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Christ Community Chapel is a church in Hudson, OH, that invites people to reimagine life because of Jesus. Learn more about us at ccchapel.com.
Genesis 21 one through seven.
The Lord visited Sarah as he had son,
and the Lord did to Sarah
as he had promised.
And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham
a son in his old age.
At the time of which
God had spoken to him.
Abraham called the name of his son
who was born to him whom Sarah bore him.
Isaac and Abraham
circumcised his son Isaac
when he was eight days
old, as God had commanded him.
Abraham was 100 years old
when his son Isaac was born to him,
and Sarah
said, God has made laughter for me.
Everyone who hears will laugh over me.
And she said, who would have said to
Abraham that Sarah would nurse children?
Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.
Well, good morning, and
welcome to the weekly gathering of Christ
Community Chapel.
My name is Zach.
I'm one of the pastors here,
and I'm so glad you're here
with us on this summer weekend.
I've just returned, actually, from being
out of the country with my wife, Amy.
Celebrating our 20th anniversary was,
Thanks.
I know that clap is more for Amy than me,
but for making it 20 years with me.
But out of the country was
a beautiful trip with an amazing woman.
It was fantastic.
But, about two thirds
of the way into the trip.
I have a little bit of a towel
when I'm thinking my legs start pumping
and we're sitting in this beautiful part
of the world having a great time.
My leg is pumping, and Amy says,
what are you thinking about?
And I said, I'm thinking about work.
Not because I wasn't having a great trip,
but because I'm so excited
about what God is doing here
at Christ Community Chapel.
It's a little tough to be away from it.
Eager to get back.
I really do think the second half of 2025
is going to be an incredible time
for us as a church.
A lot of amazing things happen happening,
and I was also excited
to get back to this sermon series
we're calling it Promises
Made, Promises Kept eight weeks
so far in total.
Looking at the faithfulness of God
and the story of Abraham.
Promises Made, Promises Kept.
Hoping we can learn something about God's
faithfulness for our own lives.
It's interesting though.
Now, eight weeks in, if we're honest,
we would say this series so far
has been pretty much entirely.
Promises Made, not Kept.
I don't mean that any promises
have been broken, I just mean that God
has been promising a lot of things
that have not yet come to be in the story.
That that is what makes this week
so exciting, because this week
we swing completely over to promises kept.
We're going to be seeing how God comes
through on a particular promise.
The biggest promise
that he makes to Abraham and Sarah
and what that tells us about him
and what it means to trust him.
So if you have a Bible,
would you take it out and open it
to Genesis chapter 21?
Perfectly okay to take out a phone
or a tablet however you want to get there.
Hey, by the way, if you're new here,
maybe it's been a while
since you've been in church.
It's been a while
since you thought about the Bible.
Maybe you've
you've never done either of those things.
I'm so glad that you're here.
And I want you to know that
what's happening this morning
is as much for you as it is for anyone.
And the screens I read the verses
I reference will be on the screens behind
me. But if you want to follow along,
there are Bibles
in the pew in front of you
or in the back of this hall.
It's the same Bible I use.
And, today's reading is on page 14.
If you want to follow along that way,
you can.
No pressure.
However, you're getting to Genesis 21,
I have three points
I want to use as an outline
to guide our time together.
Very simple.
Three points that go like this
I want to show you that trust is tangible,
trust is transformative,
and trust is possible.
Trust is tangible.
Trust is transformative,
and trust is possible.
All right.
Let me start with the first one.
Trust is tangible.
If on your way out from this service
in the parking lot,
a friend came up to you,
someone you've known for a little while
and they wild eyed
asked you to do something crazy.
I mean, something
you would never normally do,
something way out of the ordinary.
You would ask them why, why,
why would I do that?
And they might look at you and say,
I just need you to trust me.
What are they saying?
I mean, in that moment
when they ask you to do that crazy thing,
what are they saying when they say,
I just need you to trust me?
What they're saying is that, hey,
I can't answer all your questions
right now about that crazy thing
I'm asking you to do.
But what I need you to do
is to reach back into our relationship.
To find something.
Something I've said.
Something I've done.
Something I've been for.
Use something tangible
in the history of our relationship
that would give you a reason
to believe me.
A reason to listen to me.
