How God Reveals Himself - Genesis - September 20th, 2026 (Sermon Transcript)

Well, if you have a Bible, go ahead and open to Genesis chapter 18. We're going to be looking at verses 1-15. You also should have gotten a sermon handout on the way in.

It has a passage and a number of quotes and stuff. In 1984, a young Japanese man named Toshihiko Nakago, wrote some computer code that would soon change the world.

He was 28 years old, a typical engineer type, very logical and careful and straightforward. And his friends described him as mathematically brilliant. They all worked together in this office in Kyoto, Japan.

And the code that they wrote became Nintendo's Super Mario Brothers. With Mario and Luigi and the princess and all these characters and all these fun adventures that the characters would go on, they created this magical world.

Now, Nacago was the one who created this Super Mario Brothers world. But imagine for a moment if he wanted to enter into that world. How would he do that?

Could he just get on a train and go there? Could he just show up and start talking to Mario? No, of course not, because the world that he made was not like him.

The characters he created were fundamentally different kinds of beings. They had a different nature, a different existence.

So if Nacago wanted to enter into the world that he made, if he wanted to interact with the characters he created, he would have to write himself into the code. He would have to appear to them as one of them. He would have to take on their nature.

And so it is with God. This morning, we will see God take on a human nature in order to reveal himself to Sarah and Abraham. It's interesting because God has already been communicating with Abraham.

We've been going through the book of Genesis, and we've been going through the life of Abraham.

There's been a number of points at which God reveals himself to Abraham, and God communicates to Abraham, and Genesis doesn't include all the fine details of everything that happened in those revelations and communications.

But this one we know is a bit different because God, in this instance, takes on the form of a man accompanied by two angels. And it reveals a lot about who God is. But that's the whole point, isn't it?

In the video game analogy, Nacago could simply send a message through one of the characters in the game, right? He had that option available to him.

Like he could program in a message from the creator and Princess could hand it to Mario and then it would pop up on the screen. You could read the message from the creator to Mario. And that's basically what a prophet is.

That's what the Bible is. It's messages from the creator. But if the creator wants to communicate more than a message, if he wants to reveal himself more fully, then he has to enter in to his creation.

So that will be our focus this morning. We'll talk about the message, but going beyond the message, what does this incident reveal to us about God and what he's like? Please stand for the reading of God's word.

I'll read the text for us. Genesis 18 verses 1 through 15. And the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mammar, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day.

He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing in front of him.

When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them, and bowed himself to the earth and said, O Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant.

Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree, while I bring a morsel of bread that you may refresh yourselves, and after that, you may pass on, since you have come to your servant.

So they said, do as you have said. And Abraham went quickly into the tent and said, quick, three sayas, a flying flower, knead it and make some cakes.

And Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to a young man, and who prepared it quickly. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them.

And he stood by them under the tree while they ate. They said to him, where is Sarah, your wife? And he said, she's in the tent.

The Lord said, I will surely return to you about this time next year. And Sarah, your wife, she'll have a son. And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him.

Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah. So Sarah laughed to herself saying, after I am worn out and my Lord is old, shall I have pleasure?

The Lord said to Abraham, why did Sarah laugh and say, shall I indeed bear a child now that I am old? Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time, I will return to you about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son.

But Sarah denied it, saying, I did not laugh, for she was afraid. He said, no, but you did laugh. This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated and please join me as I pray for us. Father in heaven, we pray for the truth of your word to come clearly to our hearts and to our minds, for the truth about who you are to hit home with us.

God, I pray that for those of us who need a correction to our understanding of who you are, I pray that we would be corrected, God. I pray that you would help us to see who you really are, and that we would humbly submit to the truth about you.

For those of us who need a revival of our hearts, to feel again the majesty and goodness of who you are, God, I pray that you would do that. Open our minds and soften our hearts.

Feed us with the truth of your word, sanctify us with the truth of your word, we pray. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

7:14

Godʼs Mysterious Ways

Now, I want you to notice something in verse 2. This is not what you would expect at first, because as the Bible says, there is only one God. We are not polytheists, we are monotheists.

But then it says in verse 2, He lifted up His eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing in front of Him. Now, why would God appear as three men? Is it supposed to be an appearance of the Trinity?

That's what it seems at first, because we know from the Bible that God exists in Trinity. And I want us to kind of slow down and take a little bit of time here. This isn't the main point, but this is a subpoint, and it's a very important point.

This is the nature of God, so we shouldn't rush through the specifics of how God chooses to reveal himself. God is too important for that. So we'll take a minute here.

