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Abraham is 99 years old when the Lord appears to him in Genesis 17. If we trace back through the narrative, Abraham was 86 when his son Ishmael was born—a 13-year wait from that point. Before that, there was an 11-year gap since God last spoke to him in a vision. So nearly a quarter of a century has passed between these watershed moments in Abraham's story.
We live in an age of impatience. Consider how we respond waiting in a lift at a department store. The first three seconds are acceptable. Seconds three to five become the "threshold of control" where we reach for the door close button. After five seconds, we enter the "micro stress phase," where mild frustration and anxiety set in. Yet the door close button is almost always a placebo—it makes no real difference.
Abraham had to wait far longer than an elevator ride. Day after day, month after month, year after year, he pressed on in faith. This teaches us a vital lesson: faith grows stronger by daily obedience to the Lord and trust in his word, not by moving from one mountaintop experience to another. As John Stott used to say, faith is built through the discipline of daily, dogged discipleship. So much of covenant living is ordinary stuff. The God of the covenant seldom sends fireworks.
Abraham's record during this wait was far from perfect. In the previous chapter, he became impatient with his wife's desire for children and agreed to father a child through her servant girl—a decision that proved disastrous. Yet before that failure, the good foundation had already been laid. In Genesis 15, God invited Abraham to look up at the night sky and count the stars. The promise came: "So will your offspring be." Against all the evidence, Abraham believed the Lord, and God credited that faith to him as righteousness. This absolutely foundational moment set the stage for everything that follows.
Now, at last, nearly a quarter of a century later, the same Lord appears once more. And it is striking that it is the Lord who does almost all the talking in this chapter. Abraham's contribution is limited to a single line. God is the one with the agenda, and it is his agenda that matters. He comes to make announcements about how things are going to be from now on.
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Abraham's only real contribution is to question the wisdom of God's plan and suggest a better alternative—to have Ishmael count as the son of the covenant. But this is always a risky thing to do. It can never work. If we are to have dealings with the living God, we have to do so on his terms. We're in no position to dictate. Yet we rapidly discover in experience that he knows better than we do.
In verses one and two, the Lord speaks three things to Abraham and to us who follow in his faith.
"Walk with me," says God. We really can't overstate how remarkable those words are and what an extraordinary privilege they point to.
Consider how we value an encounter with someone famous or important. Earlier this summer, a remarkable woman—Nina Krush, granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, successor to Stalin as leader of the Soviet Union—came to lecture in Cambridge. When I heard she would be speaking at the Cambridge Union, I cheekily asked if I could meet her beforehand. Very kindly, they agreed. I spent a fascinating half hour with her before her talk. I felt hugely privileged. I couldn't quite believe it was happening, and I won't forget it. But I'm fairly sure she forgot it almost immediately. She had far more important things to think about.
How different it is when God says this to Abraham. This is an invitation not just to a brief time with an interesting human being, but to walk with God for a lifetime. And this is no ordinary voice that speaks. This is El Shadai—God Almighty. This is the first time in the Bible he is referred to this way. That this voice, that the one speaking, should engage in conversation with Abraham at all is remarkable. But for him to be invited to walk with God Almighty is a privilege and wonder than which there can be no higher.
This walk is to be both with him and before him. Though they will be companions, they are far from equals. There is a very real parallel here for us. When Jesus Christ, God's Son, issues his invitation to us, he says: Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. Who is this human being? This man, this teacher, who invites us to come to him? This is no merely human voice. It brings a gracious invitation. But because of who Jesus is, his invitation is also a command.
The idea of walking in the Bible stands for the whole manner of somebody's life and conduct. Pre-Christian life is described in the New Testament as a kind of living death—a walk dominated by the desires of body and mind, making us unfit for the presence of a holy God. That is how we all are by nature, until we are in Christ. But then we find that God has prepared good works in advance that we might walk in them.
We are to walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us. We are to look carefully how we walk, not as unwise people but as wise. Jesus himself said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life." King David, centuries before, knew: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me."