And what you don't know.
Something you do know that helps you
with what you don't.
Something tangible that helps you
with the intangible, the unknown.
That's why if a stranger stopped you
in the parking lot wild eyed and said,
I need you to do this crazy thing,
and you said, why?
And they said,
just trust me, you would laugh
or maybe hurry the other direction
because there's no reason to trust them.
You don't have anything tangible
on which to anchor your trust.
Interesting that
when most people think about trusting God,
when they think about obeying God,
listening to God doing something
God's way, not their way, trusting him
with their soul,
with their eternal destiny,
they tend to think of him
more as the stranger.
The God's, the wild eyed guy
in the parking lot saying, just trust me.
Trust me with your sexuality.
Trust me with your marriage.
Trust me with your money.
Trust me with your future.
And when you say why, he goes, because.
And for most people, that's not enough.
But you know something?
It shouldn't be.
Because that's not how trust works.
Trust is
always rooted in something tangible.
Trust is always anchored in something
that's been shown,
something that's been proven,
something that's been displayed.
And actually,
the God of the Bible understands that.
Look with me.
Genesis 21.
First couple of verses they read this way.
Let's see what God does tangibly
to give Abraham
and Sarah a reason to trust him.
Genesis 21, verse one.
The Lord visited Sarah as he had said,
and the Lord did to Sarah,
as he had promised.
And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham
a son in his old age,
at the time of
which God had spoken to him.
So you see, God has made a lot of promises
to Abraham and Sarah.
God's message to them is just trust me.
He comes alongside this elderly,
infertile couple and says to them,
not only am I going to give you a child,
but in that child, through that child,
I'm going to turn your family
into a great nation through whom
I'm going to bless all the nations
of the earth.
Incredible
promise is wide eyed in the parking lot.
There's I'm going to do this crazy thing.
But God knows they could never trust him
with the unknown
if he doesn't do something tangible.
That's what. Isaac is.
Isaac is a living, breathing,
physical indication
that God can be trusted.
He is a living, breathing, physical
reminder that God keeps his promises.
He is a tangible proof
in the midst of this unknown story
that God is writing.
Because God knows that's how trust works.
That when you say to someone,
just trust me,
there has to be something
they can grab Ahold of to do that.
And by the way,
this rhythm of the tangible
helping us move into the unknown
is not unique to Abraham and Sarah.
It shows up time and time again
in the Bible when God wants Moses
to step into the unknown and face down
Pharaoh and freeing Israel from slavery,
he shows up in the tangible display
of his power through the burning bush.
When God wants Joshua
to lead his people into the Promised land
and face down the mighty warriors
who live there,
he shows up to tangibly
in the Battle of Jericho.
David has Goliath, Elijah
has Mount Carmel,
Elijah has the widow's oil,
so on and so forth.
The entire Bible is God showing up
in tangible ways
to give his people
a reason to trust him with the unknown.
That's so important.
God never asks us to trust him blindly.
He always roots his question in reality,
in history, in the physical world,
because he knows that's.
How trust works.
And the thing is, when you have trust,
it changes everything.
That's actually my second point.
Not just that trust is tangible,
but that it's transformative.
I love Sarah
as a character,
as a historical figure in this story.
She's my favorite person
in the story of Abraham
and the reason why is because
I think she's very authentic.
I mean, she walks through the story.
I mean, she keeps moving
towards the promise of God.
So far, it's been nine chapters.
We began in Genesis 12, we're in Genesis
21, and Sarah keeps moving,
but she also struggles.
Her life has been hard.
Her life has been hard.
You know, I have found in 20 years
of pastoral ministry that most people
who struggle with trusting
God fit into one of two category.
Now, people are unique and nuanced, and
so these are maybe two neat of categories.
But by and large, people said
in one of these two, for some people,
the idea of trusting God is impossible
because of
what's happened in their past.
Their story involves too much guilt,
too much shame, too much pain, too much
suffering, too many hard questions like,
If God loved me, where was he?
If God is for me, why didn't he stop this?
Why didn't he cause this?
Why didn't he make this happen for me?
Those are questions of the past.
Other people,
they're their objections or their obstacle
to trust in
God has more to do with the future.
Their worry, their anxiety.
How could I ever believe
that God will take care of me?
