December 1
The Lord Appeared to Abraham at Mamre
The Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground. Genesis 18:1-2
“The Lord appeared.” Do not quickly skip over those three words. Pause. Ponder. Praise God that we have a Lord who appears!
This was not the first appearance of the Lord to Abraham. God appeared to him when he was 75 years old, after he and his nomadic household had arrived in Canaan, and he promised him that his descendants would inherit that land. God appeared to him when he was 99 years old and promised him that he and his wife Sarah would have a son during the upcoming year, and he repeated his previous promises that Abraham would become a great nation and that his offspring would be as uncountable as the stars. The verses that we are considering today, brought by three “men” who are actually the Lord himself and two angels, are the introduction to another repetition of the promise that Abraham and his wife Sarah would have a son even though they were very old.
The Lord who appears is the Lord who promises. The key point about a promise of a son to Abraham and Sarah is that he would be the ancestor of the Son who would be the culmination of all of God’s promises. Already in the Garden, God promised that the Offspring of the woman would inflict a mortal blow on Satan and his offspring. The problem: sin. The solution: the Savior.
During this season of Advent, we look ahead and prepare for the celebration of the birth of God’s own Son as that promised Offspring. The Messiah came and paid the wages of our sin. He embraced the deepest agonies of hell on the cross for us and for all people. In his unimaginable grace, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
We will see “the glory of God’s one and only Son” (John 1:14) in this series of Advent devotions, and we will rejoice that the Lord who appears keeps his promises.
Ah, dearest Jesus, holy Child,
make thee a bed, soft, undefiled
within my heart, that it may be
a quiet chamber kept for thee. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Lawrence Olson serves Martin Luther College as a professor of theology and director of both the Staff Ministry Program and the Congregational Assistant Program.
