Going Foward

 Read Genesis 21

We have come a long ways to get to these words.

Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised.

And so, 11 chapters into the story of Abraham, he and his wife have a child together.  It was just as and when the Lord had promised.  The child was named Isaac as the Lord had directed.

When the child was 8 days old, he was circumcised as the covenant directed. Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born.

Imagine Isaac at Little League games.  Some kid asks him which one is your father.  He answers, the one sitting next to your great, great, grandfather. OK, baseball wasn’t invented for another 3,600 years, but you get the idea.  Abraham was 100 when Isaac was born.

Isaac fulfilled God’s promise to Abraham.  It was a promise that Abraham and Sarah sometimes doubted.  Sarah even laughed to herself a year earlier when the Lord and two angels declared that Sarah would have a child in about one year.

Sarah laughed to herself and thought, will I really have a child at such an old age?

It really didn’t matter that Sarah was talking to herself, the Lord heard her.  You remember what followed.  The Lord said why did Sarah laugh?  Sarah jumped into the conversation between the Lord and her husband and said, I didn’t do that.

The Lord said, yes you did.

But now with the birth of her son, Isaac, Sarah laughs with joy and amazement that God fulfilled his promise in her.  The laughter was in response to God doing the impossible.

Everyone who would hear the story would laugh in response to this question.  Is anything too hard for the Lord?

The child grew and was weaned and, on that day, Abraham held a great feast.  God’s promise had come true and the child was growing as evidence of God’s promise.

For all the buildup we have seen to this point, this part is a short story. Do you know what’s missing from this story?

Regret, repentance, and remorse.  We will just stick with the R words for now.

We don’t see Abraham saying, I regret not really believing. How could I not trust the Lord?

We don’t see Abraham and his wife Sarah covered is sackcloth and ashes in repentance for their disbelief.  OK, we don’t even see a reference to sackcloth until much later in Genesis, but this was not a time of repentance.

We don’t see hearts saddened with remorse over having doubted the Lord.

We don’t see Abraham and Sarah looking back at their past mistakes.  We don’t see these two anchored to their pasts.  There was likely some repentance along the way.  When Sarah started showing, both Abraham and Sarah surely knew that the fulfillment of God’s promise was on the way.

When the baby moved or kicked, that probably put a lump in the throats of these parents-to-be. At that point, these two had to have some regret or remorse over their doubt.  We don’t read about it but these two if nothing else, were 100% human and subject to human emotions and reactions.

What we see when the promise is fulfilled are a couple of happy parents.  Mom is laughing and knows that it is from God.  God has delivered on his impossible promise.

Dad is obedient, circumcising his son on day 8 of his young life. Dad is putting on the Ritz when the kid is weaned.  Dad is celebrating.

God does this incredible thing for us.  He designs our lives to be lived going forward.  Sure repentance and seeking forgiveness are big things in our lives.  They got us to the words, JESUS IS LORD!

Learning lessons from our past leads to wisdom.  God values wisdom, but he designed us to live going forward.

Abraham had pulled some boneheaded stunts.  Sarah did her part as well, but God had plans and purposes for these two and he fulfilled them in spite of all of their doubt and shortcomings.

When God fulfills his promises in you, you celebrate.  You trust him more. You learn your lessons but your focus is forward.  Your life is before you.

Not quite 2000 years later, Jesus said that the truth will set you free. Part of that truth is that God has good plans for you.  God has purpose for your life.  God will direct our steps if we trust him.

But we continually miss the mark.  We transgress. We sin.

That’s all true, but God always hits the mark.  God fulfills his promises to us.  Even when it seems like we are a bigger knucklehead than Abraham, God still fulfills his promises to us.

And when he does, it is not a time for regret, repentance, or remorse.  It is a time for another R word.  It is time to rejoice.

We rejoice that God continues to work in this world.

We rejoice that God does have good plans for us.

We rejoice that God’s mercy and grace go beyond our transgressions.

We rejoice that God does fulfill his promises.

We rejoice that he is faithful and just to forgive us.  We rejoice that we don’t have to wonder if God loves us or will forgive us.

We rejoice that God takes everything that happens to us—and some of that stuff is due to our own boneheaded mistakes—and uses it for good because we do love him and we have been called according to his purpose. 

We rejoice that God is for us.

We rejoice that we get to live going forward.  We sometimes might laugh or chuckle as we go forward. Man, did God ever get me through some stuff?  Did God ever deliver me from my own bad mistakes?  Did God not do what I thought was impossible.

We get to laugh and live in God’s promises.  We get to live going forward.

Now our human nature tells us that we need to pay the price for our mistakes.  We need to pay the price for our transgressions.  We need to pay for doubting God.

And our human nature is correct.  We need to pay for all of those mistakes.  They are listed on an invoice of our sin and we must pay with our very lives.  The penalty for sin is death and we were charged, found guilty, and sentenced to death.

And Jesus said, I will pay the price for them. He did pay the price for us.

So, we can look back at all of our mistakes, sins, transgressions, doubt, and other shortcomings with regret and repentance and remorse or we can rejoice in the life that we have been given in the blood of Jesus.

There is a time for repentance and surely we cannot live without some regret or remorse here and there.  We are human and there is a time for everything.

But when we realize that God has fulfilled a promise to us.  It is time to rejoice and celebrate.  We can rejoice in the fulfillment of the promise to take away sin and death and we can do that every day, but we should be on the lookout for those other things that God has promised us and delivered upon.

We might even laugh a little when he does what the world deems impossible. Is anything too hard for God?

We might just break out singing our God is an awesome God when our human eyes see what almighty God has done for us.

We might just want to throw a feast every time we realize that the invoice for our sin was nailed to the cross.

On the worst of our days, we might still want to wear a smile on our faces as we are blessed to live going forward.

Sorrow may last for the night but joy comes in the morning.  We rejoice that we get to live going forward.

Amen.