How long did Abraham and Sarah have to wait for Isaac?

The first demand upon his faith was to leave his own country and his kindred and his father's house and to go into an unknown land, with the promise that he should become a great nation, and that in him should all nations be blessed. At the age of seventy-five, Abraham came into the land which he was afterwards to receive as an inheritance, though it was then occupied by the vile and vicious Canaanite. Soon he had to part from his worldly-minded nephew, Lot, who walked by sight and not by faith. Through ions and lonely years did Sarah and he dwell in this foreign land, possessing not so much as a foot of it, and without a sign of that heir to whom he might bequeath his flocks and his herds, his silver and his gold, and in whom the word of God should be fulfilled. Once again, however, while meditating in the silent night-watches, the voice, first heard by Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees, assured him that' the promised seed should be duly forthcoming. But not till eleven years after his entrance into the land was Ishmael born, and then not of Sarah. And the son of Hagar could not live before God. Abraham had still to wait; for "Abraham was a hundred years old, when his son Isaac was born unto him." And though twenty-five years elapsed since he had left Haran; yet hope deferred did not make the heart-sick. On the contrary, Abraham "against hope believed in hope. And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about a hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb. He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully persuaded that what he had promised, he was able also to perform" (Rom. 4:18-21).

Abraham was 86 when Ishmael was born. God kept him waiting for a further fourteen years before the promise of a true heir was fulfilled. A century old, his body dead, his wife an old and barren woman, it became a question of GOD’S power and faithfulness. Abraham at last learns his lesson. “He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God” (Rom. 4:20). Isaac is born, the child of promise. Isaac means “laughter,” and Sarah’s son was laughter in the home of the hitherto childless couple.

Abram was ninety-nine years old at the time. Nearly twenty-five years before this, God had promised him a seed. No family had materialised from his marriage to Sarai thus far. As the years passed by the situation became humanly impossible. Human efforts were made to gain a seed but they ended in disaster. Nevertheless Abram maintained his faith in God's promise; we read in the New Testament of Abram that 'he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God' (Romans 4:20). Eventually, when Abram was about 100 years old and Sarai was 90 years old, Isaac was born.

God in the exercise of His sovereign right made choice of Abram to be a witness for Himself, and to be the depository of promise. "Now Jehovah had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee. And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing. And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee; and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. … And Jehovah appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land; and there builded he an altar unto Jehovah, who appeared unto him" (Gen. 12:1-3). This, however, was but general. It was not until he had refused the proffered gifts of the king of Sodom that God made a definite promise, which could only be fulfilled in his own family. "After these things the word of Jehovah came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram, I [am] thy shield, thy exceeding great reward. And Abram said, O Lord Jehovah, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house [is] this Eliezer of Damascus? And Abram said, Behold, to me thou halt given no seed; and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir. And, behold, the word of Jehovah [came] unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir, but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir. And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. And he believed in Jehovah, and he counted it to him for righteousness" (Gen. 15:1-6). But that which faith values is also used for disciplining the individual. It was so in Abram's case, as Gen. 15 — 21 abundantly illustrates. Moreover, it was not until twenty-five years had elapsed that God fulfilled His own promise. Each succeeding year must have seemed to make the promise still more unlikely of fulfilment, so that we can hardly wonder at Abram's laughter in chapter 17, nor of Sarah's in the chapter following. In the birth of Isaac, coupled with his surrender (in Gen. 22), we have by far the most striking type of Christ to be found in the Old Testament.

