God makes a promise.  God makes a promise for a purpose.  God fulfills His promise and His purpose by His power.  He alone has the power to fulfill.

We’ve all made promises, even that promise not to make promises.  We make promises attempting to give a definite shape to the future, the fearful hopeful, indefinite future.  A promise implies reliability: a reliable promise made by someone reliable.  A reliable promise can be done by the one promising—maybe with difficulty, but still, something that can be done: realistically possible.  Any realistic promise has a term: by such and such a time, the promise will be fulfilled, even up until death do us part.

A promise is an attempt to give definite shape to the future; it also gives shape to the time between.  A promise requires work, devotion, commitment, discipline, focus, investment.  A promise requires faith.  Those few promises we treasure in the secret place in our heart are promises that, above all, require love.  The deep promises are secured by love.

God makes Abraham a promise: God will give the land to Abraham and his descendants (Gen 12:7, 13:15, 15:17-20); his descendants will be like the dust (Gen 13:16) and the stars (15:5): a promise of abundance, security, blessing, life.  God is not making this promise to Abraham because the man so richly merits it.  There’s nothing especially sterling about Abraham’s character.  For God’s own purposes, He claims a people, creates a people for Himself from Abraham and Sarah.  The purpose of His promise is to make His renown known on earth: from nothing, everything.  God will hallow His name in creation, among mankind.  What do we hallow?  What do our lives hallow?

Abraham has no idea why God chose him, any more than we have any idea why God has chosen us.  Honestly, I’m the last person God should have chosen!  As for you, you’ll have to ponder and decide for yourselves.  Abraham receives the promise in faith; that faith pleases God immensely, far more than any sacrifice any of us might make, any efforts to purify ourselves in the vain belief that we might thereby become worthy of God’s esteem and consideration.  No one earns their way to God.  No one works their way to God.  No one has the least interest in God until God blesses them with the seeds of interest, as God did with Abraham.  Abraham is not the father of faith, let alone our faith: God is the father of faith; He alone is the Father of our faith, for His purposes, in fulfillment of His promise that all mankind will know Him truly.  God is restoring what we ruined freely, willfully, in the Garden.

God promises Abraham land and many descendants.  He wanders in the land, a nomad.  There is famine: where is the abundance, the security?  Beloved, the abundance and security were never in the land, never in the descendants.  The abundance and security are in God alone, who promises, according to His sacred purpose.  There is family conflict, violence, as Abraham’s servants and Lot’s servants come to blows over territory.  They separate, Lot taking what looked to be the better land.  Years pass, and there is no child.  Abraham and Sarah grow old: long past the age when any child was ever conceived or born.  Sarah, at the end of her patience, fearful, decides to act, to force God’s plan, make it happen now: she tells Abraham to get a child by Sarah’s Egyptian slave, Hagar.  Abraham, heeding the voice of the woman God gave him, does.

How long, Lord?  You made a promise.  We still believe, but it’s been a long time!  And hope?  Hope feels slippery, looks shadowy, starts sounding like the echo of our pleading voices among all the dry, beaten stones.

There Abraham sits, in the meagre shade of his tent in the shimmering heat of the day.  Months go by without a drop of cooling, refreshing, happy, blessed rain.  Abraham is in the area of Hebron, a Canaanite town.  You can go there today, in the West Bank.  Abraham lives there, a resident alien in the land God promised to give to him and his descendants.  Abraham has no descendants.  He tries to deflect his thoughts from that direction, but mostly it seems to be a losing battle.  Oh, he would love a son!  He has Ishmael; he loves Ishmael, but Abraham knows that Ishmael, a blessing to him, Ishmael is not the son of the promise of God.  Abraham loves Ishmael and knows he is the child of his disobedience, the failure of frustrated, impatient faith.

Having settled near Hebron, Abraham builds an altar to God, to offer sacrifices and seek the favor of the Lord.  Over all those lean, hard years, despite every reason around him and within to abandon this God, Abraham has found, strangely, wonderfully, that he has come to love God, to trust Him.  He knows his reliance upon God.  He can recall, so clearly, the many times God has come through for him.  Abraham regards the times when it seemed as if God did not come through for him as times of testing, trial.  On the altar he built to his God, Abraham makes his offerings of flesh, bread, and wine, yet he is filled with the unshakeable sense that God neither wants nor needs any of those things.  Abraham perceives that what this God desires is the one who wholeheartedly seeks God.

At this age, Abraham spends much time by the entrance to his tent in the heat, pondering this God, feeling awe, the strangest sense of peace in the midst of his worries and disappointments, and feeling love, not like love for spouse or child, or food or light or life.  No, another sort of love.

