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We turn in our Bibles to Genesis
chapter 18. Going to read verses one through
15. And I do invite you to stand
as you get to this place. It's on page 12 of your Pew Bibles. Genesis 18, one through 15. And the Lord God appeared to
him by the oaks of Mamre as he sat at the door of his tent in
the heat of the day. He lifted up his eyes and looked
and behold, three men were standing in front of him. When he saw
them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself
to the earth and said, O Lord, if I have found favor in your
sight, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought
and wash your feet and rest yourselves under the tree while I bring
a morsel of bread that you may refresh yourselves. And after
that, you may pass on. since you have come to your servant.
So they said, do as you have said. And Abraham went quickly
into the tent to Sarah and said, quick, three say is a fine flour,
knead it and make cakes. And Abraham ran to the herd and
took a calf tender and good and gave it to a young man who prepared
it quickly. Then he took curds and milk and
the calf that he had prepared and set it before them. And he
stood by them under the tree while they ate. They said to
him, where is Sarah your wife? And he said, she is in the tent.
The Lord said, I will surely return to you about this time
next year. And Sarah your wife shall have a son. Sarah was listening
at the tent door behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old,
advanced in years. The way of women had ceased with
Sarah. So Sarah laughed to herself saying, after I am worn out and
my Lord is old, shall I have pleasure? The Lord said to Abraham,
why did Sarah laugh and say, shall I indeed bear a child now
that I am old? Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed
time, I will return to you about this time next year, and Sarah
shall have a son. But Sarah denied it, saying,
I did not laugh, for she was afraid. He said, no, but you
did laugh. The grass withers, the flower
fades, but the word of our God abides forever. Amen, you may
be seated. Is God our friend? We know he's our creator. We
know he's our redeemer. We call him Lord. And these things we can affirm
of him because we know he's high and he's lifted up, he's exalted.
But friend? To call God friend, boy, that
seems very personal, very intimate. Sometimes, in some ways, even
a little too intimate. But God... is called friend,
he's called Abraham's friend. And we see this in the scriptures.
In fact, Abraham is the only man in the Bible who is called
friend of God. We heard it in the first scripture
reading this morning from Mr. Jones. God is speaking through
the prophet Isaiah and he says, Abraham, my friend. And he does this two other places
in the scriptures. The Lord calls Abraham his friend
in James chapter 2, 23. And he calls Abraham his friend
in 2 Chronicles 27. This special, intimate relationship
with Abraham, which we see a glimpse of in our passage this morning
in Genesis chapter 18. Abraham, my friend. Abraham,
my companion. Abraham, the man whom God, the
God of the heavens, the God of the universe, condescended to
meet with face-to-face fellowship, to covenant with personally,
to do life with, to share his plans with, to speak with, to
eat with. Abraham, my friend. The good news is that this special
relationship, this friendship is available to us, to you. Friendship with God is not just
a privilege for Abraham. It belongs to everyone who trusts
in Jesus. In fact, you remember what Jesus
said in John chapter 15. No longer do I call you servants,
for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but
I have called you Friends. He says greater love has no man
than this. He would lay down his life for his friends. Along with Father Abraham. We
can be called friend of God. God can say of us, my friends. And this is something that we
don't just want to pass by quickly. In fact, what we're going to
do this morning is look at these, this word of friendship that
God extends to Abraham, these other places in the scriptures.
