What to Expect from God - Genesis - September 13th, 2026 (Sermon Transcript)
This morning, we are going to continue through Genesis 17 and God's covenant with Abraham. And our focus will be on what to expect from God. Like, what can people expect when they enter into relationship with God?
By entering into relationship with God, I mean when somebody becomes a Christian, when they recognize their sin and that Jesus saves people from sin, and they ask Jesus to save them. They turn away from their sin and they turn towards Jesus in faith.
And as a result of that, they are reconciled to right relationship with God. That's what it means to become a Christian, to be saved through the sacrifice of Jesus, the work of Jesus in his life, death, and resurrection.
We are brought back into relationship with God, the way that he originally designed human beings to be. When God created the world, he created us in perfect relationship with him. That relationship was broken through sin.
And then Jesus, by his grace, by his work, is able to undo that and restore our relationship with God. And it's a real relationship. It's something that's personal.
It's something that we can experience. But if you have never experienced that before, you can ask the question, like, what's that like? What's it like to enter into relationship with God?
Or if you've been struggling in your relationship with God, you can ask, what's it supposed to be like? Or what would it be like if my relationship with God grew deeper, if it really flourished and thrived?
Well, some people think if I enter into relationship with God, I'm going to have to give up a lot of fun stuff and do a bunch of boring religious stuff instead.
Some people might think if I enter into relationship with God, well, maybe that means I have to give up logic and reason and just submit myself to blind faith.
Or you might wonder, will I have to just struggle and strive and force myself into being really good and hope that God isn't disappointed with me or angry at me? What's it going to be like? What will this relationship be like?
Can people expect to sacrifice a bunch of time and money to serve others and help the church when they, to be honest, really don't want to? Can people expect to become some kind of prudish, morally backwards, religious jerk?
I think that's what a lot of people expect. Do a survey, ask the neighbors, what are Christians like? Well, they're prudish and morally backwards, and they're kind of a bunch of jerks.
That's what people expect. These are real expectations. But have you ever heard of Blaise Pascal?
Anybody know who Blaise Pascal is? He was a brilliant scholar, a mathematician, a scientist, and a philosopher who lived in France in the 1600s. And he was also a devoted follower of Jesus.
And he once wrote something very interesting about this. He wrote that men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.
The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next, make it attractive. Make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is.
I love that last part. Tim Keller used to talk about this all the time. Make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is.
So what can you really expect when you enter into relationship with God? The truth is, you can expect many wonderful and beautiful things.
You can expect such things that if anybody were to understand them, they would wish that it was real, that it was true. And I want to show you this morning some of those things in our passage. So please stand for the reading of God's word.
I'll read the text for us. Genesis 17 verses 15 through 27. And God said to Abraham, As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name.
I will bless her and moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her and she shall become nations. Kings of people shall come from her.
Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, shall a child be born to a man who is 100 years old? Shall Sarah who is 90 years old bear a child? And Abraham said to God, oh, that Ishmael might live before you.
God said, no, but Sarah, your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. As for Ishmael, I have heard you.
Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father 12 princes, and I will make him into a great nation. But I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year.
When he had finished talking with him, God went up from Abraham.
Then Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all those born in his house are bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham's house, and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskins that very day as God had said to him.
Abraham was 99 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, and Ishmael his son was 13 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin.
That very day, Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised, and all the men of his house, those born in the house and those bought with money from a foreigner, were circumcised with him. This is the word of the Lord.
You may be seated and please join me as I pray for us. Father, I pray that you'd help us to understand your word, to see the truth of it and the beauty of it.
I pray God that you would guide me into the truth and speak through me to your people for their sake this morning, God.
We know that your word is spiritual food for us, it is life for us, it is refreshment and encouragement for our souls, it is guidance, it is conviction, it is righteous and beautiful and wonderful.
And so I pray that we would all experience your word that way this morning by the power of your spirit. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.
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Expect Transformation
Now, the first thing we can expect from our relationship with God is transformation. If you enter into relationship with God, you should expect to be personally and profoundly changed. And just to give you a warning, it usually takes a long time.
