In Genesis 19:29, when “God remembered Abraham,” the Hebrew word for “God” in that verse is Elohim, because this is the mighty side of God about to dispense justice on Sodom and Gomorrah for their “grievous” behaviour (18:20).  

Which made YHWH, the relational side of God, wonder if he should “hide from Abraham what I am about to do” (17), because the severe justice side of God might not make sense to him. How, for instance, would Abraham take it, having to witness the massive destruction of two entire cities in the very land where he’d been told by God the blessing of all nations would begin (18)?

Add verse 19 to that too, because YHWH had chosen Abraham to “teach and direct his sons and their families to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just,” so how would blasting two cities into oblivion sound “right and just” to Abraham? And, as YHWH expected, Abraham did not react well: “How could you (YHWH), the Judge of all the earth, kill all those people when some of them might be good?” 

Abraham had a point, which YHWH acknowledged by promising to spare the entire city of Sodom if there were just ten good people in it, despite reports pouring in about Sodom’s appalling descent into depravity. 

So, first of all, we have God pictured by YHWH, deeply concerned for Abraham and how he’s going to react, but into this same story comes Elohim, the mighty God of justice, who wants to wipe Sodom off the map. What we’ve got in the same story, then, is two very different “sides” to God in YHWH and Elohim.   

But in both these sides of God, Abraham is at the forefront of their thinking. YHWH was sensitive to Abraham’s reaction to the destruction, and Elohim remembers Abraham wanting to spare the good people (19:29). So in Genesis 18 and 19 we have God as both YHWH and Elohim, and both are concerned for Abraham. Which is quite different to the notion that the God of the Old Testament was ‘all Elohim, harsh and violent’, but the God of the New Testament was all YHWH, pictured by Jesus ‘meek and mild’.

Taking into account, then, that God revealed himself to Abraham as both YHWH and Elohim, is he doing the same for us today as Abraham’s offspring? In which case, “How is God both YHWH and Elohim today?”….(next blog)

Twice Abraham challenges YHWH: “Far be it from you,” he says to YHWH in Genesis 18:25 – twice too – because in Abraham’s mind what YHWH was about to do wasn’t in tune with the YHWH he’d come to know.   

YHWH was going to completely wipe out the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, because “the outcry against them was so great and their sin so grievous” (20). But that didn’t make sense to Abraham, because what if there were good people living in Sodom too? So he “approached YHWH and said: ‘Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? (23).…Far be it from you to do such a thing, treating the righteous and the wicked alike….Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?’” (25). 

Strong words, but YHWH had grown Abraham’s relationship with him to the point that Abraham could express his upset – and make a proposition of his own too, because he asks YHWH in verse 24: “What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for their sake?” And YHWH listens – and agrees. If there are fifty good people, yes, he’ll spare the city (26). 

It was like going to the boss with an outrageous proposal after being really upset at one of his decisions, and the boss actually listens, and agrees. Oh dear, you think, maybe I shouldn’t have got so steamed up, so, like Abraham in verse 27, you settle things down a bit, remembering who you’re talking to. Abraham admits, therefore, that “as nothing but dust and ashes” he’s been speaking very boldly, but it doesn’t stop him pressing home his point in verse 28, when he asks YHWH: “Will you destroy the whole city if there are forty five good people in it?” And he keeps bargaining YHWH down to sparing the city if just ten good people exist in it, and at each bargaining point YHWH listens, and agrees.  

Can we take from YHWH’s ready agreement, therefore, that he really enjoyed listening to Abraham, and from the text we can see why too? Because Abraham did three things in his conversation with YHWH: first of all, he expressed very strongly (and respectfully) what he believed was right. Secondly, he appealed to YHWH’s own nature. And thirdly, he argued his case on behalf of other people. Moses did the same three things in Exodus 32:11-14, so did Daniel in Daniel 9, and how readily YHWH listened to them too.  

