We must specially notice before we go on to the seventeenth chapter, what Hagar called God when He had so kindly sent an angel after her out in that lonely place that she ran away to, when Sarai was so hard on her,—”Thou God seest me”, Wherever we are whether in need or in trouble, self-willed and rebellious, in sin perhaps, or pleasing God in our conversation and our ways, it is always true that He sees us. O how careful we ought to be. Thou God seest me!
Thirteen years more went by while Ishmael was growing from a baby into quite a big boy, I suppose, and when it was now just about twenty-four years since Abram, Sarai and Lot first arrived in Canaan, God appeared again to Abram.
How long the time must have seemed, waiting for that promised baby. Abram and Sarai will have very soon been sure that Ishmael was not the child God had meant, when He had spoken to Abram again and again about his “seed” or children. They surely were sorry they had acted in their own wills in the unhappy marriage to Hagar.
In the sixteenth chapter, we read mostly about Sarai, Abram and Hagar, making plans and having troubles, but in this chapter, and the next one, God is the One we read mostly of, and there are no troubles to tell of now. The long years of waiting for God to act had done no good to Abram; if there was willfulness in the sixteenth chapter and planning without God, this chapter we are looking at today, shows us a man who had learned a lesson.
“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.” When Abram heard these words he fell on his face; he was humble now and quite willing for God to lead him. And God went on to say that Abram should be a father. of many nations; his name even should be changed to Abraham, meaning father of a great multitude. God promised all the land of Canaan to Abraham and to his descendants after him for an everlasting possession. And do you know, children, that that land has never been worth much to anyone else than the descendants of Abraham? Turks and others before them have had it, but that land is waiting for God’s time, and God’s earthly people Israel, saved and obedient, to come back to it.
But though it was God’s covenant, God’s solemn agreement, to make of Abraham a great nation, and to be their God, the ninth verse goes on to say “Thou shall keep My covenant therefore, thou and thy seed after thee in their generations.” God could say. “I will make”, “I will establish”, “I will give”, for all the blessings that He told Abraham of, were what He was going to give without Abraham or his children doing anything to get them, except to believe God. This was and is what God laves to do, to give even eternal life without our doing anything to earn it from Him, but He says too, “Thou shalt keep My covenant therefore.” It is just as we would expect in the, case of some poor homeless boy who had been brought into a fine home and adopted into the family: his talk and his behavior would have to be fit for the family he belonged to, wouldn’t they?
So God’s Word in effect says to us, who are saved, that because we are His children, members of His family, we ought to be like Him in our lives. What was the sign of the covenant then? It was circumcision, a mark of death then required by God to show that we deserve to die, and that there isn’t anything in us by birth or training that God can use in our salvation; we “must be born again” (John 3:77Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. (John 3:7)). The “old nature” that we are born with is no good in God’s sight and He won’t have it, we must have a new nature in which to please Him, and we get that when we receive the Lord Jesus as our Saviour. But we still have the old nature, and we find it out too, because it comes out in different kinds of naughtiness. But the Bible says, “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God.” Rom. 6:1111Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:11).
Sarai’s name as well as Abram’s was changed. She was to be Sarah, “princess”; the old name, Sarai, meant “my princess”, but she was to be “mother of nations”, not merely Abram’s princess; she was indeed, though ninety years old, to have a son, and his name should be Isaac, meaning “laughter”. Ishmael should be a great nation, but with Isaac the covenant should be, and he should be born the next year. When God has said this, He ceased talking with Abraham this time.