It takes much longer than we would often want it to take. But if your relationship with God is real, it will happen.
There will be some point in your life as a Christian where you can look back at yourself ten years ago and say, wow, God has brought me so far. Thank God for what He has done in my life. I'm no longer struggling with that sin.
I'm now able to handle these things in this way, and God has created a love for people in my heart, or God has done this, or God has done that. At some point, you need to be able to look back and see the ways that God has changed you.
And if you try to look back on last month to see how God has changed you, you probably won't be able to perceive anything, because typically, like I said, it takes a long time.
So expect transformation, but be warned that God likes to work in 10 or 20 year chunks, rather than 10 or 20 minute rapid transformations. As an example of transformation, look at verses 1 and 2.
You shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. And in the previous passage, Abram had his name changed to Abraham, because this is how God works. He changes people.
And in their culture, their names really meant something. So if you changed a person's name, then you changed their identity. You transformed them.
Recently, when we were trying to find a name for our son, Kayla looked up the meaning of the name James, and it turns out that the name James means supplanter. I was like, oh perfect, he can supplant me. So we named him Conor James.
And I keep thinking, well, he's going to supplant this Conor. And to me, that means like, like hopefully I can raise him to be a better version of me. He'll be the new and improved Conor.
So it all worked out perfectly. But it was funny because I never even thought, it never even crossed my mind to look up the meaning of the name.
I don't think I looked up the meanings of any of the names that we were considering, because our culture, generally speaking, isn't really like that.
We generally don't attribute a lot of significance to whatever Google tells us about the meaning of a person's name. But for Abraham and Sarah, it was incredibly important. In their culture, it was closely, deeply rooted in a person's identity.
So again, when God changes Sarah's name to Sarah, that means that he was changing her. She was being transformed. And then later in the passage, we see the kind of transformation.
The name Sarah meant princess, and the name Sarah meant princess of multitudes. So the meaning of it is this. Before, she was just a princess all by herself, just her and Abraham.
But now, she was going to give birth to a son, and he would give birth to a nation. Many nations, in fact. And that's an incredible transformation for a woman who was childless for 90 years.
90 years she was barren. She had not a single child, let alone nations of children. I know that for many people who struggle to have kids, it is a very painful thing.
And when you read the story of Abraham and Sarah in the book of Genesis, it seems like it was incredibly painful for them.
I mean, God shows up when Abraham is roughly 75 years old, and he shows up to this childless man, this man without an heir, which meant everything to them in their culture, and he promises to give them, to finally give him a child.
And then he has to wait 25 years, 25 years. And so I think for their entire life up to when Abraham was 75, it was probably very painful for them. Again, for Abraham and Sarah, it would have been a very painful thing.
And then in some ways, it was probably made even more painful by the fact that God promised that he was going to change it. And then they had to wait another 25 years for him to change it.
So day in and day out for Sarah, I think it is safe to assume that this was probably the biggest and most challenging aspect of her life.
The most painful thing that she experienced on a daily basis, something that she struggled with for decades, and God changed it. You see, God doesn't just change people, he often changes the most profound and painful parts of us.
So maybe you struggle with the deepest and darkest of depression, or maybe you come from a family line that has been destroyed repeatedly by addiction, or maybe you cannot control your temper, or maybe you have absolutely zero self-confidence.
Those are the kinds of things that God can and often does change. So when Blaise Pascal says that we need to make good men and wish that it were true, in other words, we need to make our faith attractive, what is more attractive than this?
What is more attractive than the power to change? The hope that God can come into your life and radically transform the most painful parts of you. What is more attractive than that?
You know, our world deals with this in roughly two ways. Most people in our world recognize that they cannot change the most broken, the most painful, the most sinful parts of them.
They cannot change it, so they pretend like they don't actually need to change. They pretend, I'm actually, I'm just great the way that I am. There's nothing wrong with me.
The problem is with them. The problem is with those people who did something to me. Or the problem is, you know, my life played out this way, and I didn't have the same opportunities that that person had.