How can I ever believe
that God will be with me as I move forward
in this crazy world, in my crazy life?
Sarah has both of those things.
I mean, Sarah has questions,
real questions.
Questions like,
why did God let me live for so long?
Unable to have children?
Don't forget that not only has Sarah been
going a long time without having kids,
her husband Abraham, had an illegitimate
son named Isaac,
which means she knows
the reason they can't have kids is her.
At least she thinks on a biological level,
which means
God makes a promise to her husband.
I'm going to make you into a great nation
and she's the thing holding it back.
She's got questions about her past.
She has pain.
She has difficulty.
In fact, a couple of weeks ago,
you looked at a passage where God shows up
and reaffirms
the promise I'm going to give you a son.
And Sarah laughs.
And it's not a joyful laugh.
It's a bitter laugh.
It's a scoffing laugh like,
yeah, God, sure, we've heard that before.
If that was going to happen,
it would have already happened.
But Sarah
also has the obstacle of the future.
I mean, God told them they're going
to be parents to a great nation.
And yet every day she wakes up
and isn't pregnant.
She has no idea
how that's going to happen.
She has questions.
She struggles to trust God.
She laughs out of bitterness until
Isaac.
Look with me here at the passage
Genesis 21.
Let's pick it up in verse six.
I love how beautiful this is.
We've come full circle in verse six
when it says, And Sarah said,
God has made laughter for.
And everyone who.
Hears will laugh over me.
And she said, who would have said to
Abraham that Sarah would nurse children?
Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.
You know what
you hear in that verse, right, is healing.
She's
laughing, but it's not a bitter laugh
anymore.
It's a joyful laugh.
What you see is a person
who feels better about
their past,
feels better about their future, she says.
Who would have said that
Sarah would have borne Abraham a son?
But of course, we know the answer
that God would have said.
And if God kept
that promise, she's saying, then
that means he's going to keep the rest.
Here's what I want you to understand.
Sarah still has questions.
I mean, if I'm Sarah in this story,
I still have questions like,
God, thanks so much for the baby.
God, thank you so much.
Why couldn't he have come sooner?
Why not before Egypt?
God, when Abraham sold me to Pharaoh,
why not before Hagar?
God, why not before Sodom and Gomorrah?
God, thank you so much for the baby God.
But do you realize now I'm not
going to see him graduating high school?
That would have been nice.
Sarah still has questions.
Questions about the future.
Hey God, thank you so much for the son.
Explain to me again how are you going
to go from one little baby boy
to a great nation?
Sarah still has questions.
I want you to understand this.
When I tell you that God shows up
in tangible ways to be trusted.
Life is not a Disney movie.
All the questions don't get wrapped up
neatly.
All the things she wonders about don't
get solved when God shows up tangibly.
What transforms
Sarah is not the answer to every question,
but the answer to the real questions.
Because underneath Sarah's questions
about infertility and her marriage
and her pain and her suffering
and her future, are these questions.
God, are you ignoring me?
Have you forgotten me?
Do you love me?
Do you care about me?
Are you alone?
I mean, am I alone?
Understand this?
Sarah's asking the same questions
she was asking before.
How could she not be?
But those questions are different.
When little baby Isaac is in your lap.
Those questions are different
when you're holding toddler Isaac's hand.
Because every time she asks
those questions, while she strokes Isaac's
hair, she's reminded, I don't know why God
let me go so long without a baby.
I don't know why God let my story have
so many twists and turns, but I know this.
It isn't because he forgot me.
How do I know?
Because of Isaac.
It isn't because he doesn't love me.
How do I know?
Because of Isaac.
It isn't because he isn't
doing something good in my life for me.
How do I know Isaac?
Isaac is a living,
breathing, physical answer to the deep.
Questions of Sarah's life.
You see, when God shows up tangibly.
It isn't that every question in your story
goes away.
That would be too easy to spend,
too cheap.
You wouldn't
believe me if I told you that.
It isn't that every question, every worry,
every anxiety about your future goes away.
It is that the deep questions behind
those circumstantial questions
are answered.
God has not forgotten.
God does forgive.
God does love you are not alone.
How do you know?
Isaac.
So you see
what God is showing us about trust
is that in order to trust him,
we must have an Isaac.
