Now the Lord appeared to him, that is Abraham, by the oaks of memory, while he was sitting at the tent door in the heat of the day, when he lifted up his eyes and looked, behold, three men were standing opposite him, and when he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth, and said, My Lord, if now I have found favoring your sight, please do not pass by your servant. Please little little water be brought and wash your feet and rest yourselves under the tree, and I will bring a piece of bread that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may go on since you have visited your servant, and they said, So do as you have said. So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah and said quickly, prepare three measures of fine flour and knead it to make breadcakes, and Abraham also ran to the herd and took a tender and choice calf and gave it to the servant, and he hurried to prepare it, and he took curds and milk in the calf which he had prepared and placed it before them, and he was standing by them under the tree as they ate, and then they said to him, Where is Sarah your wife? And he said, There in the tent. He said, I will surely return to you at this time next year, and behold, Sarah your wife will have a son, and Sarah was listening at the tent door which was behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age, Sarah was past child bearing, Sarah laughed to herself, saying, After I have become old shall I have pleasure, my Lord being old also, and the Lord said to Abraham, What did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I indeed bear a child where I am so old? Is anything too difficult for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you at this time next year, and Sarah will have a son, Sarah denied it, however, saying, I did not laugh, for she was afraid, and he said, No, but you did laugh, but me pray. Jesus, we thank you that you give us your word and that you instruct us from it, and I pray now that you would open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf, and that you would write your word upon our hearts so that we might be changed by hearing it, and your name we pray. Amen. You know, I've done a lot of stupid things in my life, some of them more stupid than others and some of them less stupid than others, and one of the lesser stupid things simply because I didn't get in trouble was when I was in the army, many of you know I was in the army and I was among other things, I was a parachutist, and most people, most parachutists die not because their parachutes don't open. Most people don't realize that, most parachutists, at least in the army, they don't die because their parachutes don't open, they die because other parachutists get entangled with them. And the reason that other parachutists get entangled with them is because they play it with their parachutes. The way the army shoots are made is you just pop out of the plane and you're not supposed to touch anything, and it pops everyone out in their own place, and how you get in trouble is when you start playing with things, especially when it's dark, especially when it's pitch black, and one of my last jumps before I got out of the army, there was this mass battalion jump, and I jumped out of the airplane and about halfway down, I saw some joker pulling on his parachute and he was coming right at me, we got entangled, and both of us just plummeted to the ground. We hit the ground so hard, I don't know how long we were laying there, if you've ever watched the Highlander, it was sort of like, well, I came too, like I've been regenerated, and what I came too was to the sound of someone whimpering and crying. And of course I was very angry because it was his fault, and so from about eight feet away I started yelling, you idiot, and I'm sure it was 15 years ago, and I cussed them, you know. I was just going crazy yelling, and I was going to, you know, I was going to kick his exploit, and I was going off, and then I heard this whimpering, and I went over there, and I was really mad, and I looked down and I said, who are you? And the voice whimpered, the sergeant's major. Sergeant, if you don't know, military rank, I was a sergeant, and the sergeant's major is about four steps above me. He is the man, and he said, who's doing all that yelling? And I said, I don't know a sergeant's major, but if I find him I'll take care of him. You see in the moral to that story is what? You never know who you might be talking to, and so you ought to sort of watch your mouth. Not only that, you know, in Hebrews 132, the writer of Hebrews makes, he's giving these sort of general commands, he's just throwing things out there, these imperatives, and he just throws this thing out, and he says, be sure that you show hospitality to all people, because some of you have entertained angels without knowing it. So the writer of Hebrews says, you can't take any human being for granted why, because you may be entertaining an angel, right? And that's what happens to Abraham today, if these three guys show up, and he doesn't know who they are, and we see what Abraham believes by what he does with these men. But before we actually enter in to what Abraham believes, we've got to give you a much more free-for-than-usual background to the life of Abraham. I'm preaching through the life of Abraham, and in the life of Abraham, you see this movement of God that goes from a very general