Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Can God Meet Your Needs? | Torah | Genesis 21:1-7

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Are you building your life on God's promises? Do you believe that God keeps his promises? Can he actually provide what you need? In today's episode, Keith uses Genesis 21:1-7 to discuss God's faithfulness to Abraham. Listen to find out how trusting God can free you up to live generously. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Passages: Genesis 21:1-7 Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. Right now, we're going through the first book of the Bible, Genesis. Do you know the promises that God has made to you? And do you believe that God keeps his promises? At the heart of every act of obedience to God is faith in God's promises. And at the heart of every act of disobedience or sin against God is the failure to believe. that God keeps his promises. Sin is the very false belief that its promises are more sure, more satisfying than the promises

of God. We'll get back to that in just a moment, but first let's dive into Genesis 21. When Abraham was 75 years old, God promised him and his wife Sarah that they would have a son. Now, obviously, they were way past childbearing age, but what made that promise even more unlikely is that this was to be their first child. You see, they'd been unable to have children. So God promised a child to an infertile couple in their 70s.

Well, good luck with that. A lot of years have passed since God made that promise to Abraham. And during all those years, the only thing that he had to hold on to you was the faithfulness of God. God had made the promise. Would God keep it? I'm sure there were days when it was easier for Abraham

to believe that God would be faithfulness. faithful to his promises. But my guess there were a lot of days, a lot, a lot, a lot of days, when it was really hard for Abraham to believe that God would give him a son. When Abraham was 99 years old, God again appeared to him and told him and Sarah that they'd have a child within the year. When Abraham and Sarah heard that, they laughed. The laugh said, yeah, right, sure we are. Genesis 21. Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah, as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham and his old age at the very time God had promised him.

Abraham gave the name Isaac to the son Sarah bore him. Wouldn't you love to be able to see Sarah when she realized she was pregnant? You know, of course, that she was the first to know. Maybe she tried to hide it, or maybe she ran around and immediately told everyone, we're not sure. What we do know for sure is that 40 weeks later Sarah gave birth to a son. Can you imagine her shock, her joy? I bet the birth of that child set off quite the celebration. But what I want you to catch is that three times in these two verses that I just read,

the author emphasizes that God kept his promise. The repetition is pretty obvious, but let's go back through it. Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah, as he had said. See, there's the first time. It's the hardest to see. but when it says as he had said, it's saying that God had told Sarah that she would have a son and now he is doing what he said he would do. So now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised.

Well, that's the second time that God emphasizes that he kept his promise. Sarah became pregnant and bore his son to Abraham and his old age at the very time God had promised. This story is telling us that we can trust God's promises. Not one promise of God has ever failed. Ever. Just like God kept his promise to Abraham and Sarah, he will keep the promises he made to you. I think it's funny that God told Abraham and Sarah to name their son Isaac.

Because in Hebrew, Isaac means laughter. So Abraham and Sarah laughed at God's promises, but God had the last laugh. Verse 6. Sarah said, God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me. And she added, who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children?

And yet I have born him a son in his old age. There was laughter everywhere. Abraham and Sarah and their community were laughing as they held this baby named laughter in their arms. God turned their pain into joy, their disappointment into hope, all because he fulfilled his promise. As we walk through Genesis, we are watching Abraham build his life on trusting God's promises. When God first called Abraham, he left his homeland, his family, his religion, all because he trusted God. Then when Abraham and his nephew, Lott's herdsmen, were arguing over land,

Abraham gave Lot his choice of the land because Abraham trusted God to provide for him. Now Abraham has seen God provide a miracle child. In a few chapters, we'll see that Abraham's faith in God's promise will even lead him to be willing to sacrifice Isaac in obedience to God's command. Are you building your life on God's promises? Do you even know God's promises to you? I mean, God hasn't promised to give us a child like he did Abraham and Sarah, but he has made promises to us. Do you know them? Do you believe them? Let me share a couple areas that God has made promises to you and how you might use those promises to help you follow Jesus. God has made promises to provide for your needs. In Matthew chapter 6, Jesus tells you that your

father knows your needs and loves to meet those needs. And then in Philippians 419, it says, My God will meet your needs according to the riches of His glory in Christ Jesus. If God promises to meet my needs, then I'm freed up to be generous to others. Does that make sense? One big reason I'm not generous is because I think I need to use my money, my resources to meet my needs. But if God has promised to meet my needs in Jesus, then my grip on my money is loosened. And there are more promises around the act of giving or generosity. In Acts 2035, we're told that Jesus said it is more blessed to give than receive. Do you hear the promise? The promise is for blessing when we're generous. Or Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 9, remember this, whoever so sparingly

will also reap sparingly, and whoever soes generously will also reap generously. So let's try to put all this together. God promises to meet the needs of Christians, and he promises to bless those who are generous. If you believe those promises, then you're going to obey God and be a cheerful, generous giver. If you don't believe those promises, if you don't believe that God will meet your needs, then you're going to feel the pressure to meet your needs yourself. And of course, that means you won't be a generous giver. No, you'll be stingy and selfish with the resources God has blessed you with.

Okay, let's do another one. It's just a fact that we all love to be in the in group, the popular group. We want to sit at the cool kids table. We love the thought of being thought highly of. We want the boss to give us the better office or to give us a prime assignment because we love the status it conveys. We love how it builds up our reputation. We want to have important friends because. it makes us feel important about ourselves.

C.S. Lewis says that we all want to be in the inner ring. And because of this, there's a temptation to do some self-promotion, some self-exaltation. There's a temptation to be a little too consumed with ourselves. So in Luke 14, Jesus gives us promises to fight against self-exaltation, self-absorption. He says this in Luke 1411. It comes at the end of a parable. He says, for all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. So Jesus makes a promise that if you'll humble yourself, if you'll take the

low road, if you'll take the servants' role, if you'll put others ahead of yourselves, if you'll humble yourself and seek forgiveness, if you'll confess your sins, if you'll talk others up instead of talking yourself up, if you'll take the low road, God will exalt you in due time. He will reward you. But if you exalt yourself, well, as the proverb say, pride comes before the fall. If you believe God's promises, then you're going to take the low road, preferring to be exalted by God more than by other human beings. But if you don't believe God's promises, you'll feel the need to exalt yourself often at the expense of others. Let's pray.

God, I need faith to believe your purpose. promises. You did for Abraham and Sarah exactly as you promised them. Help me to believe that you will keep the promises you made to me. Amen. Hey, thanks for listening. If you want to go deeper, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talk newsletter. You'll get a short email once a week. It'll challenge you to grow in your faith, give you interesting background on today's passage, and a lot, lot more. Just click the link in the show notes to sign up. It'll help you deepen your journey with Jesus.