We know from the Bible that God exists in Trinity. And it's hard to understand, but I'm just gonna say it as simply and accurately as I can. He is one God, but three distinct persons, and three fully divine persons.

They are distinct. They aren't, you know, three modes of the same God. They're not three parts of the same God, three distinct persons, but they are all fully divine.

You, on the other hand, are one person, and you have one nature, a human nature, right? God also has one nature. He has a divine nature, but there are three people who share that nature.

With humans and other creatures, it's always one nature and one person or one thing attached to that nature or essence or core identity. I know these are not words that we use often, but when I say nature, I mean like your fundamental core identity.

You are a human being. That is the essence of who you are. You were sitting on a chair.

That thing you're sitting on, the essence of what it is, is a chair. And then your dog or cat at home, it's a particular cat or a particular dog. We have one named Winston.

And Winston is a particular dog, and he has a core identity or nature or essence that of a dog, right? And so for everything that we encounter, it's like one thing with one nature underneath it or at the core of what it is.

With you, it's one person attached to one specific human nature, but with God, it's different. It's one divine nature, one essence, one God, but three persons. I don't know what's going on down here, sorry.

This microphone keeps falling down. But three persons who are attached to that one nature. So that's what it means when we say that God exists in Trinity.

Three persons, one God. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And that's what Christians have always believed about God, and it's very important.

But this, what we see in our passage, is not that. The three men in our passage are not the Trinity. We know from the rest of the story that God is appearing Himself along with two angels.

That's the three men. God and two angels. It says in Genesis 18, 22, later on, so this story begins here, where God appears to Abraham and Sarah, and they have this conversation that we see in our passage.

But then it continues on to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Where God destroys the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and Lot, Abraham's nephew, is rescued. And this continues on for a couple chapters.

But later on in the story, seven verses after our text ends, we see talking about the same three men in our passage. So the men turned from there and went towards Sodom. But Abraham still stood before the Lord.

So two of these three men left, but Abraham still stood before the Lord, meaning one of the men was the Lord and the other two were not.

Then in Genesis 19.1, it says this, the two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. So the two men who left earlier were angels. Now the question arises, why did God reveal himself this way to Abraham?

Why did he show up accompanied by two angels? I don't really know. I don't really know.

We know that later the two angels destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. But why did he bring them along to see Abraham? Why did he use angels to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah?

He could have done it himself. And so, we have a little bit of information, but as far as fully understanding why God did this, I don't know, and I don't think anybody else knows either.

And it's important to say that because it teaches us something about God. He is mysterious. He is mysterious.

If you were to fully comprehend God, then he wouldn't be God. If God never surprises you, if he never does anything that makes you uncomfortable or does things that you don't expect, then it's not God you're worshiping.

It's just an idealized version of yourself. A couple hundred years ago, a bunch of theologians began to really study the historical Jesus. It became a movement known as the historical Jesus studies.

And back then, and it kind of is this way now, a bit less so, but back then, like 17, 1800s, early 1900s, many of the theologians and biblical scholars were not Christians. Many of them were atheists and agnostics and Jews and so on.

And so they just assumed not being Christians, but studying the Bible, studying Jesus, they assumed, well, all the stuff that the Bible says about Jesus, it's not really true. You know, I know Christians believe that, but that's their faith.

But we're gonna look at this from a critical, historical, objective, scientific perspective. We're gonna analyze the Bible that way.

And so they thought, we know what Christians say about Jesus, we know what the Bible says about Jesus, but we know it's a bunch of myth made up that Christians believe. So who was the real Jesus?

Knowing that the Bible's not accurate about what Jesus said and did, who was the real Jesus who inspired these religions, who inspired these texts?

And so they embarked to sort of disentangle the real historical Jesus from what the Bible says about Jesus. And many of these scholars since then have been proven to be ludicrous and foolish and totally divorced from reality and the evidence.

And there are now, I should say, there are now many great scholars of Jesus, scholars of the Bible who are Christians and who have shown that Jesus really was what the Bible says he was. And the Bible really is true.

But setting that aside for the moment, these scholars embarked on studying the real historical Jesus. And here's what ended up happening. They would all, you know, work on their books and do all the reading and write all their papers.

And eventually, they would all publish their findings, like here's my argument for who Jesus really was. And whoever was publishing ended up with the Jesus who looked just like them.

They all ended up, like if the guy was, you know, politically on the left, a socialist or something, his Jesus would end up being a socialist.

And if the other guy writing about the historical Jesus was really quiet and soft-spoken and gentle, his Jesus would be quiet and soft-spoken and gentle. They all ended up making a Jesus that looked just like them.

