Is Anything Too Hard for the Lord?

 Read Genesis 18

The Marines have a saying.  We do difficult things all the time.  The impossible just takes a little longer.  It comes out of the long-standing thinking, the Marines have done so much with so little for so long, they believe they can do anything with nothing. I lived through some of those years when we did a whole bunch with nothing.

I won’t give you any more Marine Corps sayings or stories today, but that one was on my mind.

I did promise you some analogies from my stroke, my car wrecks, and now my medevac on the high seas.  All in good time. OK, let’s get to the story in Genesis.

When you are pushing 100 and it’s the heat of the day, what do you do?

If you are Abraham, you sit at the entrance to your tent which is surely well-placed to enjoy the shade of the great trees in the area.

And the Lord came to visit Abraham. Abraham saw 3 men and knew they were from the Lord.  If we take the whole chapter in context, this was probably God accompanied by 2 angels.

Who is where at exactly what time is hard to discern, but after a while, the men leave and Abraham is alone with the Lord.  So, it appears that there is the Lord and 2 men, likely angels who had come for a visit.

You might think that there was the Lord plus 3 additional men or angels, but if we read the first verse as an introductory statement to the pericope that follows, we are more disposed to think it’s the Lord and he is accompanied by 2 angels.

Abraham somehow knew that hospitality was an essential component of walking blamelessly before the Lord.  He pleaded with the men to stay with him.  He had water brought to wash their feet.  Sarah made bread and a servant prepared a calf.

This wasn’t checking to see if there was some Ramen on hand.  This was putting out a spread for these travelers.

While the men waited on the meal, they enjoyed an appetizer of milk and cheese. The visitors asked about his wife.  Abraham said she was in the tent making bread but she was nearby listening in on the conversation.

The men told Abraham that in about a year, Sarah would deliver a child. We don’t get a script for this part to know who said what, but Sarah heard what was said and laughed.

Now that I am way beyond my childbearing years, I get the news that I’m going to get pregnant.  How could she not laugh?

Now we are told that the Lord spoke to Abraham and asked, Why did your wife laugh?   Obviously, the Lord knew that Sarah was listening and how she responded.

Sarah apparently felt the need to enter the conversation and said, I didn’t laugh.

The Lord replied, Oh yes you did.

Can you imagine going back and forth with God?  You did that.

No, I didn’t.

Yes, you did.

How would you expect that to come out?  How would you ever expect to win that exchange. I would have loved to have seen the look on Abraham’s face when his wife was arguing with God.

You say you didn’t do something.  God says that you did.  Where do you go from there?

Sometimes we can convince ourselves that God would go along with something that we knew for sure that he wouldn’t, but that’s just fooling ourselves.  Do we really think that we can get one over on God?

I didn’t say that.  I didn’t do that.  That wasn’t me!

Imagine God coming to visit you in your home.  You offer him some Chex Mix and Dr. Pepper while you put the steaks out to thaw and then you get into a back-and-forth of who said what.  C’mon, this is God—almighty and all-knowing God.

The disbelief is essential to the story for a couple of reasons.  One is that when Sarah has a child—and she does—it could only be the work of God.

The Father of Many Nations and his wife would not just be a couple of young folks who could have all the kids they wanted to have for 2 or 3 decades.

God chose Abraham to be the Father of Many Nations and God demonstrated that Abraham and Sarah were his choices by doing what seemed to be impossible.

That’s the first thing and the second is much like it.  It brings us to words from the Lord that we should remember today.  What words?

Is anything too hard for the Lord?

We should remember those words in these modern days.  If we are seeking things that the Lord wants to give us, we should expect that he will regardless of what the world’s analysis might be.

If God has told us that he will do something, what the world says can and cannot be done is not relevant.

Our assessment of what the Lord can and will do should be based solely upon the fact that he said he would do it and not what the world defines as possible or impossible. Let’s leave Genesis for a moment for some other biblical examples.

God did not let the Hebrew people get away from Pharoah’s army because they had a head start.  They camped where they had no escape route, until God stopped the pursuing army and opened the sea.

God would not let Gideon go to war with a large army.  God sent him with 300 men. God wanted Gideon and everyone who knew of or heard of the victory over the Midianites (perhaps as many as 135,00 of them) to know that God gave Gideon the victory.

A ruddy shepherd boy didn’t stand a chance against the giant Philistine; yet this is exactly what God wanted to put on display.  Size doesn’t matter.  Either you are with God are you are not. Either you serve the Lord or you perish against him.

A husband and wife pushing 100 were far beyond their childbearing years.  The promise of being the father of many nations could only come through Ishmael and that kid was on the wild side.

But sometimes God brings us to the impossible so we can see that it was clearly and only God who made the impossible a reality.

Is anything too hard for the Lord?

Is anything too hard for God?

We live in an age of seeing is believing.  God wants us to be people who believe and then see.  Believing is seeing.

Do you remember this one? Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

We are to believe the unbelievable. Our mindset must be:  Is anything too hard for God?

Does God always agree with our plan?  Ask Abraham.  He thought that if God just blessed Ishmael, then this Father of Many Nations thing might work out.

But God had something better in mind.  He would do the impossible.  He would give barren Sarah a child—a son—even in her old age.

Abraham doubted.  Sarah even laughed when God promised this son, but God would deliver the impossible.  There are times when God wants us to know it could only be him.

We have talked before about signs and reminders and affirmations from God in our age. We have them but sometimes our minds are still conformed to the thinking of the world.

We must work on our thinking, our perceptions, and our paradigms.  We can take a step that way by changing what is surely a rhetorical question for believers.

Is anything too hard for God?

To

Nothing is too hard for God.

With God, all things are possible.

Nothing is impossible with God.  Our challenge for this week is to solidify our thinking.  Nothing is impossible with God. Nothing is too hard for God.

Nothing is impossible with God.

With God, all things are possible.

Amen.