All of food. Belongs to those who are of maturity, full age, as Abraham has become and is becoming increasingly, that is those who by reason of youth have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. He knew it was the Lord, the second person of the Godhead because he had a developed spiritual faculty. That is a rare quality in American evangelicalism, but it is the grace of God we desperately need and I plead for it in this place. Abraham's honor. Now, secondly, for the next verses here in Genesis 18, verses 2 and following, Abraham's new homage that he paid, having listed up his eyes as we read in verse 2 and look and beholding these men, he ran to meet them and bowed himself to the ground. He lay prostrate. It is the Lord. It is the Lord. There is, for Abraham, surprised by this no doubt, full of faith, reverence paid. It is almost impossible in our Bible-believing circles to find reverence and awe. You have heard me mention in the brief months we have had together that the many of my evangelical friends have left our camp and gone into Eastern orthodoxy and gone into the Roman church. They just can't take it. The lack of reverence and awe. You have heard me say that during our sabbatical or Cambridge two years ago, we went to two evening services, one to get the truth, the others to get reference. The place where God was majestic and the hymns were great and the songs were song or chanted and the lessons were read and there was great preparation and fragmentation in worship. Never had in the whole length term that we were there in Cambridge, one true Bible sermon. But when it was five o'clock, where the word was old but in an Anglican parish, and I didn't really do it, not because I didn't want to, but because I sensed I'd be in trouble as this is all over if I did it. I wanted to go with earplugs so I could meditate and think about something else while because news and all the other things up front were playing. Did he? But then the word was open. It's almost impossible to find reverence when the Lord is presence, when the Lord is presence in a place and the people like Abraham have a spiritual faculty, rely on strength. The Lord is in his holy temple, jump off and laugh before him. That's part of his homage. It's part of the homage I want to offer. It's part of the homage I want this people to offer. Lord say, by Lord say, his petition is the same. My Lord, verse 3, if I have now found favor in your site, do not pass by your servants, but as we coupled that with verse 5,
it means don't leave old Lord having come until the full purpose of this visitation from heaven is consummated in us. That's what the old gospel song we're going to close with in an hour or two means. Pass me not old Jehovah's Savior until you in your spiritual visitation of us have done fully what you came to do. Lord don't pass us by, but that's a wonderful word of homage. Abraham prostrates before the second person of the Godhead, our Lord Jesus, makes this petition and plea. And I would like to think that wonderful Fanny Crosby gospel, him, will take on new meaning for us this night. Maybe we have a visitation from heaven, O Lord. You who are omnipresent in a very particular and powerful way, descend upon the assembly, morning and evening on the Lord's day, descend upon my heart, and don't pass us by until all you have planned in purpose is consummated. This wonderful provision, the Lord Jesus came at an inconvenient hour. The hour of the hour, temperatures could have been 120. Everything stopped. Got out of the broiling sun, rested, stayed quiet. Did the work in the morning and later in the afternoon, when the sun was at slant, inconvenience of the Lord, could he I don't need to be a river, do you understand? Could he not tell time? He made time. Time belongs to him and he came at the hour of the yesterday and rest in the heat of the day. I don't make too much of it, because here it is. Why is it in here? The hour of the day that he appeared in his visitation.
We wanted his power when it's convenient on our schedule. Abraham gets right up and in his wonderful homage, repairs the feet, the heat of the day. There isn't a hand in the hesitation. In fact, there are many footnotes. If you have a study Bible, you would have a lot of marginal notes giving you alternate word translations for phrases and so forth here. I would condense all of that by saying that in verse 5, I will bring you a morsel of bread that you may refresh your heart, and after that you may pass by in as much as you have come to your servant, the thrust there really is in making this wonderful provision, or as you came at an inconvenient time. No, not at all. No matter that it was the afternoon of the yesterday, Lord, you gave me a wonderful opportunity to serve you. What a difference in the spirit. Let it be ours that he might appear to us and speak to our hearts,
and when it seems to be over demanding his call to duty and service,
that you have to set aside your own pursuits and wear yourself out on something you haven't planned on. Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you allowed me to serve you that way. You can't tie him down to convenience and schedules. He is Lord, risen from the dead. He is Lord. On this wonderful participation, Abraham doesn't even sit down with the Lord. You see that he stands like a servant. Now, I don't like that custom in the Orient. It makes me nervous. But haven't you been places like that? Where the waiter's the servant's foot and watch you eat.