And we all have a tendency to do that, to come up with an idea of God where God is a lot like us. And so we don't expect God to surprise us or shock us or do things we don't like.

But when you look at the Bible, you see that God is often doing things that are surprising, like appearing as three men, showing up as three men and one of them is the Lord and two of them are angels.

He's often doing things that we aren't necessarily comfortable with, like destroying an entire city or two cities or flooding the entire planet and wiping everybody out. We need to understand that God is so far beyond our comprehension.

Isaiah 55 verses 8 through 9 says, My thoughts are not your thoughts. Neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Like, three men appear, and you know that it's an appearance of God, therefore it must be the Trinity, right? That's what I thought at first. Wrong!

It was not the Trinity, because my thoughts are not your thoughts, declares the Lord. He exists beyond the realm of human comprehension. Romans chapter 11 verses 33 through 36 says this, Oh, the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.

How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways.

This is the Apostle Paul sort of bursting forth in praise after 11 chapters of dense theological exposition and reflection and tying together all these threads from the Old Testament and trying to figure out like, why, how does God save people?

Or I shouldn't say trying to figure out, but by the inspiration of God writing to us in the Book of Romans, this is how God saves people, not by the law, but by grace through faith.

And this is how we see it in the life of Abraham in the Old Testament. And this is God's plan for the Jewish people. And this is God's plan for the Gentile people.

And this is how all the promises work together. And he sort of weaves all this together in this incredible book known as the Book of Romans. And he gets to the end of all that stuff.

And then he declares, oh, the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. How insurgible are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways.

For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid for from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

That's who God is. And as a Christian, the purpose of your existence is to live in close relationship with that God.

And so you need to understand as you seek to walk in relationship with God, you need to understand what the Bible emphasizes over and over again. His ways are not our ways. His greatness is unsearchable.

Who can find out the deep things of God? The secret things belong to the Lord, our God. God is mysterious, and God is awesome.

That word awesome gets quite overused. But according to Google, it means inspiring great admiration, wonder, or fear. With God, I think it means all three.

But is that the God that you worship? When you show up on a Sunday morning, when you sing songs, is that the God that you are singing to? Is that how you understand Him?

Because if not, then you do not understand Him rightly. We don't get to make up our own version of God. Whatever the world around us might say, we do not get to put together our own religion, come up with our own ideas of God or Jesus.

And that's just generally how people think of it these days, right? Many people have used the analogy of a buffet, where religion, according to many modern Americans, this is how religion works. It's like a buffet.

You go in and everybody gets to pick what they like and leave what they don't like. And so if you want to be a Christian or a follower of Jesus, you read the Bible, you listen to some sermons, go to some churches, you think, Oh, I really liked that.

I love thinking of God in that way. But you know that like judgmental, angry God of the Old Testament stuff, that's not for me. I just, I love how compassionate Jesus is in the New Testament and how he helps the poor and the needy.

And that's, that's my God. That's the God that I worship. An inclusive, loving, tolerant, kind God.

And all this sin stuff and judgment stuff, I'm just going to leave that behind. Do you know how many people think that way? They create God in their own image, or at least the image of what they think they are.

But that's not how it works. You don't get to pick your own God. There is one God, and he is real, and he has told us what he's like.

And to presume, to distort him, and to manipulate him into some image that we like better than the real God, well, that's just idolatry. That's blasphemy. We do not pick our own God.

We have to come to terms with the real God. So I want you to think about your life as a Christian.

All the times that you go to church, all the time that you spend in prayer, all the times you read the Bible or listen to the Bible or go to Bible studies or listen to sermons, how often do you feel a sense of admiration for God?

How often do you feel wonder? And do you ever feel afraid? If you never feel those things, perhaps you are not experiencing God at all.

You are just worshiping a figment of your imagination.

22:53

Godʼs Awesomeness

In the early 1500s, there was a young priest named Martin Luther. He would later realize that the Catholic Church was not aligned with the Bible. So he challenged the Roman Catholic Church, and it did not go well.

He accidentally started a revolution, and that revolution became known as the Protestant Reformation. That's why we're here today and not in the Catholic Church, because of what Martin Luther realized and what he did.

But before all of that happened, he had a remarkable experience when he, as a young priest, was called on to perform his first communion. According to the liturgy, he was supposed to dedicate the communion to the eternal, living, and true God.

So, you know, he goes through the rituals and goes through the motions and he's playing his part as the priest and he's supposed to dedicate the communion to the, quote, true or the eternal, living, and true God.