Go back to Genesis 3. God himself goes for a walk in the garden he has made. And it seems he doesn't want to walk alone. He's looking around for the man and woman he has placed there to enjoy all its good things. "They hear the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day." They hear his voice and they hide from his presence. "Where are you?" he asks. They're behind a bush, ashamed and embarrassed. They're hiding from each other in insubstantial garments of fig leaves. They're hiding from him.
What has happened? They have believed the lie that the serpent has spun—that God is not to be trusted, that he is not good, concerned only to keep them in their place. It is the great lie in our world: that God is not good and is not to be trusted. They have swallowed it whole and are already reaping the consequences of their folly.
As the narrative continues, they cannot stay in the garden. They must leave. Then in chapter 4, human society begins to disintegrate with murder and violence. In chapter 5, we find a long list of people—Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, and others—each one living for some years, having children, living more, and dying. They die because God said, "If you do what I have said you must not do, death will be the consequence." Is there nothing more to human life than that? No greater purpose? No higher meaning to live for? No deeper meaning?
But the answer is yes. There is much more to live for. One man in that long list discovered it. His name was Enoch. Enoch was different because Enoch walked with God. He was different in his life and different at his end. We don't read that Enoch died. Instead, we're told he was not, for God took him. I had the privilege in my previous church of taking the funeral of a fine Christian woman named Angela. Angela was in her 70s and had terminal cancer. She told me, "I don't want any of that stuff you get at funerals about where I was born and what I did. My family will expect it, but please overrule them and say I didn't want it." The funeral was one of the most meaningful I've ever taken. My talk was shorter than usual. I spoke about Angela as a latter-day Enoch. How do we remember Angela? Angela walked with God. That's what made her different from others—different in life, different in death. Nothing more actually needed to be said.
Christian life at its heart is a very simple thing. It begins by being made right with God through faith in his Son, the Lord Jesus. Then comes learning to walk with him. As Paul writes, "Just as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted, built up, established in the faith, abounding in thankfulness."
But God says more than "walk with me." He also says, "Be blameless." At first sight, that may sound like a tall order, perhaps even unreasonable. Some people have traditionally understood the Christian message as a summons to pull your socks up and live a good life. But the call to be blameless is quite different from that.
Blamelessness is very different from perfection. We have already seen how Abraham was far from perfect. He wasn't perfect and never could be any more than you or I could. But the great thing is that he doesn't need to be. He's already right with God through trust in God's promise. As a result, God now looks on him as a righteous man even though in himself he is not righteous. And that's the gospel. He is justified by faith, just as anyone is today who follows in Abraham's footsteps. You read all about it in Paul's great letter to the Romans.
God is not asking us to impress him with our achievements, our resolutions, our moral excellencies. That is a complete dead end and doomed to failure. What he asks is that we turn from our independent ways and believe and trust in his Son. In other words, to do the exact opposite of what Adam and Eve did in the garden when they believed the lie and no longer trusted God and his word.
The writer to the Hebrews puts it this way: "Without faith, it is impossible to please him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him." Believing in God's existence is a step in the right direction, but it's no more than that. It doesn't touch you in mind, heart, and will. We will never connect with him in the personal way he seeks if we're not ready to believe in his goodness, in his readiness to find us, to have dealings with us, if we are sincere in our search.
So what is blamelessness? Blamelessness is essentially about integrity, about wholeheartedness. In calling Abraham to be blameless in his walk, the Lord is asking him to put all his eggs in the one basket. Notice how very general this requirement is. The specifics and details of what that will look like come later—the Ten Commandments and so on. Here it is a very general summons to blamelessness.
We've already seen Abraham building altars in various places where the Lord appeared and spoke to him. After returning from difficult times in Egypt, he seems to be saying to God, "I'm here. I'm with you, and there's nowhere else I'd rather be." That's the attitude God is looking for as he calls him to walk before him.
In John Bunyan's great book, The Pilgrim's Progress, we meet a character called Mr. Facing Both Ways. It's a great name, isn't it? We can picture him at once—the compromised Christian, the half-hearted one. One moment he's following Jesus, the next he's looking over his shoulder, wondering if he shouldn't go after enticing alternatives. To be blameless is to face just one way. For Abraham, it means saying that El Shadai, Almighty God, will be everything to him. He will walk the walk, not merely talk the talk. As John Stott used to say, "There is no greater incentive to holiness than to live in the conscious presence of God." We make it our aim, says Paul, to please Jesus in all things.