Oh, and Abraham bought a tomb.  He and Sarah are old, now: he feels it every hour, every time he tries to get up, to move his body from here to there.  He bought a tomb.  And the son of the promise has not come.

Three strangers appear.  It’s the hottest part of the day, when no-one is out or about.  Then three men were standing nearby.  Where had they come from?  Where were they going?  He goes to them, quickly.  He bows down (18:2)—because he knows the Lord has come to visit?  No.  The Bible gives no clear sense that Abraham knew who they were, except strangers.  Abraham sees this as a God-given chance to show hospitality; Abraham is glad for the chance.  He invites them to stay for a time, wash the dust and grime of the journey from their feet, to eat, drink, to rest and refresh themselves (18:3-5).  Abraham is warm, friendly, generous to strangers.  Take a moment to think about this.  We know what hospitality means; we know what it looks like—the South is legendary for hospitality, right?  But what does hospitality have to do with a hospital?  We hear “hospital” in hospitality.  Beloved, they share the same root, come from the same idea: the way strangers are received, how strangers are treated.

God makes a promise to a stranger, Abraham.  God demonstrates how He receives and treats strangers by His promise, His purpose, and His power.  Abraham knows this.  This promise not only gives a definite shape to his future—though Abraham isn’t sure how much future he has left—God’s promise also shapes Abraham’s present, how he lives, acts, what he does and does not do.  Abraham has come to want to live in the spirit of the promise of God.  He will never be worthy of the promise; he did not earn the promise nor can he earn its fulfillment, yet, strangely, wonderfully, he wants to live worthy of this promise; he wants to live worthy of this God; he wants to live in such a way that others come to know, and praise, and bless this God.

This is an unusual encounter, here in the heat of the day.  Abraham addresses one (18:3), and three answer (18:5), heightening the strangeness.  Abraham could have given them whatever he happened to have on hand, but he doesn’t.  He makes haste to honor these strangers: Abraham knows a God who receives and honors strangers.  Jewish biblical scholar Nahum Sarna tells us that “[t]he Talmud remarks, ‘Such is the way of the righteous; they promise little but perform much.’”[1]  Exceed expectations.

Do we exceed expectations?  Oh, at school, maybe, on the playing field, perhaps at work.  How about at home, or in our relationships with family and friends?  How about in our discipleship?  I don’t want to be hard on anybody, because then I’d have to be hard on myself, too, but are we really exceeding God’s expectations?  Have we even thought to live that way?  Who could?  Who is able?

Abraham brings out his best.  He gives it, freely, abundantly, happily.  I mean, how often do we even do that for God, let alone other people?  Abraham asks for bread made with the best, finest flour—not the coarse stuff with the grit in it, but “the type from which meal offerings were later brought to the sanctuary”[2]—flour fit for God.  Abraham offers the best of the blessings God has provided, offers it to strangers.  “Three seahs” of flour (18:6) means nothing to us: that’s around thirty-six pounds.  You may not bake, but you’ve got to suspect that thirty-six pounds of flour will make a lot of flatbread, warm off the griddle.  I can smell it, almost taste it!  Abraham isn’t providing bread for one meal: he provides food for their journey.  Exceeding expectations.  Abraham lives in the light of the promise of God, whose promise has been food for Abraham’s journey.  Fresh, warm bread, cheese, fresh milk, roasted meat—it’s not a kosher meal, but this is before the Law.  The expectation of God needed no lengthy elaboration: seek the Lord with all your heart; let your life speak love for the God who promises you abundance and security, a future and a hope.

It is a rich, plentiful meal, a meal of generosity and blessing, compassion and grace: a godly meal.

The three strangers eat.  Does God eat?  Jesus ate, in his glorified body, not because he needed such food, but to be in fellowship with his faithful, to bless them with the assurance of his true presence with them.  The three eat, and Abraham stands at a distance (18:8).  He doesn’t eat with them: he is host and servant, ready to attend, to wait upon their needs.  Have we ever treated anybody this way?  How long could you tolerate it, such humble, silent, prompt service?  What do you suppose Abraham was thinking, wondering?  What do you suppose he was expecting?  Was he waiting for something?  These three who answer as one are on a long, important journey.  It is hot and dry.  Abraham wants to do what he is able to here to make the journey a little easier, a little more pleasant for them.  Maybe that’s part of what we’re called to do for one another, part of why God brings us together under His promise.

