Memorial Baptist Church, Parkston SD · “Who Can Make a Name?” — Part 3 of 4
A ninety-nine-year-old man is face-down in the dirt. Moses never tells us why.
That is where Genesis 17 opens. God appears to Abram, announces His covenant, and verse three gives us four words with no explanation attached: “And Abram fell on his face.” No commentary. No motive. Just an old man on the ground.
So this morning we went looking for what put him there — and then we came back and read those same four verses again, to a room that had changed.
First, the clock
Moses keeps stopping to tell you how old this man is. Chapter 12, twice in chapter 16, chapter 17, and he will do it again in chapter 21. That is not filler. Moses is running a clock, and he wants you to feel it.
- 75 — Genesis 12:4 says it flat out: “Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran.” God had just promised, “I will make of thee a great nation.” He packed up and went.
- 85 — this one you do yourself. Genesis 16:3 gives no age; it says “after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan.” He reached Canaan at seventy-five. Seventy-five plus ten.
- 86 — Genesis 16:16: “Abram was fourscore and six years old, when Hagar bare Ishmael to Abram.”
- 99 — Genesis 17:1. Our text. A man on his face.
Twenty-four years between the promise and this visit. Three things could have put him on that floor, and I think all three were there at once.
1. “I’ll fix God’s problem” — the thing he did
One chapter earlier is the great faith verse of the Old Testament. God takes him outside — “tell the stars, if thou be able to number them” — and Genesis 15:6 says “he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness.” God had said the heir would come from his own body. God never said through whom.
The idea always goes in the space where God didn’t specify.
So Sarai proposes Hagar. And notice — she is not wrong about God. “Behold now, the LORD hath restrained me from bearing” (16:2). She knows exactly who closed that womb. Right about God, wrong about what to do next. That is not the unbelief of an atheist. That is the unbelief of a churchgoer.
The Hebrew behind “that I may obtain children by her” is literally “perhaps I shall be built up from her.” The verb is build — the same verb Babel used three weeks ago: “let us build for ourselves a city and a tower.” Babel built a tower. This house builds a family. Same instinct, and this time it is inside the covenant home.
“God, I got an idea.”
The father who didn’t lead
Genesis 16:2 — “And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai.” Now hear Genesis 3:17: “Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife…” In 16:3 Sarai took and she gave. In Genesis 3:6 she took and she gave. I don’t think that is an accident. I think Moses is walking us back through Eden on purpose.
And hear me carefully, because this is not a sermon about wives. In the garden the problem was not that Eve spoke. Adam was standing right there — “with her” — and said nothing.
Here is what you cannot miss. Moses does not give us one word from Abram to God in this entire chapter. Not a prayer. Not an altar. He built an altar in chapter 12. He built one in chapter 13. Not this time. God gave the promise to him. He was the one who could have said, “Let’s ask Him.” He didn’t lead. He went along.
And it was perfectly legal. Every neighbor would have called it wise. His accountant would have signed off. The shortcut almost never breaks the law. Usually it’s just normal.
How do we know it was sin?
Because God gave us a test — and the test is not the plan, it’s the fruit.
“For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.” (James 3:16)
Church, we just spent three weeks on a city whose name means confusion. Now the same fruit shows up in the tent. James goes on: “the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle… full of mercy and good fruits.” Hold Genesis 16 up against that list.
- Pure? He took another woman.
- Peaceable? By verse four there is contempt in that kitchen, and by verse five they are calling down the judgment of God on each other.
- Gentle? Verse six — “Sarai dealt hardly with her” — and a pregnant girl runs into the desert to get away from that house.
- Full of mercy? Ask Hagar.
It fails every line. That wisdom did not come down from above. And hear the mercy in that test: you don’t have to be able to judge the idea. You just have to watch what grows.
Men, this one is ours. The failure did not start when he went in to Hagar. It started when he had a promise from God and didn’t open his mouth.
2. “How long, Lord?” — the ache that never left
He was seventy-five when God said “I will make of thee a great nation.” He left everything on that promise. Ten years went by. Same promise. Same empty crib.
Here is something about your Bible that will change the way you read it. Scripture gives us the highlights. Some stories are separated by a day. Some are separated by decades — and the page turn doesn’t tell you which.
You just turned from Genesis 16 to Genesis 17. That page turn is thirteen years.
It happens all through the book. Joseph is seventeen when he has the dream (37:2). He is thirty when he stands before Pharaoh (41:46). Thirteen years in a pit, a house, and a prison — and you read across it in four chapters.
