God has not Forgotten

Genesis 17:1-7

What is in a name?  I was born with the name Robert Wayne Rice, but to family my name is Bobby.  I was still Bobby in high school and when I went into the U.S. Army I once more became Robert to my sergeant and the officers, and Bob to the guys I ran around with, until I came home and I was still Bobby to the people I had gone to school with.  The only exception to that rule was from the age of three on; if I was in trouble things got real formal at our house and I became Robert Wayne Rice.  What is in a name? In my case and in most, it is a change in the person, I no longer wanted to be a Bobby, I had become a man and Robert or Bob seemed to be more fitting than the name I was given as a child.

But that is not the case with Abram, he is ninety-nine years old and the Lord appears to Abram and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly.”  We have seen Hollywood try their best in movies to show how a person would act if God Almighty were to appear to them, but in reality it would be more like what Abram did when he encountered God Almighty.  “Then Abram fell on his face.  And God said to him, “Behold my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations.  No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you.  And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.  And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”

My name change was a move into manhood, but Abram did not change his name, God Almighty did, and it was a covenant relationship between God and Abraham, and it was an everlasting covenant, one that has no end.  Henry M. Morris gives this report in “The Genesis Record”, “The next thirteen years are passed over in silence, so far as the record of Scripture goes.  It would have been easy to forget God’s covenant promise.  Abram was prospering financially, Ishmael was growing into young manhood, the land was at peace, and Abram had apparently given up all hope that he and Sarai would have a son of their own.”  But as you can see from the Scripture above, God had not forgotten, and in the fullness of time, God Almighty appears to his servant Abram at ninety-nine and changed much more than his name.  What promises have you given up on, remember, God has not forgotten one of His promises.  Remember 2 Peter 1:4

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice