Summary of Nick's Sermon: A Time for Every Purpose This sermon is based on Genesis 21, which tells the story of the birth of Isaac to Abraham and Sarah. Key Points: God is Faithful: Even though it took 25 years for the promise of a child to be fulfilled, God remained faithful to his word. The Importance of Holding On: We can easily get discouraged when our prayers seem unanswered, but the story of Abraham and Sarah reminds us to hold onto faith. Laughter in the Midst of Difficulty: Laughter is a gift from God that can help us see challenges in perspective. God Uses Our Mess-Ups: Even when we make mistakes (like Sarah suggesting Hagar), God can still work through them for good. God Blesses Our Mess: We may regret our past actions, but God is gracious and can still bless us. God Works Across Divides: While there is division in the world, God seeks to bring people together and show his grace to all. Biblical References: Genesis 21:1-7 - Birth of Isaac Scripture about laughter (not mentioned but referenced in sermon): unreferenced Additional Points: The sermon references the story of doubting Thomas (John 20:24-29). The importance of looking for God working in the lives of people from different backgrounds is mentioned. Transcript Thank you, good morning. Am I on? I think I am. Can you hear me yet? Great. We are still in Genesis, you may be surprised to hear. Genesis 21 already, and just been fascinated reading these passages, hearing what people have said through different aspects of God's Word in Genesis, and it is God's Word. Let's remember that when God gives us something on a Sunday morning it's because we need to hear it, and I need to hear it. There are challenges for me in the preparation of this Word. We need to hear what God is saying. It's quite a long passage, Genesis 21, it's quite involved, there's different elements to it, and we're just going to take a wander, a wander through it, deeper than our feet could ever wander. And we're going to, yeah, just have a table. The title on the screen is A Time for Every Purpose. It's not there, it doesn't matter, but it seems like we've been following, we've arrived, the subtitle in my Bible of Genesis 21 is The Birth of Isaac, and we've been following this story of Isaac, it seems like, for as long as Sarah was. It's just been going on and on and on. You know, God said, I'm going to give you a son, and then there's the whole Ishmael story, and there's all of that, and then years pass into years, and I think we've said, wasn't it 25 years from the time of the promise up to the time of the fulfillment, and yet we've arrived. Genesis 21, the birth of Isaac. So much drama has been generated since God made that simple promise. Like we've been on the edge of the fulfillment, week on week on week. It's around every corner, it could even be today, but today, finally, the time has come, and there is a beautiful rhythm to the first few verses of Genesis 21. I don't know what version I'm using here, English standard version. It's quite good in places and quite old-fashioned in others, but we're going to read it from here. 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. Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, that's true, in case we've missed it, Isaac, and Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old as God had commanded him. Makes the life of faith look very simple, doesn't it? The Lord visited Sarah as He had said and did to Sarah as He had promised, obviously, but it's not that obvious, is it? Because we're 25 years into the story, and there's been a whole load of stuff that has happened, and yet we come to this culmination, simply the Lord visited Sarah as He had said. All the years of waiting, hoping, doubting, trying to manipulate the promise, laughing at the prospect, it all came down to this, the Lord visited Sarah as He had promised. Johnny reminded us last week that God is committed to His promises, and here we see it, 25 years on, with every passing year their faith looked more and more ridiculous. Sarah got older and older, I mean these are these are crackpot people, you know there's a 99 year old lady or whatever she's saying, oh you know God's told me I'm going to have a child, oh well okay, good luck with that. God visited Sarah as He had said. One of the burdens of modern life, as you may well know, is being on hold to telephone call centers, listening to a recorded voice saying, thank you for holding, your call is important to us, and you know with every fiber of your being that your call is not important to them, otherwise they would have answered it. If you have any involvement with the Edge Center on a Thursday morning, you know that it's not true, their call is not important, and so we can spend the best part of two hours waiting to talk to somebody ...