And that's why I am the way that I am. But really, I don't need to change. There's nothing wrong with me.
There's something wrong with them, or that system, or these circumstances. And so recognizing the inability to change, they pretend like they don't actually need to change. Or you can just admit the truth.
That you do need to change. That we all need to change. That there are things about us that are broken and disordered.
That there are things about us that are sinful. Things that we do on a daily basis that are just wrong, deeply wrong. But the good news is that God can change us.
God can change us, and only God can change us. The truth is, we cannot change on our own. I think I talked about this recently, but have you ever tried to change yourself on your own?
Every year, come January 1st, millions upon millions of people are determined to change. They make a New Year's resolution, and what happens every year? They fail.
92% of people, despite them gearing up for weeks, and thinking long and hard, what's my resolution this year? Thinking, okay, that's gonna be it. That's the thing that I want to change.
All right, this is what I'm gonna do to change it. Okay, come January 1st, I've got my plan, and I am committed. I'm going to change this thing.
And sometimes it's like the tiniest thing. I'm gonna remember to bring my reusable grocery bags every time I go grocery shopping this year. That's it.
And 92% of people, even if it's small changes, they fail. A solid 50% of people won't even make it till the end of January. 23% of people fail within a week.
That's how hard it is to change.
And when your sin, your behavior, your compulsions, when who you are is hurting people that you love, when your addictions are destroying your marriage or hurting your kids, the inability to change is not an interesting statistic. It's life or death.
It's hell or hope. But the good news of the gospel is that by the power of Jesus, through our relationship with God, we can change. We will change.
That's the promise. Look what God did for Sarah. Took the most profound and painful struggle of her life and changed her.
2 Corinthians 5 verse 17 says that, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come.
If anyone is in Christ, in other words, if anybody is genuinely saved, if there's any real Christian out there, they're a new creation. The old has passed away. The new has come.
This is what God is calling us to. And he's promising us that he will do it. And he's commanding us also to participate in it.
Ephesians 4 verses 22 through 24 says this.
It's a command to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true
righteousness and holiness. When you enter into relationship with God, you should expect to be transformed.
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Expect the Unexpected
You should also expect the unexpected. You should also expect the unexpected to happen. Did anybody expect Abraham and Sarah to have kids at this point in their lives?
He was 99, she was 90. And yes, lifespans were different in the book of Genesis, but this is post-flood, and I believe Abraham lives to be 149 years old. So he's two-thirds of the way through his life.
Sarah is roughly two-thirds of the way through her life, and they had never been able to have kids for decade after decade. They had been trying.
So even with the longer lifespans at this point in Genesis, they're not 900 years long, and there is absolutely no reason to think that they could have kids at this point.
There is every reason to think that they would not be able to have kids at this point. That's the expectation. God did promise Abraham that they would have a son, but other than that promise from God, this would be completely unexpected.
But that's just how God works. As the saying goes, He likes to work in mysterious ways. We could also say that He likes to work in unexpected ways.
He likes to use unexpected people, people like Moses, stuttering, shy, Moses to be his spokesperson, to lead a nation. He likes to use people like David, small, young, overlooked David, to slay Goliath and become the king of Israel.
So the question is, how does God want to use you? You might think, I am not the kind of person that can do much for God. Which means you are exactly the kind of person who can and probably should do much for God.
God likes to use people who don't think that they are worthy or able to be used by God. You should expect that God will call you to do unexpected things, even miraculous things.
You should expect that God will supernaturally empower you to be a blessing to the people around you. Let me say that again, because it is thoroughly biblical. It's something that God has already done.
You should expect that God will supernaturally empower you to be a blessing to the people around you. The Bible says that all believers are filled with the Holy Spirit.
And the Bible also says that the Holy Spirit gives each person a gift or a number of gifts that are meant to be used for the edification of the body, the building up of the body of Christ.
We all have these supernaturally empowered gifts that God expects us to use to build up, to encourage, to edify, to support the people around us. So if you're a Christian, then God has already done this.
He's already done that miraculous thing in you. And now it's your turn. God's done his part.