Perhaps Abraham’s thoughts, unintentionally, unconsciously, wander to God’s promise; Abraham has tried to live worthy of God’s promise, God’s unfulfilled promise.  Abraham has a son of his disobedience; Abraham has a grave, but Abraham does not have the son of the promise.  Is God unfaithful to His promise?  Does He build hope just to smash it?

They ask him, “Where is your wife Sarah?” (18:9). Sarah?  She’s in the tent.  How do they know the name of my wife?  How do they know I have a wife?  The one says to Abraham that, about this same time next year, when he returns, “Sarah your wife will have a son” (18:10), as though these strangers had come as messengers, sought Abraham to tell him this unlikely message, this hope that, for Abraham and for Sarah, felt long-deferred, this sudden news that the promise would indeed be fulfilled; this abrupt reminder that God is true to His promise.

Abraham has shown generous, lavish hospitality, exceeded expectations.  Abraham has made provision for these strangers, these guests, for days to come.  Is their announcement repayment?  Reward?  The promise was made long before.  Abraham is being repaid nothing; their news is no reward for Abraham’s actions.  Abraham expected no reward, sought no repayment for his free generosity.  Abraham has a God who showed free generosity to the stranger Abraham.  Abraham strives to live in the light of this God.  Now, he hears the words he had been hoping in for years: God is about to fulfill His promise.  God who makes a promise fulfills the promise He makes.  It is true.  It is sure.  It is reliable.  Abraham had faith that God was reliable.  He believed the promise because he believed God: God is able.  God has the power to fulfill.

God made His promise to Abraham for God’s own purpose.  As we trace the ancestry of Jesus we arrive at Abraham.  God chose Abraham to be the one through whom, after many generations and much tribulation, Jesus would be born, Son of David, son of Mary: both have Abraham as their ancestor.  In Jesus Christ, we are all children of the promise, the promise of God who will accomplish His purpose by His power, not according to our desires, visions, or timetables, but solely by His own sovereign will.  In God’s own time.

God chooses.  Why?  God chooses according to His own purposes, purposes that mean life for His elect.  Why me?  Why you?  God knows.  The God of promise, purpose, and power knows.

Sarah knows about the promise; most of the time, she believes it.  And it has been so long.  She knows she is far—oh, far—past the age of childbearing.  Quietly, unseen, she listens to these words and laughs to herself (18:12) in her mind, her heart.  “Then the LORD said to Abraham, ‘Why did Sarah laugh?’” (18:13).  How did this stranger know?  How did he know her thoughts?  How could he?  We knew already that this is God visiting Abraham and Sarah in the guise of strangers.  Abraham and Sarah don’t.  They’re both shocked.

And the Lord says this, these words I want you to remember and take with you today and treasure in your heart and ponder in the night: “Is anything too hard for the LORD?” (18:14).  When you pray in the Spirit, pout out your most sacred hopes to the Lord, pray in this attitude: Is anything too hard for The LORD?  Biblical scholar Gerhard von Rad heard this response and thought of “God’s omnipotent saving will.”[3]  What is God’s will?  It is omnipotent.  It is saving.  What is God’s promise?  It is a promise to save.

Sarah, so human, afraid, lies, saying “I did not laugh” (18:15).  Fear, lying—that’s a tried and true response to God!  Adam and Eve tried it.  Humanity has been trying it ever since, with the same result.  God knows the truth.  God tells the truth.  There is salvation, healing, in the truth.  The truth doesn’t reflect very well upon us.  Just look at this world we’ve made in fear and lies.  It doesn’t take long for it to come crashing down around us, does it?  Denunciations, destruction, disease.  So many, living as if they were each an autonomous zone.

Why did Sarah laugh?  Was this news a good joke?  Some people think God is a joke, a bad joke.  The Bible—laughable, absurdity, nonsense.  Sarah may have held on to the promise, yet somewhere along the way she had stopped living for it.  The promise sat there, in her mind, unopened, uninspected, like a Bible among the other books on the bookshelf.  It’s always there—you know just where it is, can visualize it now.  But when’s the last time you opened it, read, thought, asked, prayed, wept, hoped, and lived for what is being promised to you, there?

As the three get up to leave, “they looked down toward Sodom” (18:16).  You see, they had come, not only on the business of sharing Good News, not only to announce the fulfilling of the promise.  They had also come with an eye to Sodom, where people built lives, and children played, where there was laughter and labor, and no place for God in any heart.

And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.

               [1] Nahum Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989, 129.

               [2] Sarna, 129.

               [3] Gerhard Von Rad.  Genesis: A Commentary.  Old Testament Lib.  Philadelphia: Westminster P, 1973.  207.