initiative with Abraham to a very specific thing. And it goes from general to specific, and it gets more specific as we go along. You remember, God came to this unbeliever, this guy Abraham, who is in the land of earth, and he simply said, come follow me, if you will, and he said, I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will buy you, every nation, all the families on the earth will be blessed, and whoever blesses you will be cursed. In some ways, that goes to great promises. On the other hand, they're very sort of ambiguous. But we know Abraham believed them. Why? Because he obeyed. You see, there's a principle that we also see in the life of Abraham. You know what you believe by what you do. And we know Abraham believed these promises, not because he said, I believe them. We know he believed them because he obeyed. And then in chapter 15, God says, Abraham, I'll be your shield in great reward, and he says, this is so ambiguous. I'm getting a little itchy here. What do you mean by that? And he says, I will give you an air, an air who will come from your own body. So it gets more specific. He just doesn't say I'm going to bless the world. He's going to bless the world through you, and then he says, I'm going to bless the world through this air. And of course, Abraham believes God, and it's counted to him as righteousness. And then in chapter 16, right, we have the whole heygar, Sarah thing. It's been many years, and God has not given them the air, and Abraham thinks, well, maybe Sarah is not the one. She's barren, and so Sarah says, this is one of my favorite lines in the Bible. Sarah says, take my little hottie, hey, heygar into the tent, and it says Abraham heated the voice of his wife. You know, he gutted it out to go in and sleep with heygar. And we see through that whole thing that God comes, and he says, they have a child and an isch male, and God says, that's not the one. It's not isch male. And remember, Abraham probably was thinking that his sin was so big that God had forgotten about him because he didn't talk to Abraham again for 13 years. So 13 years later, God comes again. And before he initiated it into his fear, and he initiated it into his unbelief, and in 17, he initiated it into his apathy, right? Abraham probably felt like most of us feel all the time, that we've sinned so big, and our particular issues, and our particular wickednesses are so big that God has just either forgotten about me, or he would not want to have anything to do with me, because I'm just too dirty or too nasty. And God comes to him. He not only reiterates the promise, but he gets even more specific. Remember, he changed his name. Abraham means exalted father, and he says, Abraham, you're so beautiful, your name is now going to be Abraham, because you're not going to be just the father of a nation. You're going to be the father of a vast multitude of nations. And remember, it said, Abraham bowed down to the ground, and he believed that, but then when God said, if Sarah she, I changed her name from Sarah, I'd say Sarah, because she's a princess, and from her kings will come. And remember, at that point, Abraham fell on his face on the ground and laughed, because he didn't believe that. And God says, oh, you better believe it. And he gets so specific that he says, you're going to have a child, and the child's name is what? It's laughter, right? Because he will be the practical joke that I pull on all of you guys. You thought I couldn't do anything, but I'm going to pull it. And so now we come to today's passage, where God is coming, he says, you're going to get this very specific child named Isaac, and you're going to have this mark of the covenant, circumcision. And then you have this sort of funky passage that comes out of nowhere, these three angels that show up. What does that mean? And that's what we're going to talk about today. First, we're going to basically talk about two things. This is the first that God gets personal, and the second thing is that God gets very specific. So if you look at your text again, Genesis 18, it says, but now the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of memory while he was sitting at the tent door in the heat of the day. Now it's very important to know that certainly this is the revelation of God, but it's also a story. And so we're letting on things that Abraham doesn't know. We know that these three men somehow are God. From chapter 19, it seems that one of them might be God and the other two are angels, but Yahweh has shown up. And I know in some of your traditions you've been taught that this is Jesus, that Jesus showed up before the incarnation. That's probably not true. It's just Yahweh, because the incarnation of Jesus was about suffering and all this stuff. This was just Yahweh showing up in a way that Abraham would recognize him, or in this case maybe not recognize him. So he shows up, and what we get to see here is what Abraham really believes concerning the gospel, or concerning at least how it applies to the treatment of strangers. Because Abraham does not know this is God. He doesn't know that they're angels. For all he knows that these three guys have shown up from nowhere. And what does he do? It says that when he lifted up his eyes, he looked and behold, three men were standing opposite him, and he saw them. He ran from the tent door to meet them, and he bowed himself to the earth. He shows them