Now it's time for you to play your part, to do what God has empowered you to do. And almost as a side note, this is a bit of a shift in mindset for many people who come to church.
Many people come to church, and I'm guilty of this myself, everybody is. We come to church thinking, what's God going to do for me this Sunday? What can I expect to get out of this?
How is this going to bless me and help me? But then you read the New Testament, you see that God sends His Spirit so that we, when we go to church on Sundays, can be a blessing to others.
Usually if God's going to help you on a Sunday, if He's going to bless you on a Sunday, it's going to be because some other believer is using their gifts to serve you and bless you. And so you should be thinking, how can I do that for somebody else?
That's a miracle that God does in our lives. An unexpected miracle that He would take broken sinners like us and fill us with His Spirit and give us gifts to be used in the service of others. And God may do other miracles in your life too.
But saving you and giving you the Holy Spirit, those are miracles that He has already done. And back to Sarah, when she finally got pregnant, that was an absolute miracle. And you read through the Bible and you see that God does a lot of miracles.
He does many incredible miraculous things. And so I think God is showing us what to expect in relationship with Him.
When He inspires the authors of the scriptures to record all of these miraculous things that He has done throughout history, I think He wants us to know that He is involved in the world. He is involved in the world.
He wants us to know that there is nothing that is too hard for Him. Psalm 77 14 says, You are the God who works wonders. You have made known your might among the peoples.
Jeremiah 32 17, Oh Lord God, it is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you.
And we read that and then we think, there's no way I'm going to be able to pay my rent this month. Right? We read something like that about the amazing power of God who spoke the universe into existence.
Then we're like, well, guess I'm out of luck. There's nothing that can be done. We face these situations in life, like you're facing some huge financial problem.
You've got these hospital bills and you're fighting with the insurance company and it feels impossible. Like if Kaiser Permanente wants to send me to collections, what am I going to do about it? Call customer service?
And then they're going to be like, oh yes, we'll get that fixed. We'll call you back. Right.
Then you call customer service again and again and again for 50 times. If they want to send me to collections, there's nothing I can do in the face of a giant conglomerate like that.
Or if Chase Bank wants to repossess your house, what are you going to do to stop them? We look at these human institutions like they're so mighty and powerful. We look at human circumstances like they're so insurmountable.
And God laughs. What is an insurance company in comparison to Almighty God? God spoke the universe into existence.
Don't you think he can fix your insurance problem, or your money problem, or your marriage problem? We should expect God to do mighty and even miraculous things in our lives.
Proverbs 21.1 says that the king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord. He turns it wherever he wills. Think about that.
We look at the people around us, and we might think, I know that person. They're never going to go for this. They'll never agree to this, not in a million years.
They hate that kind of thing. There's no hope that they'll ever be on board with this. God turns the king's heart wherever he wills.
God turns all human hearts wherever he wills. Therefore, God can turn your husband's heart wherever he wills. God can turn your wife's heart wherever he wills.
God can change any human heart concerning any matter. God can change any human mind about any thing. It doesn't matter what you think you know about a person.
God is in control. God is the one with the power, and he often intervenes for the sake of his people. We should expect that.
If we shouldn't expect that, we shouldn't expect to have verses like this, right? Why do you think God put that in the Book of Proverbs? So that you can know about it.
So that you can know that God can do things like that. Why do you think we have all these miracles recorded in the Bible? So that you can know that God can do miracles, and then he often does for the sake of his people.
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Expect Godʼs Plans
And we should also expect, and this one's a lot less fun, by the way, but we should also expect for God to change our plans. This is part of the deal that we need to be made aware of. Looking again at verses 18 and 19.
Abraham said to God, Oh, that Ishmael might live before you. God said, no. God said, no.
But Sarah, your wife, shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him.
You see with Ishmael, Abraham and Sarah had taken things into their own hands. Ishmael was their plan. He was their hope.