It just makes me a listener uneasy. Years ago, we were to quasi-state dinner in Nairobi, the minister of immigration, included ambassadors, and had a dinner party for the Oliver's and Mary Beam and Betty Cridlin, all four of them. The owner had come. He had his whole retinue of employees there and he directed the whole thing, and there they were. I want to turn around and say, can't you just run out in the kitchen for a few minutes until we ring for you? That was their custom. No thought that they sent with us, Abraham did not sit down with the Lord. He stood as a servant and served him. Do you understand what a privilege it is for his invitation to sit down with him? Sit at his table? He stood as a servant, Abraham did. I have to say this in all charity. There's a wolfal lack of understanding in this place of the privilege of that table. Abraham's honor. Abraham's homage. Sarah's part. Oh, now we get it verse 9 and through verse 15. The Lord asks, Abraham, where is Sarah your wife? Here we get to the point of the visit on a promise. Nothing new is added to the covenant promises, but the point of its visitation is really to bring Sarah into full believing participation. Insofar as we are able to tell, this is the place where she herself is not pulled along with somebody else, namely Abraham, but she herself becomes a full believing participant in the covenants of grace. And so the question and so the reiteration, if you allow, verse 10 of the pledge and the promise, and there's something holding Sarah back from being a full believing participant in this wondrous covenants of grace, it is unbelief. Her laughter is not astonishment. Abraham was,
but it was the laughter, not of unbelief, but of astonishment. There's an unbelief, wrinkled old woman that I am. I don't want to be in delicate ever at the sacred desk, but you follow the reading. We're going to be like young newly married again,
and she laughs in her heart, because that's where the unbelief is, isn't it? And then the pledge, the promise, the reproof, yes, the return visit, this year, what she had conceived and born a child had she not believed, is the pledge automatic? Does it require faith on the part of the subject of the covenant? Careful, try to trick you a bit. I admit it, I'm devious at times, the covenant is the covenant of grace, is it automatic? You're afraid to move, aren't you?
No, it's not. You must believe it. And believe it savingly, not believe about it, not get all the information correct, theologically and doctrinally, but you must receive it by grace, foundation. Are you saved through faith, the faculty of faith to receive that which is grace alone? I will return a year from now. I've come a year early to correct the unbelief problem as Sarah's art. What happened between this visit and the pledge return visit? Turn to Hebrews 11 at verse 11, very briefly and quickly. Hebrews 11, Hebrews 11, 11, by faith, Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed. And she bore a child when she was past the age because she judged him faithful to a promised. This visit is to correct the unbelief in her heart, and it worked. Would there have been a child the next year without this no there was not? The promise is true, the subject must be active in faith and receiving. Think it through, Hebrews 11, 11, where was the strength to conceive seed in her old age in the number of smells? No, she received it. But how did she receive it? By faith. Don't read Hebrews 11 too carelessly and begin to think that the little prepuditional phrase by faith is just a literature. It's a wonderful truth. But there was something else holding Sarah back on belief in her heart and falsehood in her spirit. Her easy lesson ended sort of broadly, didn't it? Sarah denied it, saying, I did not lie. No but you did. And for her good, there is this conviction of unbelief in the heart and confrontation about falsehood in her spirit. For our good, the spirit of God, when we frustrate ourselves before him and pay homage to him and respond to his word and develop the faculty of spiritual perception, it is a blessing to know the conviction and confrontation. What if you just got a little bit of inspiration and felt good? It doesn't last until you get home. But Sarah is being brought in as a full, believing participant in the covenous of grace and out of it comes one of the great pledges, promises of scripture. How much you prayed is? How much you've held on to whatever?
Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? That's what it means, literally. So wonderful, but you can't do it. In the English translation it is, is anything too hard for the Lord and that's what we've memorized and that's what we pray. Pray this. Learn the prayer of scripture. Is anything too wonderful for him who is wonderful? Whose name is wonderful? And you should know, I just sent from the modern changing of the translation in Isaiah, what makes wonderful an adjective, wonderful counselor, mighty God, oh no, wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. This trauma is related to his nature. He is wonderful. Now is anything too wonderful for wonderful, but astray. Father, we thank thee. For the record of all of these things with Abraham, thou art wonderful beyond our grasp. His name, O Father, is wonderful. And nothing is too hard for him. We would cry out with Abraham ahold. Lord, as thou has come to us by the spirit and in the holy scriptures do not pass us by until all of thy holy purposes and plans are fulfilled and us and for us we need thee. Every hour we need thee, speak to our hearts, cast out on beliefs, confront us about falsity, hold sovereign and full sway. Feel the word to our hearts this night through Jesus Christ. Whose name is wonderful. Amen.