respect, and he says, now my lord, if I have found favoring your sight, please do not pass your servant by. Please let a little water be brought to wash your feet and rest yourselves under the tree, and I will bring you a piece of bread. I like the King James better. He says, I will bring you a small morsel. He's very modest here. I'm going to bring you a little something to eat. And he says, then you may go on, and then it's beautiful as well, but people say, do what you do, and he's a typical husband. I'll fix you something to eat, and then he runs in the kitchen, of course, and says, all right, Sarah, start resting. It goes to the servant, and he's really running, and he's preparing this great feast for these men. Now, why is Abraham doing this? Is he by temperament a good guy? If you look at his life, really not. Is he secure in himself? If you look at his life, really, he's not. But apparently, as Abraham gets older, and he has a better sense of himself, he's able to show hospitality. And all hospitality is grace to strangers that you don't know, and not only showing grace to strangers that you don't know, but giving them your stuff. Now, why can Abraham just be so gracious and give away his stuff? It's probably because he's starting to get a grasp on the promise of God. Remember, what are the reasons that we don't show hospitality to people? Why do we not just have every time they can hurry coming into our homes, everyone off the street? Either because we're afraid for ourselves, you know, there are issues of protection. I just can't have every people come in my house with my children, and of course there are issues of selfishness. We only have limited resources, and we don't want to give them to other people. But Abraham, apparently, has grasped the fact that when God came to him, and he said, I will be your shield. I'm the one who protects you, and he says, I will be your great reward, that I give you everything you need. And if you have that in mind, there's no reason not to show hospitality. And we see from Abraham's actions that he is actually living what he believes. He believes that. And he sees the principle, which I mentioned before, is that we all live the way we believe. I remember when I was in college that the big thing in all the campus ministry was to get students to live out their faith. You need to live out your faith. I mean, you need to live out your faith, Chris, you all need to live out your faith. No one ever said to us, was this, that everyone, whether you're a Christian or not, is always living out their faith. You're always living out your faith. Now the question is, is what faith or you're living out, or what level do you understand the gospel these promises have done? You see, if you don't show mercy to strangers, if you don't show hospitality, you're living out your faith. And what it says about your faith, is maybe you don't get it. Another more beautiful thing here, what's more important about this text is not Abraham's actions. Certainly, we see this hospitality thing, and it really is compared next week we're going to look at the destruction of Sodom and Demora. And when these angels come to Sodom and Demora, they're not served, but in fact the men of the city want to rape them and have sex with them. Okay, there's a comparison going on here between people who get it and people who don't get it. But what's even bigger is you have to ask the question, why did God come in the first place? Why did God show up here? Why did He show up in person? Why did He get so personal? Why would He take on human form and go to Abraham's house? And why would He eat? And you notice that God ate and Abraham stood by and waited for him. He serves him this feast, and he just stands by, and the answer actually is pretty simple. Because the covenant that was cut in chapter 17, remember he came and gave him this covenants of circumcision? And all these promises, the covenant wasn't complete yet. The covenant was not complete yet. You see in the ancient Near East, they would cut covenants together, and the covenant would never be complete until both of the kings sat down together at a meal. You sit down together at the table, right? You just signed a big deal, a corporate merger, you've done whatever, and you just don't walk out. What you do is they would present this great feast, and the lesser would serve the greater, and they would put their swords on the table. And when they would eat together, that would be the final culminating event that would say everything is cool between us. And so what God does is God comes to Abraham Yahweh, and he takes on this form of a man, and he sits down, and he eats. And he lets Abraham serve him, and Abraham stands by, and he waits, and by God, partaking of this meal, what we see is that everything is cool. Abraham doesn't know this yet, but not only do I make all these promises, but I have come to just let you know in a very personal, sacramental way if you will, that everything is cool. And that's why the Lord's Supper is so important for us. The Lord's Supper communion, we partake of every week, why? Because Jesus, at the end of his life, as he's approaching his passion, what does he do? He sits the disciples down for a meal, and instead of the lesser, washing the feet of the greater, the greater washes the feet of the lesser, things begin to go backwards here. And instead of the lesser, serving the