And he listened to Abraham all right, because in the destruction that divine justice was about to unleash on Sodom and Gomorrah “God remembered Abraham” (Genesis 19:29)….(next blog)    

By Genesis 18:8, Sarah is probably still recovering from her husband’s rather frantic cry to her in verse 6: “Quick get three seahs (large measures, possibly a whole sack full) of fine flour and knead it and bake some bread” for the three visitors who’d just arrived (2). 

That was surprise enough, but after the visitors had sat down and eaten, she heard one of them ask her husband where she was because, he said, “I’ll be back about this time next year, by which time Sarah will have a son” (9-10). “You must be kidding” (in our terms) she chuckled to herself, and not surprisingly, because at nearly ninety years old “I’m worn out and my husband is past it too, so how can such a pleasure be mine?” (12).  

That wasn’t the last of her surprises either, because she overheard the leader of the group asking her husband, “Why did Sarah laugh and say to herself, ‘What chance have I got of having a child at my age?’” (13). But she’d only been thinking it in her head (12), so how on earth did he know?

She soon found out, because he asks, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (14). Oh no, now she was in trouble, not only for chuckling but for doubting the Lord’s power too – especially when the whole point of the last twenty-five years was to build their trust in YHWH and his ability to pull off the impossible. On the other hand, Abraham had also laughed at the prospect of a son in his old age (17:17). 

But in her case she was only a few feet away from the one who knew exactly what she was thinking, so she “was afraid” (15), the same Hebrew word used for Adam when his fear led him to hide from God (3:10). And at this point, Sarah probably wished she could hide and never be found too. But being Sarah, with a tendency to resort to human solutions (like suggesting Abraham have a child by Hagar, and agreeing to be his sister), she went the human route again and lied, saying, “I did not laugh.” “Yes you did,” came the answer, and we can only imagine Sarah’s reaction, having been caught in this exquisitely embarrassing moment of her own making. 

But there’s no serious telling her off by YHWH. No repercussions. She doesn’t get away with lying, but there are no recriminations either. Imagine being Sarah, then, and what she might be learning about YHWH too. So that next time she’s in a tight spot and she’s tempted to resort to human means to get herself out of it, just be open about it with YHWH. Because “YHWH listens”….(next blog) 

The first step YHWH takes Abraham through is just good old plain obedience. He tells Abraham to leave his homeland and “go to the land I will show you” (Genesis 12:1). And “Abram left” (4). Step one, obedience, successfully completed. 

Step two, however – “from obedience to trust” – takes a while longer, the best part of three chapters. But after YHWH gets Abraham out of the hole he’s dug for himself in Egypt (12:17), and helps him win a major battle against a powerful coalition of kings (14:13-20), and takes him outside to count the stars as proof he’ll have many offspring despite having no children at present, Abraham “believed the Lord” (15:6). Add trust, then, to his obedience. Step two successfully completed.  

Three chapters later we see what trust then led to, when YHWH (along with two others) “appeared to Abraham while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day” (18:1). A hot, hazy day, time for a relaxed nap. But when Abraham catches sight of three men nearby he immediately “hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground” (2) – because he knew who the leader of the three was, addressing him in verse 3 as “my Lord” (adonai in Hebrew, the deeply reverent title for YHWH).   

So what Abraham does next is amazing. He begs the mighty Lord to take a rest in the shade of a tree while water is brought to wash his feet (4). He then rushes off, yelling to Sarah, “Quick, make and bake some bread” (6), and then he rushes out to “select a choice tender calf” for some meat to go with the bread (7). Which must’ve taken several hours to bake and cook. But every minute worth it to Abraham, because what a great way he could express his love for his Lord by refreshing him on a hot day (5). Which made me wonder if YHWH set things up this way just for that purpose. 

Imagine Abraham’s pleasure when it was all prepared and ready and he stood watching nearby “while they ate” (8). From obedience to trust, YHWH had now brought Abraham to love too. Step three.

Does YHWH engineer circumstances for us as Abraham’s offspring to bring us to love too, then? Yes, 1 John 4:17, which states “Love is made complete in us” – just as love, step three, was being made complete in Abraham.  