But nobody’s life fast-forwards. Abram did not skim those thirteen years. He got up every one of those mornings. Most of your life is not the highlight. Most of your life is the working and the waiting in between.
And here is what was in Abram’s in-between. He got a son. He held a baby. And he still did not have the promised child — thirteen more years with a boy in that tent who was not the answer. Walking, talking proof that the plan had worked and the promise still hadn’t come.
That is what a shortcut does. It gives you the thing. It just doesn’t give you what you wanted the thing for.
Some of you already took your shortcut, and it worked, and you are here this morning still waiting on the actual thing. “God, I got an idea” is not a rebellious sentence. It is a tired one.
3. “God? …Are You still there?”
Abram is 86 when Ishmael is born (16:16). He is 99 in 17:1. Thirteen years — and not one recorded word from God in between. The text is silent, which is not the same as God being silent. But Moses hands us thirteen empty years, and I don’t think that is an accident either.
The last thing recorded before the quiet is the shortcut working.
We are not told what he was thinking. But you know what you’d think. He stopped talking to me because of what I did.
The Bible knows that feeling. Psalm 32 — “When I kept silence, my bones waxed old… day and night thy hand was heavy upon me.” Unfinished business with God feels exactly like this: quiet, and heavy. He had thirteen years to build a case against himself, and a thirteen-year-old boy walking around as Exhibit A.
Some of you know that floor. You did it your way, and it worked, and it cost you — and then it went quiet. And the quiet is worse than the consequence, because in the quiet you start doing the math on whether He’s done with you.
And then He walks in
17:1 — “the LORD appeared to Abram.” And listen to the very first thing He says. “I am the Almighty God” — El Shaddai, the first time in the whole Bible God calls Himself that. A name that means: I am enough.
You might expect Him to lead with what Abram did. He doesn’t. But do not mistake that for God letting it go — look at what that name answers. Abram’s entire chapter sixteen was a man deciding God needed help. God’s first word is “I am enough.” He never said “here’s what you did.” He said the opposite of what Abram had done, and let the man do the math.
Then the command: “Walk before me.” Not behind Me. Not apart from Me. Before Me — where I can see what you’re doing. Church, what was missing from chapter sixteen? Not one prayer. Not one altar. Not one word to God. He ran that whole chapter out of God’s sight. And the first thing God asks is: come live where I can see you.
That is not a scolding. That is being let back in the room. And the runaway slave girl already knew it — 16:13, “Thou God seest me.” She learned it in a desert a chapter before he was told it.
And look who He says it to. A ninety-nine-year-old man. God does not retire him. He gives him a walk. “And be thou perfect” — whole, undivided. In chapter sixteen he had God’s promise and Sarai’s plan and was running both at once. God says: be one thing.
Every piece of it is answered, and there is not one word of accusation in the whole sentence. That is why the old man is on the floor.
Back to verses 1 through 4
Same four verses. Different room listening. Now watch the order, because the whole gospel is sitting in the architecture:
- “I am the Almighty God.” — who God is.
- “Walk before me, and be thou perfect.” — the command, and it is the cure written for chapter sixteen.
- “I will make my covenant… and will multiply thee exceedingly.” — the promise.
- “And Abram fell on his face.” — everything the man contributed.
- “As for me…” — and God starts over with His own part.
He is not told to walk perfect in order to get the covenant. The Almighty speaks. The covenant is announced. The man hits the dirt. And God says “as for me.”
Count the verbs in these four verses and see whose they are. I am. I will make. I will multiply. My covenant is with thee. Abram’s entire contribution to this paragraph is a face in the dirt.
And look at what the covenant does after the failure. Verse 2: “I will multiply thee exceedingly.” He didn’t renegotiate it. He made it bigger.
Some of you have an Ishmael
Something you built in a season when God was quiet — and it worked, and you have been living with it ever since. And you have been braced, some of you for years, waiting for God to finally bring it up.
He walked up to a ninety-nine-year-old man with a thirteen-year-old mistake in the next tent, said “I am God Almighty,” and handed him a bigger promise than the one he had doubted. He answered every bit of it. And He never once said the word “Hagar.”
That is what it looks like when God deals with your failure. He doesn’t file the charge. He tells you who He is, and He asks you to come walk where He can see you.
So here is the one thing to do this week, and it is the one thing Abram never did in chapter sixteen. Ask Him. Take the thing you are worn out waiting on — the real one — and instead of building something, say it out loud to God. Out loud. This week. That is the whole assignment.
God’s love is bigger than our failures. His promises are bigger than our bad ideas.
Next in the series: Part 4, September 6 — what this old man said when God finally told him how.