Genesis 16: El Roi. The Lord God (Yahweh) Who Sees Me. When Sarai drove Hagar from her presence into the wilderness, the angel of the Lord appeared and assured her that her son by Abraham (which was Sarai’s idea) would be blessed with many descendants. She was surprised that she was still alive after seeing God as the angel of the Lord was perhaps the pre-incarnate Jesus and thus God. She called the angel, “You are a God who sees”. She realized that He noticed her deep pain and isolation. She also named the nearby well Beer-lahai-roi, meaning “well of the Living One who sees me”.
Life Lesson: AI: “This name highlights that God sees the outcasts, the vulnerable, and the forgotten. To be “seen” by God means He fully understands personal suffering, distress, and individual circumstances with compassion. It reassures believers that no hidden place or lonely situation escapes God’s notice.” This name is only used once in the Old Testament. Do you ever wonder if God is watching you suffer, when you are depressed, when you are in trouble, when you are afraid, when you are discouraged? A good parent is always watching his/her children. He/she sees them when they are having difficulties and goes to help. It doesn’t always seem that the Lord is watching us like that when we have difficulties. But he is. He might not bail us out immediately, but He will always give us the strength we need to handle the difficulties. The next time you face such, just say the name “El Roi” and remember the lesson from Hagar. Hagar had her child Ishmael when Abraham was 86. Ishmael would become the father of the Arabs and of course, the Muslims. AI: “Muslims view Ishmael in Islam as a major prophet, a righteous man of deep faith, and the ancestral patriarch of northern Arab peoples. Unlike the biblical narrative, Islamic tradition teaches that Abraham was commanded to sacrifice Ishmael, not Isaac, in Genesis 22. According to Ishmael | Meaning, Facts, & Significance, Ishmael and Abraham together built and purified the Kaaba in Mecca as a house for the worship of the one true God. Muslims believe that the Prophet Muhammad is a direct descendant of Ishmael.”

Genesis 17: When Abraham was 99 (Sarah was 89) God renewed his promise with Abraham to multiply his descendants and give them the promised land. He changes Abram’s name to Abraham and Sarai’s name to Sarah. He then gives the covenant of circumcision for all male descendants when 8 days old. Also Abraham and all his servants were circumcised at that time. God then tells Abraham that he will a son by Sarah in one year’s time. Abraham’s response is a little surprising: Genesis 17: ¹⁷ Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart, “Will a child be born to a man one hundred years old? And will Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” ¹⁸ And Abraham said to God, “Oh that Ishmael might live before You!” This sounds contradicotry to what Paul said in Romans 4:¹⁸ In hope against hope he believed, so that he might become a father of many nations according to that which had been spoken, “So shall your descendants be.” ¹⁹ Without becoming weak in faith he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb; ²⁰ yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, ²¹ and being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform.” It sure looks in Genesis 17 like he “wavered”, doesn’t it? He seems perfectly content to just have Ishmael as his descendant that would be multiplied. I saw this on AI: “Abraham’s laughter in Genesis 17:17 is best understood as an expression of awe, wonder, and stunned amazement rather than cynical disbelief, which resolves the tension with Paul’s description in Romans 4.” I’m sorry but I can’t buy that. He questioned in hs heart silently, “how can a child be born to a man 100 years old and a woman 90 years old”? He told God that he wanted his descendants to come through Ishmael. God had to tell him “No”, your descendants to fulfill the promises will be through Isaac not Ishmael. That sounds like wavering and doubt. My conclusion to this dilemma is that he did have a moment of doubt and wavering, but then obeyed God and went right back into Sarah to have sex with her and bear that promised child by her. A moment of wavering does not mean that he wavered throug the whole process. It took faith to go have sex at age 100 with a 90 year od woman, fully expecting God to give you a child in one year.

Life Lesson: Have you ever had one of those doubting, wavering moments, when you questioned God on how things would turn out? When you doubted that God was going to do some good thing in your life? When it looked “hopeless, hope against hope” in your difficulties or prospects, did you waver briefly but then come out of that moment with renewed hope in the promises of God? The next time your faith wavers a little think about Abraham and how it all turned out for the good like God promised.

