history. We have many questions we could ask ourselves by way of application. But since we want to confine ourselves to the central theme of the story, the thing we want to ask ourselves is do we have saving faith, the kind that Abraham has. Do you really believe that God requires Christ’s righteousness from you and that you are wholly unable to generate that righteousness in and of yourself, and that it must be put there, it must be infused, it must be deposited by a miraculous work of God. We’ll close by singing….