INTERESTING FACTS : The Bible is the best-selling book of all time. ABOUT 150 MILLION are sold in one year, AND THERE ARE over 4 billion Bibles in print![1]

DAILY READING : [GENESIS 16 - 19]

TEXT : Gen 18:14 Is any thing too hard for the LORD? At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.

THEME : THE OMNIPOTENCE OF GOD!

In chapter 15, after God tells Abraham God is his shield [protection] and his reward [source of all that is good and desirable], Abraham inquires about God's promise of his receiving a son. God answers Abraham ["father of a multitude"], whose name is still Abram ["high father"] that his descendants will be as many as the stars in the sky. It is here that we discover an important truth about our lives as Christians - all who come to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those that diligently seek him. We find this fundamental law in chapter 15:6. "And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness." This same foundational principle is the argument of the Apostle Paul when he refutes those who believe that keeping the ceremonial law makes them just. Anyone who has ever known God and seen His Mighty Hand do marvelous things has seen this because they believed God's Word.

We also see in chapter 15, that God makes a covenant with Abraham called the Abrahamic Covenant. God makes Abraham fall asleep, and then in a dark vision, Abraham hears God tell him of the bondage of his descendants. He also hears how God will deliver them into the land where Abraham is after 400 years in a nation God will afterward judge. It is also noteworthy that after the animal is cut ["to cut" is the literal meaning of the word covenant], that only God walks through the divided animal. This is contrary to how men make covenants with each other, as each party normally would walk through the severed animal. Yet here God shows that He will work out His will in the earth through the Jews, displaying His sovereignty and omnipotence. In other words, everything that is about to transpire in the lives of the Jews in the rest of Genesis, Exodus and throughout the Bible is the work of God, not man. One of the greatest demonstrations that God wrote the Bible is the existence of the Jewish people. They are the only nation to lose everything - their land, nation, wealth, language, and so forth, and have it all restored in the 19th and 20th centuries as foretold by God. Prophecy and the existence of the Jews are two of the strongest pieces of evidence that God wrote the Bible.

In chapter 16, Abraham listens to his wife when she suggests they have a child by Sarah's maid. In this, we see a clear mark of how we often try to do God's work our way. Abraham went in to Hagar, no doubt because of a lapse of faith and the influence of his wife. How important it is for us to know that whoever influences us has far more effect on our lives than those in authority over us. God was Abraham's authority. Yet, Sarah persuaded Abraham, and in his lapse of faith, or perhaps poor judgment about God's ways, he affected mankind to this day. Ishmael, the son of an Egyptian and a Hebrew, has the founder of Islam - Mohammed as one of his descendants[2] as well as all the Arab people.

TRUTH FOR TODAY : NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE WITH GOD!

Abraham is almost one hundred years old when God again tells him that Sarah will bare a son, and through this child, God will bless the nations of the earth. Both Abraham and Sarah laugh, since Sarah no longer has the natural means to bare a child. She is ninety years old. Imagine being at a seniors citizens complex where a birthday celebration is being held for a one hundred year old man. If being one hundred is not rare enough, during the party he stands up and announces he and his aged wife are going to have a baby! No doubt, everyone would chuckle at the joke. Yet, it is no joke! This is what God has spoken, and Abraham believes God. God's displays His omnipotence in the birth of Isaac [which means "laughter"] because what was impossible with men is possible with God. God spoke the same truth about the birth of Jesus through the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary when He said - "For with God nothing shall be impossible." [Lk. 1:37]. Likewise, Jesus said of salvation - "And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved? But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible." [Mat 19:24-26]. We too must believe the Lord through His Word, for with God nothing is impossible. He is omnipotent.