But as he said those words, according to one summary of the event, the ontological chasm between himself and God struck with physical force. In other words, the truth about God hit him like a ton of bricks and he was completely undone.

Many years later, he wrote this about his experience that day. He wrote, At these words, I was utterly stupefied and terror stricken. I thought to myself, with what tongue shall I address such majesty?

Seeing that all men ought to tremble in the presence of even an earthly prince, who am I that I should lift up my eyes or raise my hands to the divine majesty? The angels surround him at his nod, the earth trembles.

And shall I, a miserable little pygmy, say, I want this? I ask for that? For I am dust and ashes and full of sin, and I am speaking to the living, eternal, and true God.

Is that the God you worship? Because there's only one God, there is no other. God is awesome.

We can see Abraham get a little taste of this awesomeness of God in our passage. And I think, ultimately, this is the clearest picture we get of who God is in this text.

Of all the things we can learn about God from our passage, this one is the most obvious. God is awesome. We can see it by how Abraham and Sarah react.

Verse two, when he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth. When Abraham saw God and the angels, he didn't walk over and say hello. He didn't wait for them to come to him.

And you have to remember with Abraham, this is a great man that we're talking about. Abraham was wealthy and powerful and respected and honored and feared. But when he sees God, he runs over and throws himself face down on the ground.

And then he does what you're supposed to do in his culture. Visitors have come to his home and it's now his responsibility to entertain them, to provide a meal.

But notice in verse 5, the language that he uses, while I bring a morsel of bread that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on since you have come to your servant. Abraham is a man who owns many servants.

He is the master, but not before God. Before God, he is the servant. And Abraham is about to make a lavish feast.

Notice the wording. He is about to break out the fine flour. He is about to slaughter the best and most tender calf.

He is about to provide an extravagant meal. But he knows that despite all of his wealth and all of his greatness, whatever he can offer to God is nothing for somebody so great and majestic and awesome as God.

Whatever he can offer, the finest his region could produce, as he says in verse five, is for God just a morsel of bread. That's what he calls his lavish feast, just a morsel of bread. Nevertheless, he is absolutely frantic in preparing this feast.

Like in verse two, he runs to meet them. Verse six, Sarah, get the fine flour and get it quick. Verse seven, he runs to get the best calf to slaughter.

Then he tells the boy to prepare it quickly. Can you imagine what it would take to send a great man like Abraham into a tailspin like this? He's absolutely frantic.

And then after this, we see even more signs of their reverence for God. In verse eight, Abraham stands while they're eating. And in verse 15, Sarah gets caught laughing at what God said, and she is afraid.

She is afraid. I always think of that story in the Gospels where Jesus is in the boat with his disciples. And I believe it's the one where Jesus falls asleep and there's a great storm and the disciples are just terrified.

They think they're going to die. And finally, Jesus, I mean, they're scared out of their minds. And finally, Jesus wakes up and he just speaks a word and calms the storm.

And it goes completely flat. And at that point, it says that they were afraid of Jesus. They were afraid of Jesus because they saw his power.

That's similar to the situation that we have with Sarah in our text. She experiences the power of God and she is afraid.

In the Middle Ages, there were a number of theologians who would not or who tried not to say anything about God, which is weird because that's exactly what theologians are supposed to do.

A theologian is somebody who studies and writes and talks about the nature of God. But starting with Pseudo-Dionysius and Maimonides and Aquinas and others, they felt like it would be wrong for them to apply any human language to God.

So they proposed this via negativa in Latin, the negative way. And they thought maybe it would be better if we only talked about what God isn't instead of presuming to talk about what God is. And the idea behind it made sense.

If God is infinite, if he is eternal and transcendent, if he is truly as awesome as we think he is, then how on earth could human words come close to describing him correctly?

It's almost insulting to God to try to describe him with our poor, limited, fallible language. In the end, I disagree with this method, but I get it. I get the idea.

I disagree with it because the Bible uses human words to tell us about God. So I don't think the Bible follows this method, but the sentiment is spot on. God is so awesome that human words are simply inadequate.

If we can say that about a sunset, like it was so awesome that words don't even do it justice, or about Yosemite, or Zion National Park. It was so amazing. I could try to describe it to you, but words can't capture its majesty.

Well, if that's true about a sunset, or a beautiful park like Yosemite, how much more is that true of God? God is awesome.

32:12

Divine Power Faithfulness

Now let me give you two reasons why God is so awesome. I could give you dozens more, but there are two that are explicitly present in our text. The first one is his power.