But “Imagine being Sarah” too….(next blog)

Thirteen years have passed since Ishmael was born (Genesis 16:16) and Abraham is now ninety-nine years old (17:1). This was the time when YHWH changed Abram’s name to Abraham, meaning “father of many” to confirm YHWH’s promise to make him “a father of many nations” (5). 

But the ninety-nine year old Abraham was in for quite a surprise when YHWH requires him and every male in his household “to undergo circumcision” as “the sign of the covenant between me and you” (11). From now on it was cut off the foreskin or be “cut off from being God’s people” (14). Blunt, yes, but this was “God Almighty (El Shaddai)” speaking (1), and this was his will, that Abraham and his descendants “walk before me and be blameless.”  

So YHWH in his love initiates an incredible covenant, but in all his covenants there’s a part the people play too – which in this case was circumcision. It would act as a daily reminder of their intent (and their need as God’s people) to “walk before him and be blameless.”  

But what was YHWH really after in requiring this painful physical circumcision? Surely there had to be a deeper purpose to it, that was meant to reach down into their inner being too, to create some sort of transformation in their thinking perhaps. 

And that’s exactly what it was meant to do. When YHWH later confirms his covenant promise in Deuteronomy 30:1-5, he adds this statement in verse 6, that the “Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants so that you may love him with all your heart and soul, and live.”  

So YHWH had them make a circumcision cut to their bodies because it pictured what he was really after, a cut to their hearts, like what happened in Acts 2:37, when the Jews realized they’d crucified Jesus and “they were cut to the heart.” Now at last they saw God’s plan, that in Jesus he was fulfilling all his promises to Abraham, so to Jesus they would now direct all their faith, love and obedience. Which is exactly what the Spirit had come to do in them – and would also do in future for all those “the Lord our God will call” (39). 

So what started as a physical cut to the body became a spiritual cut to the heart, so that “walking before God and being blameless” as YHWH requires becomes something we love doing.  

Is this then what YHWH was doing with Abraham, bringing him “From obedience to trust to love”?….(next blog)

But was it really YHWH himself Hagar replied to in Genesis 16? Verse 7 says it was “The angel of the Lord” who found her in the desert and spoke to her (8). And that same “angel of the Lord” in verse 9 who told her to “Go back to your mistress and submit to her,” and “The angel” (again) who said, “I will so increase your descendants they will be too numerous to count” (10). 

The Hebrew word for “angel” here is malak meaning “messenger,” so is it an angel passing on a message from YHWH when he says, “I will so increase your descendants,” rather than YHWH himself saying it? And was it an angel speaking on behalf of YHWH in verse 11 when he says “the Lord has heard of your misery”? 

It would seem so – until verse 13, which states that Hagar “gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her.” Not to the angel of the Lord who spoke to her, but “to the Lord (YHWH)” himself. And she leaves us in no doubt that she believed this was the real YHWH she was speaking to when she replies to him: “You are the God who sees me.”    

To Hagar herself, then, this was the great God YHWH she was speaking to. Which opens up something wonderful about YHWH in her amazing reply to him. Because in her reply to what he’d done for her, “She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her” – and because names were so important for describing someone’s most striking attributes in that ancient culture – this has real meaning to it. 

So what name did she give to the Lord as the most striking attribute she saw in him? It’s in the name of “the well” in verse 14, the name of the well being Beer Lahai Roi meaning “the Living One who sees me.” Or as Hagar herself phrased it in verse 13, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” 

The transformation in Hagar is wonderful to see. From feeling like death to the joyful realization that God himself had seen how badly she’d been treated – and even though she was a mere maidservant, he cared. What she saw in YHWH, therefore, was a Being who is utterly aware of our circumstances – who also wants us to know he’s aware too, by enabling us to see his love, so that the same transformation in Hagar can happen in us whenever our circumstances make us feel like death too.  