greater, Jesus, Jesus, serves them. Right? He's giving them this last final covenantal meal, and by this meal, what is he saying? Guys, no matter what happens, remember everything is cool. And not only does he serve it, and he hosts it, but you see that Jesus is also the main course. You see, Abraham presented Yahweh with a fatted calf, and waited on him, he stood back and waited for Yahweh to eat. What Jesus does is Jesus presents himself, from every take the bread, and he says, this is my body, which is broken for you. Take from it all of you. And he takes the cup, and he says, this cup is the new covenant in my blood, drink from it all of you. And then what does he do? Jesus waits. Remember what he says? He serves them this great feast, and then he stands back and says, I, Jesus, will not protect it this cup again, until I protect it in the kingdom with you. And so that's why we do communion at Grace Seattle every single week, why? Because every single week you and I get to celebrate this covenantal meal with God, where we sit down at the table with Him, and every time we sit down at the table, we remind ourselves and are reminded by Jesus that everything is cool. That I'm never going to hold your sins against you, that all of the promises of God are yes and they man and me. Remember that as you come forward today. You see, God not only gets personal with Abraham, but he gets very specific, and in fact, he sort of gets a little frustrated. Look at the next verses 9. This is where Abraham, I disagree with most commentators here, in verse 9 it says, then they said to him, where is your wife? And he said there in the tent. Most commentators, maybe they never read any great literature, but most commentators say that because there's nothing added here that Abraham was not surprised at all. And I think Moses gives us a great deal of leeway to sort of fill in the blanks. Abraham doesn't know who these guys are from Adam, and then all of a sudden they're eating this meal, and one of them looks up and says, which wife? Sarah. And at that point, I can only imagine that Abraham became stone-faced white and probably went into the tent. And he probably, at that minute, everything came to him, but I'm hosting someone here that's bigger than just a stranger. And he says, where's your wife? She's in the tent. And then he says, I will surely return to you at this time next year and behold, Sarah, your wife will have a son, and Sarah was listening at the tent door, which was behind him. And then he says, I will surely return to you at this time next year. And then he says, I will surely return to you at this time next year, and I will surely return to you at this time next year. I'm going to be here this time next year. Then you have this editorial comment. Now don't forget, Sarah, this says that the Hebrew really is sort of translated and now Sarah was past the time of a woman, right? She was post-menopausal, right? So it wasn't even that she struggled with barrenness. It was that she struggled with barrenness her whole life, and now she did not even have her period anymore, right? She didn't have anything. And what does it say? Sarah laughed to herself. Now remember, we've seen in Genesis, if nothing else, the sort of issue of the sovereignty of God, that Abram laughed to himself and God says what he laughed at. You think you're hiding from God. You can't do it. Sarah's laughing. She's in the tent and laughed to herself and God says to Abram, why Sarah laughing? And he asks him this beautiful rhetorical question that you and I ought to ask ourselves all the time. Is anything too difficult for the Lord? Is anything too difficult for the Lord? You see, that's the question that Christians ought to ask themselves all the time. Frankly, that's the question that non-Christians ought to ask themselves all the time. Whether Sarah in her barrenness, or it's you and me, in our heart issues, you know, we look at our heart issues and we look at Sarah struggles with sexuality, whether you're a male or female, or we look at our struggles with our family, or we look at our struggles in any number of areas of life. And you've got to ask yourself, is anything too hard for the Lord? And the gospel comes back with a resounding no, but in our hearts we're constantly saying, I'm not sure. It's interesting because God constantly challenges us on this. God challenges me. If you remember about this time last year, I read you a letter of biker's or convention outside. Last year, I read you a letter that was from my father. I told you before that when I was about five years old, my parents divorced, my dad left and I pursued him for most of my life and he scorned me. He said, don't come around. And this time last year I get a letter saying, dear Tommy, I've become a Christian and I hated that letter. Why? You see because I stand up in front of you every week and I say that nothing is impossible for God. God can change any heart or any institution and the one person in the world who would challenge that. The one person in the world that would make me doubt that steps forward and says, here I am. I mean, it's a year later, I still grapple with it. Judy pulled out the card this morning and said, Tommy, you need to read this again. I just found it in our stack and I said, I can't do it. I can't look at that right now. Why? Because I'm such a stinking unbeliever and I have to ask myself, is anything possible for the