It's All in the Timing (Genesis 15-17)

What is the key to good comedy? Any comedian will tell you it is all about timing. Athletes will tell you that the key to their profession is timing too. If a quarterback wants to complete his pass to a receiver, his timing has to be right. If a baseball player wants to hit the ball well, he better not be even a fraction of a second late. If we thought about it, we could list endeavor after endeavor that has to do with timing.

Genesis 16 reminds us that success in life has to do with timing too. In Genesis 15, God has given Abraham a promise that he will have descendants like the stars in the sky or the sands on the seashore. Yet, some decade later, he and Sarah are still waiting. The promise has not been fulfilled. So, Sarah gets an idea. Let's make alternate arrangement for having children. No, Sarah's not talking adoption. She's talking fornication. Sarah wants Abraham to sleep with Hagar, her servant, so that the child can come through her. In the ancient world this might have been an accepted practice. In God's world, it was not. But Abraham and Sarah aren't getting any younger. Time is running out. And so not able to wait for God's timing, Abraham and Sarah create their own.

Not surprisingly, the results are bad. The good relationship that Sarah and Hagar had is ruined. Abraham, who had been running his household well, loses control, abdicating leadership of the family to Sarah. The attempt to speed God's timing is a decided disaster.

This is a lesson that we need to remember today. For it seems to me that many of our modern sins are sins of timing. Sexual immorality is that type of sin. God says that sex is good in marriage. But we can't wait to find someone to make a commitment to, so we seek physical affection in our timing rather than waiting for God's gracious gift of a husband or a wife. Greed is that type of sin too. Don't wait until you can pay for it. Buy it now on credit without the money. Much of our problem is not that we desire the wrong things. It is all about our timing being off.

Timing is everything. We need to learn to be patient and to wait upon God for His blessings rather than trying to quickly grab them for ourselves.