Hello and welcome to our broadcast. We're looking in Genesis chapter 17, a major pivotal point in the book of Genesis. Be sure and have your Bible open if you possibly can. You'll get more out of it that way. Well, in chapter 17, verse number 1, we read, And Abram was ninety years old and nine, and the Lord appeared to Abram and said unto him, I am the Almighty God. walk before me, and be thou perfect, and I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly." This is a very interesting portion of scripture here. And it says here that the Lord appeared to Abraham. That phrase is found three times in chapter 12 and verse 7. He was 70 years old and the Lord appeared to him there. And then in chapter 17 and verse number 1 here, he is now 99 years old and the Lord appears unto him again. Now that is not to say that they have not had any communication in the meantime. We read in chapter 13 and verse number 14, the Lord spake to Abraham and that was after Lot was separated from him. And then he had that vision in chapter 15 where he was given some information concerning the nation of Israel and also in verse 18 of chapter 15, the property in which he would inherit. Now, you'll notice as you go down through this chapter that in verse number two, God said, I will. Verse number six, he said, I will. I will. Verse 7, again, I will. Verse 8, I will. He said, I will establish my covenant. Verse 19, God is about to do something very different here. This is where Abraham and Sarah officially become Jews. You'll notice in verse 5, he changes his name. He said, neither shall thy name anymore be Abram. but thy name shall be Abraham, for a father of many nations have I made thee." And then we see also that Sarah's name is changed. In verse number 15 it says, And as for Sarah thy wife, thou shalt not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be. And I will bless her, and give thee a son also of her. I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations. Kings of people shall be of her." Now keep in mind, Abraham at this time is 99 years old. Now it says here in verse 17 that Abraham fell on his face and laughed. And he said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is a hundred years old? And shall Sarah that is ninety years old bear? And Abraham said unto God, O that Ishmael might live before thee. Why don't we just use Ishmael here? He didn't really think this was going to happen once again. We've said before, Abraham was a great man of faith, but he also was a man of flesh. And they that sowed of the flesh shall reap corruption, we see, and Abraham did that every once in a while. And anyway, he says, why don't we just use Ishmael? And God said, verse 19, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son, and I will establish my covenant with him. And he says in verse 19, you're going to call his name Isaac. And then he said, And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee. Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly. Twelve princes shall he begat, and I will make him a great nation. But my covenant will I establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear unto thee at this that time into next year. And he left off talking with him, and God went up. from Abraham. Once again we see Abraham being obedient to God. We read in verse 23, And Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all that were born in his house, and all that were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham's house, and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin in the self, same day as God had said unto him." That's the secret. You just do what God says and God will bless. Well, we go on in 24 and it says, "...and Abraham was ninety years old and nine, when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, and Ishmael his son was thirteen years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, and in the selfsame day was Abraham circumcised, and Ishmael his son, and all the men of his house, born in his house and bought with money of strangers, were circumcised with him." Now you say, why would God want to do that? I have absolutely no idea, but I do know this, when God says do something, you're going to be best just to do it. And once again we see immediately following his obedience to the will of God. We read in chapter 18 and verse number 1, And the Lord appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre, and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day, and he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him. And when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door and bowed himself toward the ground. And so in verses 1 through verse number 8 in chapter 18, we see Abraham as a servant, taking care. You can read these verses on your own. We see him in a very, very serious way, simply being a servant, willing to wash their feet, etc. And that is certainly a major role for the Christian. Years ago, I had the privilege of being the founder of the Faithway Baptist College of Canada that is located in Ajax, Ontario. And when we located, when we began that college, we came up with the phrase, training servants for the master. That's what God wants, training servants for the master. We've had so many colleges over the years training leaders for the master. And now we've got so many leaders going in so many different directions. Nobody knows who to follow anymore. What we need to do is simply be servants for the Master. You can go through the Bible from one end to the other, and you will find out that God picks his leaders from his servants. We need to be servants for the Master. Abraham knew all about that. Well, then in verse number nine, we have a very interesting question. And they said unto him, Where is Sarah thy wife? Where is Sarah? They knew exactly where Sarah was. It's