God is awesome because God is all powerful. Look again at verse 10. God had already told this to Abraham, and presumably Abraham told Sarah, but it seems like Sarah was still struggling to believe it.

So God appears again to reiterate the message to Abraham, but this time he says it loud enough so that Sarah can hear, I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah, your wife, shall have a son.

And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him. So what does that teach us about God? We often overlook these kinds of things in the Bible, the obvious things.

It's telling us that God is powerful enough to physically change a 90-year-old woman's body from infertile to fertile. And he can do that without even touching her. Do you know anybody who could do that?

I mean, come on, we've got computers, we've got AI, and space flight, and neuroscience, and nuclear technology. This is thousands of years ago. And here we are with all the wonderful things we've built.

Are there any humans on the planet who can enable a 90-year-old woman to get pregnant? There are not. Only God can do that.

Sarah obviously is baffled. But she's also a little bit incredulous, maybe unbelieving. She just laughs.

She says to herself, in effect, shall I indeed bear a child now that I am old? Like now that I am 90 years old, after all of these years, after 25 years of waiting for God's promise to come true, now I'm going to have a child of my own?

That's her attitude. That's what she's saying to herself, the text tells us. And God reads her mind.

She didn't say that out loud. She said it to herself. And God heard her.

And that scares her. Notice how she responds when she realizes that God reads her mind. Verse 15, she is afraid.

But did you know that God can read your mind? Did you know that you will give an account to God for every single thought that goes through your head?

Hebrews 4, verses 12 through 13, For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. The Bible testifies repeatedly that God knows our thoughts.

He knows the intentions behind our actions, and we should respond with a healthy and reverent fear. God's power is part of what makes God awesome. And so is his faithfulness.

We are reminded here in our passage that God always keeps his promises. For years and years, he has been promising Abraham a son, and the time has finally come. And notice the language in verse 10.

I will surely return to you about this time next year. This is not a maybe I'll return next year. For us humans, we have to say maybe, because, well, we might change our minds, but God doesn't change his mind like that, not like we do.

We might be unable to. God is never unable to. Something might get in the way.

For God, there are no obstacles that get in the way. This is a surely I'll return next year, because God does not operate in the realm of maybe's or I'll try. When God says that he will do it, then he will do it.

Numbers 23 verse 19, God is not man that he should lie or a son of man that he should change his mind. Has he said and will he not do it? Or has he spoken and he will not fulfill it?

We need to know that every word in our Bibles is 100% true. Every promise that gives you hope will 100% come to pass. When everyone else and everything else fails you, God will remain faithful.

When everything in this world feels like a lie, God is completely true. I feel like that one really hits home these days, doesn't it? When everything in this world feels like a lie, God is completely true.

That's who God is. He is mysterious and awesome and all-powerful, meaning that he is able to do anything and certain to do everything that he says he will do. George Mueller was a great saint who lived in England in the 1800s.

He ran orphanages for decades and he had a very strict rule, a very unique rule. His rule was this, to never tell anybody what the orphanage needed. He would never ask for money.

He would never ask for food. He would never broadcast his needs or send out letters to ask people for help. He would simply pray and trust God.

If you've never read his autobiography, I would encourage you to get it and read it as soon as you can. His autobiography goes through all kinds of incidents of God's faithfulness.

He kept meticulous records of every crisis, every need, every prayer, and every answer to those prayers. And there must be hundreds of them, just absolutely miraculous answers to prayer. And I want to close by sharing one of the more famous ones.

There was one particular morning when the orphanage was completely out of food. No food, no money, and 300 hungry kids. So they decided to sit everybody down and set out the cups and set out the plates and the utensils.

And of course, the plates were empty. And the cups were empty, and there was nothing to put in them. But Mueller got up and prayed anyways.

He thanked God for the meal that God was about to provide. And sure enough, just a few minutes later, there was a knock at the door.

A local baker was outside, and he explained how he had woken up in the middle of the night, and he couldn't go to sleep. He had this overwhelming sense that God wanted him to bake three dozen loaves and take them to the orphanage.

So that's what he did. And there he was with the bread. And shortly after that, the milkman knocked on the door.

His cart had just broken down right outside their property, and he realized, I'm not going to be able to deliver any of this milk, so what should I do? Should I just let it sit here and spoil?

He decided, I'm just going to give all this milk to the orphanage. And that's what he did, and they sat down, and they ate, and they drank. And all he did was pray.

That's who God is. He is faithful, faithful. He is all-powerful.

He is awesome. He is mysterious. He is trustworthy, and he is good.