And then I want to look from there and look back and see Genesis
chapter 18 in light of this and see how Genesis chapter 18 is
this glimpse of what that friendship looks like. And then this, This
friendship that now we enter into and can be part of. Genesis
chapter 18 shows us the features of our friendship with God. By faith in Christ, God is our
friend. By faith in Christ, God is your
friend. What does that look like? Well,
I want you to see, first of all, that we have a friend who communes
with us. We have a friend who fellowships
with us, who comes close to us, who lives life with us. He is
not a distant God, far off and separated from the details of
our lives. although this is sometimes how
we think of Him, isn't it? It's certainly how our culture
tends to think of God. There's this phrase I've used
in sermons before, moral therapeutic deism. And what I mean by that
is that most people in our world today, when they think of God,
they think of Him as this being who has some moral rules that
you live by, and He's kind of out there and separated from
you. and doesn't really care about the details of your life,
unless something really bad has happened, there's a death in
the family, or you're in a hard spot, and then you can count
on him to lend you an ear. But otherwise, he's aloof, he's
off, he doesn't intrude into the details of your lives. And
that is not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is up close
and personal, face-to-face fellowship, friendship. Notice, how God desires
to share life with his saints. And we see this here with him
coming to Abraham. One day he comes disguised as
it were as a weary traveler. Here's Abraham out. He's a nomad
in the desert, right? He's a nomad in the promised
land, moving around his tent. He doesn't have a home. And there's
something that's true of nomads. You could think of the Bedouin
tribes today. I've seen them out in Israel,
moving around in the desert lands. And you see them and you think
they probably are out there because they don't want to be around anyone. It's
not necessarily true. In fact, what I've heard is that
it can be a pretty lonely life and they love visitors. They
love when guests arrive. Well, suddenly God shows up as
a guest, and he's flanked by two angels. We know that they're
angels because in the next chapter, these angels are the ones who
go to Sodom and Gomorrah and have that famous confrontation.
But here's God, and he's appearing as a weary traveler. He's come
in the form, as it were, or the shape or the appearance of a
man. We don't know exactly how much
of this Abraham knows. He says grand things about this
visitor, but the things he says could be said almost of anyone
who would show up. You know, that title Lord can
apply to God, but it can also apply to someone who shows up
and you're giving honor to them, right? And so we don't know how
much Abraham knows at first, but just he has visitors. He
has visitors who he gives great weight and honor to, and you
see him rushing around. What's he doing? He's preparing
a meal. He says, oh, I have a bit of
bread for you, but he brings out more than bread, doesn't
he? He has Sarah making bread by hand, and then he goes and
he takes one of the best of his flock, one of his calves, and
he says, I'm going to offer this up as a grand feast for these
visitors. This is good, old-fashioned hospitality in the desert. Now, there's a lesson here, if
you think back to the summer study in Rosaria Butterfield,
there's a lesson in what hospitality ought to look like. Abraham here
gives you a picture of good hospitality, but that's not where we're focusing
this morning. Where we're focusing is on the God who comes and condescends
to the level of Abraham such that he does what? He says, I'll
be your guest for a day. I'll come into your tent. I'll
sit in the shade of a tree with you. And guess what? I'm going
to let you serve me. Can you imagine this? The God
of the heavens has come and as it were said, I'm coming to your
house today. And I'm going to sit and be fed by
you. I'm going to let you do hospitality
for me. I'm going to eat with you. Abraham and God and these angel
companions sit down under the shade of some trees and start
to eat a home cooked meal. Now this is the only time before
the incarnation that God eats something set before him. Think
about this. There's other places in the Old
Testament before the coming of Christ where there is food that
is set before the Lord. One is in the book of Judges,
when Manoah offers up a meal as a sacrifice before the Lord,
and what happens? Fire comes down from heaven and
devours it as a sign that God has accepted the sacrifice, but
there's no sitting and eating. Fire descending and consuming
it. The same thing happens with Elijah,
right, and the prophets of Baal. A sacrifice set before the Lord.
The fire comes down and consumes it. But here in Genesis chapter
18 is the only place before the New Testament, before the coming
of Christ, where God says, I'm gonna sit down and I'm gonna
eat what's served to me. I'm going to chew it. I'm going to
share it with you. Think of how meals, play an important role in our
closest relationships. And you can think of some, maybe
you have a day of the week when you get together with your family.
