The Beginning - 5 - Abraham

So today is week 5 in our journey through Genesis. So far we have gone all the way from creation to the great flood and the tower at Babel. This week we are going to be looking Abraham, his wife Sarah and his son Isaac.

The first passage that we are going to look at today starts mid-action. So here is a bit of background before we start. Abraham is married to Sarah. God had promised Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation, that he would have lots of children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren to make his family flourish.

However, years went and the couple was now very old, Abraham was 99 years old. They still had not had any children, and as you might have guessed their hope for a family was getting a little thin. Then three visitors arrived at their camp and in Genesis 18 : 9 - 15 we see them re-confirming God’s promise.

As we can see in the passage when you cannot see how God is going to make a situation happen it can be hard for us to believe it. Here we see Sarah laughing at the prospect of having a child, because she was well past the age that someone would naturally become pregnant.

We are now going to play a game to show the difficulty of doing something without being able to see the solution.

Like for the people in the game it can be tough going through life not being able to see how God is going to do achieve the plans that he has for us. We might sometimes feel like giving up or losing hope, but this is when faith, and trust in God is most important.

The important thing that we need to remember is that God isn’t limited to the natural or the logical. Just because we cannot see how something is going to come together does not mean that it won’t happen. With God anything is possible.

As the years went on Abraham and Sarah began to get impatient waiting for God. They started to feel that God was never going to provide for them the child that he had promised them. They decided to give God a helping hand and Abraham decided to have child with one of his slaves instead.

As we are about to see, working in impossible situations is exactly what God did next for Abraham and Sarah, Genesis 21 : 1 - 7.

So as we can see in this passage God provided for Abraham and Sarah, just it was not at the time that they were expecting. God make good on his promise at the point when it could have only been him. He waited until there was no other possible way than relying on him, and then he delivered on his promise.

Trusting God in the possible is a key part of what faith is. We are now going to think about this while listening to a song. Think about things that you know that God has done which have seemed impossible, or that you hope he will do in the future.

God is not limited to the logical, reasonable or natural. God can and does doe incredible things when we least expect them.

As we have seen throughout this series faith needs to be followed with perseverance as was the case for Noah when he was building the Ark, and as we have seen today Abraham had to wait years to get what he was promised.

To illustrate this we are going to play a game, which we need to volunteers for.

Faith is not just for the short term. Sometimes we need to trust God over long periods of time, maybe even years.

The story of Abraham, Sarah and their boy Isaac didn’t end at the birth. God has another test up his sleeve for Abraham as we can see in Genesis 22 : 1 - 12.

So God after many years of waiting has given Abraham his son. The son that God promised would make him a ‘great nation’. The son which would cause him to have so many descendants that they would outnumber the stars in the sky (Genesis 15 : 5).

Now God as asking Abraham to kill his son. To kill the son who he was resting his hopes of decedents on, to kill his hopes of creating a great nation.

• If you were Abraham how do you think you would feel?
• Would you have gone through with it?
• What do you think the conversation between Isaac and Abraham would have been like?

Fortunately Abraham did not have to kill his son, instead God provided a ram for him to offer as a sacrifice instead.

This reminds us that our God is a God that provides for us. What I want you to do now is think of times when God has provided for you or someone you know, and write this on your ram as a reminder that God continues to provide for us even today.

As we look over this field of provision set out in front of us we can be thankful that God continues to provide for us every day.

Let’s finish our session with a prayer.

God is not just someone who has provided for his people in the past. He is a God who continues to care for and provide for his people today. All we need to do is have faith in him.