Genesis 18: The 3 men visit Abraham. The story is easy to understand so just a few points that maybe you didn’t notice in your reading. 3 men come to Abraham. 19:1 identifies 2 of them as angels just taking the form of men temporarily. The 3rd men is more than an angel. After the 3 men tell Abraham that he will have a son in one year, 2 of the men head to Sodom and the 3rd man remains, talking with Abraham as Abraham finally asks God to save Sodom if 10 righteous souls could be found (which God agreed to do). Abraham addresses this main figure, the 3rd “man” as Adonai (Lord), and the text interchanges the dialogue directly between Abraham and Yahweh. It is what is called a “theophany” (a physical, visible manifestation of God (Yahweh) taking on human form). Maybe even the pre-incarnate Jesus, the Word, as he delivers the word about the birth of Isaac. Sarah laughs as she is snooping at the tent but denies it! It is encouraging to hear Abraham talk directly and boldlyto the Lord with his requests. Isn’t this what prayer should be, talking directly, humbly, boldly to God, making our requests made known to him? You might even can changed what God had planned to do. As evil as Sodom was, God was going to spare Sodom if 10 righteous souls could be found in the city b/c of the constant, bold intercession of Abraham. God even rescued Lot and his family of 4 even though 10 souls could not be found. Life Lesson: Who knows what disasters or bad things could be avoided for people or what good things could be given to people through your intercession. 1 Timothy 2:1 – “I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people”. James 5:16 – “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” Ephesians 6:18 – “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.”

Genesis 19: The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. You probably know the sordid story. Lot takes the 2 angels into his house (they still lookd like men so did he know they were angels) and the men of Sodom want Lot to bring them out so they can have sex with them! The most surprising part of this story is when Lot offers his 2 virgin daughters to the men to have sex with them instead of with the 2 angels. What laws of hospitality could even remotely suggest doing this? What kind of a man had Lot become that he would do that? 2 Peter 2 comments on Lot’s frustration with the evil in Sodom: 2:⁶ and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter; ⁷ and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men ⁸ (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds).” If Lor was tormented day by day by the sins in the city, why didn’t he take his family and leave. His wife was probably from Sodom. His 2 daughters were engaged to 2 of the man of Sodom (at least were either straight or bisexual), but the 2 future sons-in-laws thought he was joking about the upcoming destruction of the city. Lot “hesitated” leaving the city so the 1 angels/men take Lot and his family “by the hand” to pull them out of the city and tell them not to look back. I’m sure you know that Lot’s wife looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt, the falling, fiery briimstone with which God rained destruction on the city. Lot and his 2 daughters are given permission to flee to Zoar while Sodom was being destroyed. Later they fear for their safety in Zoar and flee to a cave in the mountains where his 2 daughters, thinking they are the last 2 women on earth, get Lot drunk and have sex with him to get pregnant. Moabites and Ammonites come from that incestuous relationship. A sad ending as Abraham looks down on the smoke from Sodom. I wonder if he knew at that time that Lot and his 2 daughters had been spared? We are not told what happened to Lot after that. His 2 daughters’ children obviously survived and formed the nations of Moab and Ammon, but we don’t know about Lot. Luke 17 tells us: ²⁹ but on the day that Lot went out from Sodom it rained fire and ^[s]brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all.” and then adds “Remember Lot’s wife” which would serve as a warning to those fleeing the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

Life Lesson: Lot lost everything when he moved to Sodom for financial gain. He lost his self respect. He lost the respect of the men of Sodom and his future sons-in-laws. He lost any friends he might have had in Sodom. He lost his wife who turned into a pillar of salt. I wonder if he ever went back to look at that pillar. He lost his daughters to their incest. He lost his companionship with his uncle Abraham. He lost his peace of min as he was tormented day by day with the sins of Sodom. He lost his home and all his possessions that were burned up in Sodom. He was still called “righteous” in 2 Peter 2 so we don’t think he lost his spiritual relationship with Yahweh. We can only hope that he was not drawn into idol worship in Sodom. He lost everything and it started with one simply decision: which land to choose. Choose the one that promises more financial gain but is close to Sodom or choose some land in Canaan away from Sodom. Life is about choices. A friend of mind preached a simple lesson to our high school seniors telling them the 3 main choices in life were 1) To follow God and Jesus. 2) Who you marry. Nothing is guaranteed in marriage even if you marry a Christian, but your odds are better if you do. 3) Your career and all the implications of the career you choose. Perhaps you have already made some bad choices and are reaping what you sowed. Perhaps you have some choices still to make. Make them wisely. Ask God to give you wisdom in your choices and ask the Spirit to guide you.

Chapter 20. Surely Abraham learned from his mistake in Egypt, right? Nope. He goes to Gerar in Philistine territory and tells the same lie, that Sarah is his siter, to keep Abimelech from killing Abraham and taking Sarah to be his wife. Here is where he tells that Sarah is his half sister, which still was a lie to deceive Abimelech. Here we learn that Abraham had told his wife to lie wherever they went telling that Abraham was her brother. Again, Abimelech, not Abraham, is punished even though he innocently took Sarah in the “integrity of his heart”. The women in Abimelech’s household had been made barren b/c of this incident, but after he restored Sarah to Abraham the women were healed. I don’t understand this, but perhaps this is just God’s way of showing that Abraham was a prophet of the one true God (20:7) even if he makes mistakes. Have you ever committed the same sins over and over. Have you ever thought, “I wonder if God gets tired of me confessing the same sins. Maybe he is frustrated with me that I don’t learn from my mistakes.”

I’m about caught up.