Physical.
Tangible.
Historical, real evidence
that answers
the deeper questions of our heart.
That's actually my third point.
Not just that trust is tangible, not.
Just that trust is transformative,
but that trust is.
Possible.
By the way, if you're here
and you consider yourself irreligious,
secular, maybe you don't even know what
label just, you know, not whatever I am.
This might be your objection.
You might say that's the whole point,
Zach.
Look like I'm being asked to trust God
in such a big way to reassure
change my life because of God, and
I just don't know what I would ever have
that would be convincing enough for God
in the parking lot to say, just trust me.
What do I have?
What what evidence is there?
It's a great question,
and I want you to see that
you could never trust God
until you have an answer to that question,
and you shouldn't.
That's not how trust works, by the way.
You would be amazed at
how bad the answers of the world's
religions are to that question.
Like if you ask Islam,
why should I trust God?
They'll say, Because he is God.
Which I guess is not a bad answer.
Conceptually,
a little thin in the cold moments of life.
If you ask
a Hindu, why should you trust the divine?
They will say, The divine is in you.
Trust yourself.
And I don't know about you, but I've got
41 years of experience to tell me.
That's not a great plan.
Prince,
did you know that only Christianity.
Only the God of the Bible
says, I know you could never trust me
without an Isaac.
And he gives us that in the person
and work of Jesus Christ
Jesus, a literal, historical.
Real world physical evidence.
Of God's love, of God's faithfulness.
Jesus, who lives in our place righteously,
who goes to the cross and takes on our sin
and comes up under the anger and wrath
and judgment of God
that is poured out, emptied onto him,
so that his dying words are,
it is finished.
There's no more left for you or for me.
It's on Jesus.
Jesus who dies
literally, historically, in reality,
who three days later, literally,
historically raises from the dead.
Jesus is the true and better Isaac.
The physical indication that God keeps
his promises that God can be trusted,
that God forgives,
that God loves, that God welcomes.
No, Jesus does
not answer every question of your past.
I know that,
or of mine.
No, he doesn't answer every question
about your future.
But Jesus for us is like Isaac for Sarah.
He answers the deeper
questions of your heart.
Has God forgotten?
You know, how do you know?
Because of Jesus.
God knows you could never trust him
without an Isaac.
And so great is his love,
and so great is his mercy
that he's given us one in Jesus.
People will say to me all the time, Pastor
Zach, how do I know when I'm ready
to become a Christian?
And I've been coming for a couple
of weeks, maybe a month, a couple months.
How do I know when I've crossed that line?
How do I know
when I should start thinking about baptism
and and all that kind of stuff?
And the answer to that,
very simply is this when Jesus.
Is your Isaac,
not your answer to every question,
but your answer to every question,
that really matters.
And if you're here and you say, well, I'm
already a follower of Jesus, he's already
my Isaac.
What does this mean for me?
I think it means probably,
like Sarah, that you sit in your chair.
She had Isaac in her lap.
You hold the hand of Jesus
and you finally.
Take a look at your past.
Take a look at your future
and say, God,
I still don't know why that happened.
But once and for all, I'm
going to let go of the idea
that it's because you had forgotten me.
I don't know what story
you're writing. God,
but I'm going to stop laughing out of
bitterness and start laughing out of joy.
Because wherever that story is going,
it's good.
How do I know? Because I'm. Holding.
The hand of Jesus.
You know,
when Jesus appears to the disciples
and Thomas says,
I could never believe that God
is this good, that God is this forgiving,
that God is this powerful.
Jesus says to him. Come touch me.
Healing brothers and sisters in Christ.
Healing from your past
or from your worry about the future
does not come in micro answers.
It comes in holding the hand
of the literal physical reality
that is Jesus Christ.
The answer
to the deepest questions of your heart.
Let me pray for us.
Father God, thank you so much.
That in your incredible mercy
and kindness
you understand what we need to trust you.
You understand what is necessary.
You know how trust works,
and you have shown us in
Jesus all that we need to know
in order to trust you
with what we don't know.
And my prayer is that people throughout
this weekend, for the first time
or for the hundredth time, would.
Be seeing in
Jesus the true and better Isaac
the tangible
that allows them to step into the unknown,
trusting you in his name.
We pray. Amen.