To the next blog, then: “What YHWH requires in return”

Abraham took YHWH to task somewhat in Genesis 15:2-3, for not coming through with his promise to provide him with children. The years were passing too, and “Sarai, Abram’s wife, (still) had borne him no children,” Genesis 16:1. 

It was a bit much for Sarai too: “The Lord has kept me from having children,” she told her husband (2), as though it was YHWH’s fault. It was in this frame of mind, then, that she came up with a ‘brilliant’ idea of her own as to how to sort out this ‘unfortunate lack’ on YHWH’s part. 

“Go sleep with my maidservant,” she told Abraham, “perhaps I can build a family through her.” Understandable, perhaps, in the culture of the day, and it would still fulfill YHWH’s promise to Abraham to provide “a son from your own body” (15:4) – because YHWH hadn’t mentioned Sarai’s body, just Abraham’s.

And it worked, Hagar the maidservant became pregnant. But in her triumph at being able to bear a child when Sarai couldn’t, Hagar “began to despise her mistress” (16:4). Which only escalated how Sarai felt. She’d already blamed YHWH for keeping her from having children, and now she blamed Abraham for Hagar’s boasting: “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering,” she told him in verse 5, and she even pressed YHWH to “judge between you and me.” Tough words. She was clearly very upset.  

Abraham didn’t help the situation either, because he told his wife to “Do with Hagar whatever you think best” (6), a rather unwise move knowing his wife’s fragile state of mind. Not surprisingly, “Sarai mistreated Hagar,” and so badly that Hagar ran off into the desert (7).  

And none of it had been Hagar’s fault. It had all started with Sarai, and made worse by Abraham. But YHWH was fully aware of the situation, because in verse 7, “The angel of the Lord (YHWH) found Hagar” and asked her in verse 8, “where have you come from, and where are you going?” – which enabled Hagar to pour out her woe to a listening ear, the very thing she needed.

Such was YHWH’s care for the one who’d been hurt. Abraham and Sarai, meanwhile, had no idea YHWH had done this. Which made me think back to those I may have hurt too – and to wonder what YHWH, being YHWH, did in his care for them that I didn’t know about either. 

It certainly got Hagar thinking too, as we see in “Hagar’s amazing reply to YHWH”….(next blog)

YHWH promised Abraham he would bless all nations through him and his offspring, but he also made it clear in Abraham’s own life, that for any of us to be a personal blessing to people in fulfillment of that promise, it is hugely important that we believe in YHWH making us that blessing.   

Which YHWH demonstrated by showing what happened when Abraham didn’t believe that. Like the mess of things Abraham made in Genesis 12, for instance, when he trusted in his own ingenuity to save his life by palming off his wife as his sister. And in so doing he made a lot of other people’s lives miserable (17). He was hardly being “a blessing” to people while in that state of mind, then, was he?  

But something else had been dawning in his mind at the same time, because soon after YHWH had promised “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (3), Abraham “built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord” (8). He was beginning to realize already, then, that he was going to need a close connection with YHWH. 

In this new life of his, therefore, there were three things going on in his head that were becoming very real to him: first of all, the staggering promise YHWH had given him, and his own part in it. Secondly, the embarrassing realization that he was still human and subject to making a right hash of things. But thirdly, “discovering” (as Romans 4:1 phrases it) the vital importance of calling on a very personal God for help. 

Belief in all three is what enabled Abraham to become a blessing to people in his own life, as his part in the blessing of all nations. And in our own experience it’s the same. First of all, it dawns on us that YHWH is still fulfilling his staggering promise to bless all nations, by making us now a blessing to people. And we’ll witness the importance of our belief in him doing that in us, in the obvious blessing effect we have on people.    

But, secondly, it’s also believing that we’re still very much human too, because in discovering that YHWH is ever patient and forgiving with our frailties, it too has a blessing effect on other people as YHWH enables us to be ever patient and forgiving with their frailties as well. 