Lord? Yes. Is anything possible for the Lord? Yes. And so you look at all of your issues and all of your sins and all of the things you grapple with in your own heart and you say, can God change this? And God continues to say over and over. Yes, yes, yes. And yet you and I go, I'm not sure. And that's because you and I tend to think that our particular wickedness, our particular sins, our particular family situations are unlike anyone else's. Sort of like Tommy, if you knew the things I did in the dark, you wouldn't stand up and say that. So Tommy, if you knew I was a pedophile or if you knew this or if you knew this about my family, you wouldn't be so bold as to say that. And you know, frankly, I might not be, but God is. God stands in front of you and says nothing is impossible. That there's no sin that is too big and there's no issue that cannot be gotten past because of this thing called the gospel. And many of you, I know think, you know, you don't look at it that way, but you say, you know, if God really cared about me, he wouldn't have sent all this crap down the pipe for me anyway. Right? I had all these plans. I had all these things and God keeps thwarting them. And if God cared about me, he wouldn't thwart my plans. And you know, the thing you have to ask yourself then, or tell yourself is that God has plans too. And he's bigger. And God's plan is this. God's plan is to draw you unto himself and do whatever it takes to ween you. Remember Calvin's words to ween you from excessive love of this present life. And so your issues and your struggles, in fact, they are not curses, but now they are blessings if you're a Christian. Now you look at them and say, God, you have revealed who I am. It's interesting. This week, I'll close with this. I was on a radio program this week, anonymously. Most of you, I'm guessing, didn't hear it. And they were asking me about a pastoral perspective on WTO and all this kind of stuff and what I thought. And they said, what's the greatest thing that's come out of WTO? Or the biggest issue. They didn't say great. They said, what's the biggest issue or the biggest thing that you see coming out of WTO? And I said to them, I said that I think the greatest thing is that we've been revealed for who we are. Right. The city of Seattle prides itself on tolerance. And it prides itself on sort of hospitality, if you will, in genuineness and loving one another. But you know what? The root of tolerance is hatred. It's not love. And so if you're going to say you're a tolerant person, what happens when someone steps in your path? If you don't have love, you've got to respond some way. And I told this guy in the radio, I said the most beautiful thing is that we've been shown that tolerance can't fix anything, that being squeaky clean can't fix anything. And you know the beautiful thing about the gospels, if you read the gospels, that Jesus is all the time telling people to repent, repent, repent, repent. And yet Jesus almost never tells people to repent of their badness. You realize that. Jesus almost never tells people to repent of their badness. And he almost always is telling people to repent of their goodness. But he's constantly telling people you're not as good as you think. And I think the thing that came out of WTO is we're not as good as we think. And you see when you look at the gospel, when you look at the issues in your life, you basically have two choices. Most of us think we have two choices and the two choices are this, right? It's either try harder. You know, you look at the issues in your life, whether it's sexual or financial or anything. You say, man, I just need to gut it out. If I try harder and try harder and try harder, I'll do it. Right? The big joke in my house, I keep telling people, is that I've read the book of Genesis about eight times this year. Why? Because I want to read through the Bible. And every time I've missed a few days, I start over. Well, I've never read any book with book of Genesis my whole life, right? Because I always start over, over and over and over. I don't have what it takes apparently. Now, if you think about your life, your sexual issues, your financial issues, how many times have you said, I'm never going to look at pornography again? How many times have you said, I'm not going to lie anymore? How many times have you said this? And yet without even knowing it, you find yourself knee deep and it all over again. So trying harder apparently doesn't work. Then on the other side, what do you have? You just have apathetic despair. Who cares? Why bother anyway? And what the gospel says is that the gospel comes in and gives you a third way. And the third way is this. You don't have what it takes. Own that. Right? The conservative says, be good and the liberal says, do good and the gospel says you're not good. Wait and do about that. You own that. You own your brokenness. You own the fact that you don't have what it takes. And then you look to Jesus and what does Jesus say? Everything's cool. Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. That's the gospel. You have to ask yourself, do I trust Jesus? Let me go. Let me disclose with that. Jesus, we thank you that you come unto us and you make very specific promises and that you among them is the promise to change our hearts in our lives. And I pray simply that today you would change our hearts in our lives as well. We thank you in your name. Amen.