Some of us do that. Some of us have the custom of
saying, oh, there's a Tuesday night dinner with grandma. Right? And it's those times where you
can reflect back and say, those are special times. That's where
the family bonds, and we're not really thinking about the formality
of the event, but the food, the conversation, it blends, and
we feel ourselves growing closer together. Think of first dates. birthday parties, family dinners,
fellowship meals, and how so many of these things revolve
around food. Why? Because food and fellowship
are intertwined. Because food and fellowship are
designed to go together. And then think of how the God
of the heavens, the God who made Abraham, sits down outside his
tent and eats a feast prepared by Abraham, who says, I'm gonna
come and do life with you. I'm going to come and bond over
a meal. I'm gonna eat what you've served
me. I know, at least with my Tuesday
night dinner with my grandmother, when I get to go to that, she
is just delighted to get food in front of me. And then she's,
what'd you think of it? Did you enjoy it? Could I do anything
different next time? And here you have God giving
Abraham that kind of privilege. Go ahead, serve me. Go ahead,
give me something that you like. I'll share it with you. Now what's
the lesson here? The lesson here is that God desires
to draw near to us in fellowship. The covenant idea, the idea of
God covenanting with us is more than what is truly the case that
we have one who pledges himself to us and pledges to purify us
and promises to be our Lord and has control over our lives. Yes,
all of that, but also it is designed such that we know God so up close
and personal that we can call him friend. Personal, close fellowship. That's the goal. that God would
talk with you and walk with you and share life with you and know,
and that when you come and draw close to God and know him in
Jesus Christ, that you would do what? That you would spend
your whole lives knowing more and more of his mind and he would
evidence that he already knows everything about you. Are you uncomfortable with a
God who desires to befriend you? and who moves to befriend you,
if that's an uncomfortable idea and you say, that's a little
bit too close, that's not the God that I am looking for, then you
need to go back to the scriptures because like it or not, this
is what God is after in his covenant relationship with you. Remember that God took on our
flesh. Remember that he came to dwell with us, really and
actually. in the incarnation when Jesus
Christ, the Son of God took on flesh and went about the personal
work of Christ Jesus. And then in the Lord's Supper,
what did he do? Our divine friend takes Abraham's
place as host and serves us a meal. A meal at the cost of his very
life. He says, look, I've prepared something for you. I desire to
share it with you. And the way for this to be true
is for me to die for you. Won't you come near, be my friend? Won't you come near and know
something of my mind? Won't you come near and see what
I love? If we trust in Christ, we are
friends of God and we can know his thoughts more deeply than
the more we walk with him. We have a friend who communes
with us Pay attention to that word commune because we call
the Lord's Supper communion. That's another way we speak of
it. There are different dimensions of the Lord's Supper, right?
But one of those dimensions is a friendship meal, a fellowship
meal where God says, won't you come and partake of this so that
I can come close and show you who I am, so that I can meet
you at the table, so that I can serve you. We have a friend who
communes with us. We also have a friend who confronts
us. And we know this is true of friendship, that the best
kinds of friends don't just let us do whatever we want. They
don't just visit for the social calls and check off the box,
but they come and they tell us hard things. Proverbs 27, six,
faithful are the wounds of a friend. You've probably learned this,
that the best kinds of friends are ones who just at the right time
say, hey, brother, You shouldn't do this. You shouldn't
do that. There's a better way. You say,
you know, you're a faithful friend because you're willing to point
that out. Well, so it is with God, our friend. And Abraham
learned that. Abraham saw that when God came
and visited his household, it was more than just a social call
because what God came to do was to actually gently but firmly
confront Abraham and his wife, Sarah, about a seed of doubt
that was beginning to be sown in their hearts. And that seed
of doubt was what? That God really wasn't going
to be faithful to his promise. That's deep down what Sarah believed,
and it had gotten them in trouble before, hadn't it? Think back
to Genesis chapter 16. And even before that, think of
all the times when Abraham and Sarah, because they were doubting
that God really would give them a child, took things into their
own hand, and then what happened? Chaos. Setback. But God is a loving friend, and
he is coming to them to say, no more of that doubt. Don't
you know that I'm going to provide for you? He does it with Sarah. At some point during this fellowship
meal, Abraham must've realized that these visitors weren't normal
and that he had divine company. Wherever that happened, whenever
it happened, it surely happened when he said, I will come back
this time next year. By that time, your wife Sarah
will have a son. Okay, I'm not talking to an ordinary visitor.