Between the building of Noah's altar and that erected by divine direction on a mountain in the land of Moriah more than four hundred years elapsed, during which period we read not of any fresh teaching as to either the need, or the acceptability of sacrifice. Men had not ceased to make use of altars (Gen. 12:7; Gen. 13:4, 18); but God did not disclose, that we read of, anything fresh in reference to sacrifice. Yet how many important events had taken place in the interval! The confusion of tongues, and the consequent dispersion of mankind abroad upon the face of the earth, had been already effected. The glory of Nimrod's kingdom had culminated, and its power had evidently declined; for an Elamitic monarch, Chedorlaomer, was the head of that confederacy, which, sweeping like a flood over Palestine, carried all before it, until Abraham, the Hebrew, the stranger in that land, at Hobah, on the left of Damascus, made the four victorious kings disgorge their prey. Besides this an event of still more importance, and one which concerned all the world, had taken place in the encampment of that patriarch who was called the "Friend of God;" the heir had been born to Abraham, in whose line the promised seed was in due time to appear. For twenty-five years had Abraham to wait between his departure out of Haran and the birth of His son and heir. (Gen. 12:4; Gen. 17:17.) But at the end of that time Isaac was born, the meaning of whose name his mother well understood, as she said, "God has made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me." (Gen. 21:6.)

It was the term of Abraham's age when he "considered not his body now dead, when he was about a hundred years old, neither the deadness of Sarah's womb," and God fulfilled to him the promise so long delayed in the birth of Isaac. It cannot but appear, then, to stamp with accuracy and with significance the common reckoning, to find, when man was discovered dead, the true Isaac born according to it in the fortieth century of the world — the four thousandth year.

Another great act of renunciation lay ahead, apparently as severe in its testing as any which had preceded. It sets forth in type the renunciation of the flesh. The promise of the seed had been given and Abraham's faith had embraced it, but impatient for its accomplishment, he sought for its fulfilment "after the flesh," and Ishmael was born. Fourteen years afterwards the promised seed appeared in the person of Isaac.

But rather than reproving his lack of faith, God encourages his faith by telling him that Eliezer would not be his heir, "but one who will come forth from your own body shall be your heir" (v.4). God's promise was absolute, though it took longer to fulfil than Abram expected. Then God brought Abram outside and directed his eyes toward heaven. Could he count the stars? He did not tell Abram at the time that he could only see a very small percentage of the number of stars actually in the heavens, but tells him that his descendants would be as the stars (v.5).

When God's promise stood before the soul of Abraham, as an accomplished fact, he might well have learnt the futility of his own effort to reach that accomplishment. Ishmael was of no use, whatever, so far as God's promise was concerned. He might, and did, afford something for nature's affections to entwine themselves around, thus furnishing a more difficult task for Abraham to perform afterwards; but he was in no wise conducive to the development of the purpose of God, or to the establishment of Abraham's faith — quite the reverse. Nature can never do ought for God. The Lord must visit and the Lord must "do," and faith must wait, and nature must be still; yea, must be entirely set aside as a dead, worthless thing, and then the divine glory can shine out, and faith find in that outshining all its rich and sweet reward. "Sarah conceived and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him." There is such a thing as God's "set time," His "due season," and for this the faithful must be content to wait. The time may seem long, and hope deferred may make the heart sick; but the spiritual mind will ever find its relief in the assurance, that all is for the ultimate display of God's glory. "For the vision is for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie; though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry. … but the just shall live by his faith." (Hab. 2:3-4) This wondrous faith! It brings into our present all the power of God's future, and feeds upon God's promise as a present reality. By its power the soul is kept hanging upon God, when every outward thing seems to be against it; and, "at the set time," the mouth is filled with laughter. "Abraham was an hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him." Thus nature had nothing to glory in. "Man's extremity was God's opportunity;" and Sarah said, "God has made me to laugh." All is triumph when God is allowed to show Himself.

Now the grace of God bears its most important fruit in the history of Abraham. Sarah, at the unlikely age of 90 years, gives birth to Isaac, at the time God Himself had appointed (v. 2). Though faith (that of Abraham) had waited long, till he was 100 years of age, yet grace (as seen in Sarah) eventually bore the fruit that God had promised. This pictures the fact that believers throughout the Old Testament had waited through centuries before the grace of God is seen in all its beautiful fruition in the birth of the Lord Jesus. What an answer to their patient waiting in faith!