Listen to this extract from the Puritan prayers collected under the title The Valley of Vision:
Lifegiving God, quicken me to call upon thy name. For my mind is ignorant, my thoughts vagrant, my affections earthly, my heart unbelieving, and only thy spirit can help my infirmities. I approach thee as Father and Friend, my portion forever, my exceeding joy, my strength of heart. I believe in thee as the God of nature, the ordainer of providence, the sender of Jesus, my Saviour. May the truth that is in him illuminate in me all that is dark. Establish in me all that is wavering. Restore in me all that is wretched, and glorify in me the name of Jesus. I pass through a veil of tears, but I bless thee for the opening gate of glory at its end. Set my hopes on that better heavenly country. Prepare me for every part of my pilgrimage, and uphold my steps by thy word.
That, I would suggest, is the prayer of one who truly wants to be blameless.
But there's one more thing which we must note. God says, "Be sure of my covenant."
In chapter 15, God first makes that covenant with Abraham—a solemn agreement that he will give the land he's in to his descendants. A covenant is a turbocharged promise—a promise on steroids. He repeats that promise here and develops it. Abraham's numbers will be greatly increased. He will be the father not just of one nation but of many. Kings will come from him. The land will be the everlasting possession of his descendants. And all this because of the greatest promise at the heart of this covenant: that he, El Shadai, God Almighty, will be their God forever and ever.
Now both aspects of the covenant seem at that moment to be flying in the face of reality. The promise of descendants when he's got no children, and territory when he doesn't own a square inch of the place he's in.
When the Lord says he will bless Sarah and give Abraham a son by her, his reaction is to laugh. It's a reverent laugh—he falls face down first, humbling himself—but a laugh is a laugh. And a suggestion is a suggestion. Abraham's got one ready: he already has a son by another woman. Won't Ishmael do? What's wrong with him?
But no, Ishmael won't do. The Lord gently makes that plain. He's not in any hurry. He has his own plan. It's a plan entirely of his own devising. He will reclaim his world in his own way and time. Salvation by committee is not his style. It's going to be his doing from beginning to end. Abraham's offer to contribute to the planning process is quietly put to the side.
But once that suggestion is over, Abraham is quick to sign up. That's the significance of all that we read about circumcision in verses 9 to 14. Every male in Abraham's family is to be circumcised as a sign of the covenant.
This ritual is probably strange and unfamiliar to us. The cutting off of the male foreskin was much practiced in the ancient world—a very common passage rite into adulthood. It was the point at which a boy could say, "At last I am a man." But here it has a quite different significance. It is a way of recognizing God's claim on a human life and gladly saying yes to it. It's a sign of obedience, of consecration to the Lord, and of belonging to his people. From now on, every male child of eight days of age is to be circumcised.
Circumcision functions rather like the Old Testament tithe. Tithing means you give back to God 10% of what he's given to you. The point is not that "I give him 10% and then I've got 90% left for me." No—the part is the token of the whole. All is his. Circumcision is similar—the surrender of a small but intimate part of male anatomy symbolizes the willing consecration of the whole person to Yahweh, to the Lord and his purpose.
Of course, in the New Testament, the sign of God's covenant is baptism. Whether of children or adults, male or female, baptism stands for the glad acceptance of God's claim on that person's life. The old me is over and gone, dead and buried. A new me has risen, united to Christ, living from now on for him. And that's because we have a better covenant than the one we read of here. It was planned from before the beginning of time, inaugurated 2,000 years ago when Jesus of Nazareth shared a meal with his friends, took a cup of wine, and said, "This is the new covenant in my blood."
Abraham has not always been quick to trust and obey when God speaks. But he certainly is here. You see verse 23: "On that very day, Abraham got up and did what he was told. No hesitation, no hanging around, just quick to respond faithfully and fully to this word from the Lord."
Come walk with me. Be blameless. Be sure of my covenant. So may it be also for each of us.
