This week millions of Christians around the world will be studying together the story of Abraham and Sarah, how they waited until they were 100 and 90 respectively before the birth of their long-awaited child Isaac. It seemed that God was nowhere to be found; all their prayers and efforts to provide an heir were in vain.
When you have to wait that long for a promise to be fulfilled, you would think that you could be excused for getting impatient. But impatience is a sin. The Lesson book everybody is studying suggests that God Himself was responsible, who delayed the fulfillment of His own promise.
It’s this writer’s job to teach (or preside) at a class that will discuss the lesson; but this bothered me. Is it true that God Himself delayed the fulfillment of that promise of an heir to be borne by Sarah herself? (She was always his only lawfully wedded wife!)
This bothered me; if God Himself gives a promise and then deliberately delays its fulfillment, this looks like it casts aspersion on God’s character. It makes Him work against Himself!
Or would it be more correct to say that the unbelief of both Abraham and Sarah was what delayed the fulfillment of the promise?
Abraham’s and Sarah’s decision to get Hagar mixed in as a second wife was sinful unbelief; the result: family pain and tension. Ishmael “mocked” Isaac when he was finally born, suggesting that all through the experience, the affair with Hagar poisoned the family relationship of Abraham and Sarah. Let’s be very careful here; people need to be reconciled to God, not alienated from Him through misunderstanding His character of fidelity.
Up to almost the end Sarah’s heart was like cold stone against God (see Gen. 16:2; she was the first to blame Him for “delaying” things; she anticipated the Lesson book!). But Hebrews 11:11 makes clear that she finally repented, fully; and that spiritual experience made it possible for her to have sex with her husband with a melted heart so that the Lord could at last do what He had always wanted to do—enable her to get pregnant.
Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
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