They had come up with this plan for Sarah to give her servant Hagar as a wife to Abraham, because they knew, well, God has promised us descendants, and we still haven't had any kids of our own, so we'll do the culturally customary thing, and we'll
give Hagar to Abraham as a wife, and then they can have a kid, and that will be the heir. So she was a surrogate, and that's how they got their precious boy Ishmael. And that was their plan. Ishmael will be the heir.
And now he's 13 years old, and God comes along and he declares that Isaac will be the heir. Can you imagine how that would feel for Abraham?
His only son, his precious beloved boy Ishmael, the heir to his legacy, his fortune, the hope for fulfilling God's promises to him. And God comes along and says, no, he will not be the heir. So he's understandably quite upset about this.
And God is very gracious, and he promises a great future for Ishmael, but he still changes the plan. God comes in and changes his plans.
It says in the Book of Proverbs, Proverbs 16, 9, the heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps. When you enter into relationship with God, you need to know that we plan, but God decides.
And I think many Christians have gone through much pain and suffering because they refuse to let go of their plans. So remember that. We plan, but God decides.
And to be honest, it's a good thing that he does, because he's a lot smarter than us. Because he's perfectly good. Because he loves you completely.
Because he knows the future and he controls all things. So of course his plans are going to be better than ours. Who do you think you are that you could come up with better plans than God?
You see, letting God plan your life is not a terrible sacrifice. It's a privilege. It's a joy.
You just have to trust him. I love what Tim Keller used to say about this. He would say that when you pray, God will always give you exactly what you would have asked for if you knew as much as he does.
So, here's the question. Do you trust him? Will you let him lead?
Will you let him plan your life? That's what it means to obey God.
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Expect Obedience
If we are going to experience transformation, if God is going to do wonderful supernatural things in our lives, it's going to come along with our obedience. Look at Abraham in verse 23.
Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all those born in his house are bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham's house, and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskins that very day as God had said to him. As God had said to him.
So God had commanded him to circumcise everyone in his house, and Abraham obeyed immediately and completely because he trusted God.
This text, it makes me think of a quote I heard one time, and the quote was in the context of a story about like a, I think it was like a servant in a king's house, and the servant said in response to the king's command, to hear is to obey.
And I've always remembered that and always loved that. Like that's the kind of attitude we are supposed to have towards God. To hear is to obey.
Like my disposition to obey God is so immediate and so complete, and so without any qualifications or hesitations whatsoever, that if I hear it, I'm doing it. That's it. That's what Abraham is doing in this text.
God said it, so he did it immediately and completely, exactly as God had asked. Now in practice, that's a very hard thing to do, because we're sinners.
Because we're, the new creation has come, but the old creation is still scratching and clawing and hanging on with all of its might. And it's a process. But that should be our aim.
That should be our goal. That's ultimately what God wants from us. This kind of obedience, total, complete, immediate, to hear, is to obey.
Because obedience is how we participate in God's work in our lives. It's not how we earn God's love. Most people don't know that about Christianity.
They think that obedience is how we earn God's love and favor and approval in our ticket to heaven. But it's not. It's not how we earn God's love.
It's not how we earn His approval. It's not how we make it to heaven. We obey in order to participate in His work in our lives, to be transformed, to experience the supernatural, wonderful things that God wants to do in our lives.
We obey in response to God's gracious gift of His Son, Jesus. Like God sent His Son, Jesus, to die for our sins, to make a total and complete payment for all of our sins, past, present, and future, to set us free from the power of sin and death.
God did that and we obey in response to what He has already done. So again, we obey in response to the gracious gift of God's Son, Jesus, just like Abraham obeys in response to the gracious gift of His Son, Isaac. Isn't that interesting?
We've got two sons here who are received by grace through faith. Isaac was received by Abraham by grace through faith, and Jesus is received by us by grace through faith. Ishmael is the other son who was not received by grace through faith.
Ishmael was the product of human effort. Ishmael was the result of them trying to do it on their own, but Isaac was received by grace through faith, and that kind of faith always produces obedience. That's what we should expect.
Transformation, God to do wonderful things in our lives, often supernatural things in our lives, and we should expect obedience, to walk in total obedience to Him in light of what He has already done for us.