This is that thing that God's been saying a lot. And here he
is, he's in front of me and he's speaking to me and At this time
and in this kind of culture, the men would eat separately
from the women. And so Sarah is in another room. In fact,
she's kind of listening in outside the tent and her ear is perking
up when she hears reference to this. And then what happens? She laughs, but it's not laughing
out loud. It's not LOL. It's a laugh in
her mind, right? And of course, you know what
I'm talking about. When you hear someone say something, you kind
of keep a straight face, but you're thinking, no way. You
know, it almost like, not gonna happen. I'll be polite. I'm not gonna laugh out loud
to offend my guests, but that's not gonna happen. When God comes
and assures, reassures the couple that they are indeed going to
have their own offspring, Sarah laughs in her mind. Why? Because
she's about 90 years old. And as the text says, the way
of women is well past her, well behind her. And so this laugh in her mind
goes something like this. Keep dreaming. There's just no
way. I'm 90 years old. Pigs will fly
when I'm pregnant. Thanks for the nice words. Come
back, pay your visit, but you're gonna see that I still don't
have a baby in a year. You're crazy if you think I'm
gonna have a baby. Well, we have to call this laughter
for what it is. It's the laughter of unbelief.
It's the laughter of distrust. This is nothing to make light
of. This is a laughter that we know in our own selves, right?
Where do you laugh at God? Even if you're not LOLing, God
knows your hearts. He knows your mind. He knows
everything about you. He knew exactly what was going
through Sarah's mind. Where is it when we hear promises
of God and we say, yeah, but that's not gonna happen. Yeah. Nice words, but I don't
think so. Where are you most tempted to
laugh? The laugh of unbelief. Say, yeah,
I'm not seeing that, no way. God loves us too much to let
distrust and disobedience take hold, even when it's just a little
root. He loves us too much to let that
little root grow and grow and grow. And so you can imagine
Sarah's surprise when God suddenly confronts her and says, Abraham,
ask your wife why she laughed in her mind about what I said. And then what does Sarah say?
Abraham calls her in and Sarah says, I didn't laugh. And then
what does God say? Yeah, you did. It's amazing. I still, I wonder
what the look was like on Sarah's face. She's like, God knows us so well. He knows us perfectly. He knows
us better than we know ourselves. He knows the laughs that don't
even come out, but that stay in our minds. He knows the distrust
that's in our heart. This is the kind of friend we
have, one who knows us so intimately that he is willing to come and
not just know us, but also confront us and say, I'm gonna inflict
a faithful wound here. You've got to stop that. Where does this happen today
still? It happens still as God in his perfect expert way speaks
through his word and continues to point to our sins. Have you
ever noticed how the word convicts us even when there are things
that we haven't told another person? Another, no human being
knows something we've been struggling with or things going on in our
mind. And then it's like the word of God comes, maybe it's
in a sermon, and maybe the pastor puts an application and you're
like, whoa, he's speaking to me. And then Wednesday night
home group, it comes up again. And then in Sunday school, or
while you're reading the scripture on your own, you're saying, it
just feels like God keeps poking at this thing like he knows my
mind, like he knows my heart. Well, guess what he does? And
God in his own expert way will convict us with his word, even
about the things that we haven't put into words to other people,
even about the laughs that don't come out loud. And my admonition
to you from the word is to receive this correction from the Lord
as from a faithful friend. to not say, okay, moving on to
something else, okay, I'm gonna stay away from worship, I'm gonna
stay away from home group, I'm going to flee from this conviction.
No, receive the wounds inflicted from God's word as those of a
faithful friend who knows you better than you know yourself. This is the kind of friend we
have. He meets us, he communes with us. He does, he confronts
us when we sin. In the right time, in the right
place, he does. But he doesn't leave us with that. He also comforts
us. And his comfort is the best kind
of comfort. A friend is meant to comfort.
A friend is meant, amongst other things, to come alongside at
a time of struggle and say, don't fail now, I'm here with you. Don't fail now, I'm here to help
you. And is this not what we see with
God? That he is this kind of friend to Abraham and to Sarah
and to us? Abram and Sarah's friend does
not leave the tent without extending tremendous comfort. And it comes
in the form of a question, which we all ought to wrestle with.
One of the great questions of the Bible. Is anything too hard
for God? Is anything too hard for God?