sort of like when God came in the Garden of Eden and he says, Where art thou, Adam? He knew where Adam was. It was one of those questions where it was time for Adam to stop and realize where he was. What are you doing, Adam? What are you hiding over there for? Where are you physically? What are you doing behind those trees? And why are you hiding and why are you afraid? And where are you, Adam, spiritually? Where are you now? Well, the same thing is true here. The Lord says, where is Sarah? Well, where is she physically? She's in the tent. But where is she spiritually? We find here that she laughed, she laughed, verse number 12, Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old, shall I have pleasure, my Lord being old also? And the Lord said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh? She laughed. Not only did she laugh, she lied. She says here in the next verse, I laugh not, she said, in verse number 15. For she was afraid, and he said, Nay, but thou didst laugh." Well, here she was laughing because God said he was going to do something that was miraculous. And here she is lying. Yes, we are simply people who can be living in faith in one minute and living in the flesh the next. And these things are written for our admonition. And so the Lord said to Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I of a surety bear a child which am old? Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the time appointed I will return unto thee according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son. God says something's going to happen. It is going to happen. Well, in verse number 16 it says, The men rose up from thence, and looked toward Sodom, and Abraham went with them to bring them on their way. And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham the thing which I do, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth will be blessed in him? For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord to do justice and judgment that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he had spoken of him. And the Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, And because their sin is very grievous, I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it which is come unto me. And if not, I will know. Yes, he will know. Well, what's it say in verse 22? And the men turned their faces from thence and went towards Sodom, but Abraham stood yet before the Lord. And Abraham drew near and said, wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Right away, Abraham was very concerned about his nephew Lot and his family. And so he starts this very familiar story. He says, per adventure, there be fifty righteous within the city. Wilt thou destroy it and not spare the place for the righteous that are therein? And so he comes down and he says, all right, I'll spare it if there's 50. And then he says, well, what about if there's 45? And God says, well, all right, if you can find 45. And then in verse 29, Abraham says to the Lord, well, what if there's 40? And he said, all right, I'll spare it if there's 40. And then in verse 31, he says, well, What if there's 20? Will you spare it for 20? And he said, yeah, I'll spare it if there's even 20. And one more time, he said in verse 32, Oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet, but this once per adventure, 10 shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for the sake of ten. And the Lord went his way as soon as he had left communing with Abraham, and Abraham returned unto his place. And I'm thinking that Abraham is thinking, oh great, if you consider the fact that there's Lot and his wife, and he has two married daughters there in the town, And he has two unmarried daughters. There's eight. Surely he's won two people in all the time he's been there. All he had to do was win two people and that place would have been spared. But God could not find ten righteous people in that place. Righteous meaning simply that they were saved, that they were born again. Well, in Luke chapter 17, when the disciples asked Jesus what it would be like before he came back, he said, he said, as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it also be in the days of the Son of Man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage until the day that Noah entered in the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all. Only eight righteous people there. That's all there was. Well, likewise, also in the days of Lot, they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded. And the same day Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all." So what are we saying here? The Lord is saying that it's going to get like it was in the days of Lot, and when it gets like that, I will be back again. He said also that there would be very, very few people who would actually be saved. Way back in the late 50s or the early 60s, A. W. Tozer said that 90% of the people who are our church members are not saved. Now, A. W. Tozer was not some kind of a redneck. He was a very highly respected servant of God. Maybe that's why 90% of the people who sit in our fundamental independent Baptist churches do absolutely nothing for God except throw a few bucks on the plate every week, try to get off some of the guilt of the fact they're not doing anything for God. Why is it that less than 10% do all the work? Maybe Tozer had the answer here. In any event, we do know this, that Jesus says, when it gets like it was in the days of Noah, when it gets like it was in the days of Lot, when the Sodomites were taking control, He said, I will be back. Well, my prayer is to even so come quickly, Lord Jesus. Well, our time is up. Be sure and tune in again tomorrow. We'll have another broadcast. We'll try to make it plain, and we will try to make it simple. I'm not afraid of anything I'm not afraid of anything