And thirdly, it’s also believing that in our upsets with people, YHWH is right there to help us when we call on him, so we can still be a blessing to people in those situations as well. Which includes believing in “YHWH’s care for those we hurt”….(next blog)

What constituted belief in YHWH for Abraham was “facing the fact,” Romans 4:19, “that his body was as good as dead – since he was about a hundred years old – and Sarah’s womb was also dead,” so no way could they produce the offspring YHWH had promised them. 

The only way YHWH could fulfill his promise, then, was if he did it for them. Which is exactly what Abraham believed, that in YHWH there really was a “God who gives life to the dead, and calls things that are not as though they were” (17). And for believing that he was credited with righteousness (3) – one hundred percent right standing with God. 

Paul then gives a second example in King David, because David at one point had messed up his life so badly that he had to face a fact too, that his sins had rendered him “as good as dead” as well, and no way could he make up for the horrors of what he’d done (6) unless God did it for him. Which is exactly what David believed – that in YHWH there really was a God who gives life to the dead – which in his case was forgiving his sins and not counting his sins against him (7-8). And for believing that he too, like Abraham, was credited with righteousness (6). 

Both these examples Paul then uses to lead into what constitutes belief in YHWH for us today, because what was written about Abraham is “also for us” (23-24). And what was written about David is for us too, because we’re also faced with the fact that sin rendered us as good as dead, and there was nothing we could do about it either. But Jesus did what was needed for us, by being “delivered over to death for our sins” (25). 

And that’s what we’re being asked to believe, just like Abraham was being asked to believe that YHWH would give him a son. But YHWH also offered proof to help Abraham believe, by telling him to look up at the stars, as obvious proof that he, the Creator of all those stars, was fully capable of producing just as many descendants for Abraham. And it was then that Abraham believed (Genesis 15:5-6). 

And God’s done the same for us, having “raised Jesus our Lord from the dead” (Romans 4:24), because there’s our proof that he “gives life to the dead” to help us believe he’ll raise us from our old dead selves too. 

And that for us is what constitutes belief in YHWH, that in both Jesus’ death and his resurrection we believe God has done for us what we could not do. But “Why is our belief so important?”….(next blog)

In Genesis 15:5 it was YHWH himself who brought Abraham to belief in him, through his intimate knowledge of Abraham and how to get through to him. But he also had a reason for bringing Abraham to belief in him, which was to credit his belief as righteousness (6). 

There’s no mention in verse 6, however, as to what that meant, or that Abraham understood what it meant, or that YHWH himself actually spoke it in the vision. It’s just a statement, almost out of the blue, but designed to fit in here at this stage in Abraham’s life. 

Which is odd, because Abraham had already done a lot of believing in YHWH. He’d upped sticks and left his homeland when YHWH told him to – without even knowing where he was going (12:1). He’d sought evidence from YHWH that his promise of many offspring was true (15:2-3), and the only evidence YHWH had given him was a look up at the stars and try to count them, and so would his offspring be (5). But Abraham had believed it, despite no sign of a child in the making. 

That’s some kind of faith, because in both cases Abraham was flying blind. All he had to go on was YHWH’s word. YHWH said leave, so he left. YHWH said he’d have an uncountable number of offspring like the stars in the sky, so Abraham took his word on it. And yet that was all YHWH needed to credit Abraham with righteousness. And especially at this point in Abraham’s life too, when there was no proof whatsoever that what YHWH had promised him was happening, or would happen. 

Twice now Abraham had simply taken YHWH at his word. YHWH had spoken, Abraham believed him. But it was YHWH who’d brought him to this point, because belief was the key. That’s what counted as “righteousness,” or (in our terms) put Abraham one hundred percent on the right track in God’s eyes.   

But why is this important for us to know? Because according to Romans 4:23-24, “The words, ‘it was credited to him’ were written not for him alone, but also for us.” So tucked away in Genesis 15:6, that one little verse set the scene for all Abraham’s offspring through the ages, as to what YHWH is doing in our lives. He’s bringing us to belief in him, because the result of that belief puts us one hundred percent on the right track in God’s eyes too. 

With that in mind, then: “What constitutes belief in YHWH today?”….(next blog)