Genesis 17:15-22 And God said to Abraham, As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be.… I. It must strike the most casual observer, that THERE IS A SPECIALITY IS THE PRAYER which makes it necessary that the import of the prayer should be unfolded. For it appears not but that Ishmael was in all the glow and vigour of his youthful health; there was no symptom of physical decay, there was no indication of approaching death. Whence, therefore, and why did the patriarch pray, "Oh! that my child might live?" Was it that his days might be lengthened out? Was it that his health might continue unimpaired? was it that he might live to a green and a good old age? No, we find a key to the patriarch's prayer in the one simple expression — "Before Thee." "Oh! that Ishmael might live before Thee." Before his father's eyes, before the eyes of mankind, the child lived; but the father had reference to another and a higher and a different life — a life in the sight of God. It follows, then, that adequately to comprehend the import of the prayer, we must illustrate the death, from which the patriarch desired his child to be set free. And we are led to remark, that every child of man, as he comes into the world, is dead in the sight of God, in a two-fold sense; he is legally dead, he is spiritually dead. He is dead in the sight of God in law, and he is dead in the sight of God in his moral nature. He is "dead in trespasses and sins." But how, then, is life given to man? and what was the life, for which the patriarch prayed on behalf of his child? In order to remove the eternal death under which we lie, the Son of God took our nature upon Himself, stood as our substitute; so that God might be just in justifying every penitent, that lays hold on the righteousness of the Redeemer and comes to God in faith. Everyone, then, that by faith is brought into a participation of the righteousness and redemption that is in Christ, is, in virtue of that righteousness and that redemption, passed from death to life. II. I pass simply and briefly to press upon you THE IMPORTANCE OF THAT PRAYER. 1. The importance of the patriarch's prayer appears, in that till that prayer is accomplished in a child or in a man, that child or that man is a poor, maimed, imperfect being. What a wretched life is the mere vegetable life for a man to live! 2. But the importance of the patriarch's prayer is still more emphatically and touchingly impressed on our minds, if we remember the fearful peril in which every man stands, that is not "living before God." (H. Stowell, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be. |
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