Now that question demands an answer from every single one
of us. Is anything too hard for God? Because each of us, in our
own different ways, this week has had trouble believing that
our best friend will come through for us. There are different ways,
different relationships, different sin struggles in our lives in
which we've just, that seed of doubt has said, you know, I don't
know how this one's gonna have an answer. I don't know how this
is gonna get worked out. I don't know how this is gonna happen. Let me
ask you this. Is it too hard for God to overcome
your guilt and shame? Some of you have wrestled so
much with this question this week. Is it too hard for God
to forgive you all your offenses? And you live life as if, indeed,
it is too hard. You live life as if there's this
impossibility that you'll never be accepted, and so you wallow
in the guilt and the shame when God says, what does he say? What's the answer to this? Is
there anything too hard for God? No, no. Jesus himself says this in Mark
10, verse 27. He says, remember that question
that Abraham was asked? I've got an answer. Nothing is
impossible for God. Is it too hard for God to forgive
you all your offenses? Is it too hard for him to bring
you safely through the darkest of situations? Is it too hard
for him to raise the dead? Is it too hard? For him to root out sin in your
life, is it too hard? For him to take a broken relationship,
a struggling marriage? And to breathe life and to reunite
what is separated? No, nothing is impossible for
God. And you need to realize this about your friend, your
heavenly friend. Your salvation was not too hard
for God, and so nothing is impossible for him. Now think about this. Your salvation looked utterly
impossible. We're talking about us, each
one of us being a sinner, eternally separated from God, and there
being not one single thing that we could do of our own strength
to resolve that issue. We sinned, we sinned in Adam.
And then we personally sinned. And the things that we make light
of, even sins that we've forgotten, even one of them, condemns us
for eternity, because God is perfect, and we are imperfect,
and we are separated from Him. Nothing we can do to fix that
problem. But God did the impossible. He remained just. He punished
sin, because that's who God is. The God who punishes sin, but
He punished sin by laying it upon His Son. He did the impossible,
the seemingly impossible, by taking upon flesh, by taking
the punishment for our sin on the cross, and then, raising
Christ Jesus from the dead so that we in him might have that
newness of life and might have the gift of the Holy Spirit reunited
to him and growing in grace all the way to glory with heaven
itself being our inheritance. Nothing is impossible for God.
Your salvation should teach you that. And so nothing else is
impossible for him. And I want you to see something
about our friend here. Our friend, our heavenly friend
God, he gets the last laugh in this text. Because he reveals the name of
this son that will be born a year after this, and his name is Isaac. You know what the word, the name
Isaac means in Hebrew? Ha, ha, ha. It's like naming
your child, Mr. Ha-ha-ha, Mr. Laughter. Literally the name Isaac in Hebrew
sounds like a laugh, if you hear it in Hebrew. And what God is
saying is, just wait, you're gonna have this son, he's gonna
be born, and what's his name gonna be? Ha-ha-ha. And that's
God's laughter. That's not Sarah's, but God saying,
you thought that I'd failed you. You thought I'd given up on you.
You thought I wasn't a faithful friend, but I am. What a faithful friend we have.
One who turns our laughter of distrust into a laughter that
says, look at what my friend has done for me. Will you not
go to this friend now? Will you not run to this faithful
friend? Let us go to him now in times
of trouble and in times of praise. Heavenly Father, we thank you
for all you've done for us and for how you are a friend that
is close, as close as a friend gets. We ask, Lord, that in the areas
of our life where we want you to be distant, that we would
we would sacrifice that pride and we would accept you as a
close and faithful friend. And we pray that in the areas
where we are struggling to allow your conviction to take full
fruit, that we would receive your firm corrections as those
from a faithful friend who inflicts good wounds upon us in order
to get us back on the right track. Lord, we pray that in all the
areas where we are doubting, where there is laughter, not
of joy, but of distrust in our hearts, that you would address
that very laughter, that you would root it out of us, and
instead a different kind of laughter would come forth, one of joy
and praise, the kind of laughter that Sarah had when she saw her
son and saw that you were really faithful to your promise, long
after it was possible for man to be faithful. Lord, we pray
that in our own lives, the things that are seemingly impossible
would be overcome by your grace and that we would get such a
view of this that we would laugh properly, the laugh that you've
taught us, the laughter of joy and praise. We pray this in Christ's
name, amen. We come now to the time of the
Lord's Supper. I invite the leaders of the church to come and help
serve.
A Friend of God
Series The Book of Genesis
Through faith in Jesus, we are friends of God.
| Sermon ID | 316251949597371 |
| Duration | 31:58 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Genesis 18:1-15 |
| Language | English |
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