Genesis 17 opens 25 years after God first called Abraham — he's 99, Sarah's 90, and everything about their situation says this isn't happening. God shows up anyway, introduces himself as El Shaddai (God Almighty), and does something unexpected: he changes Abraham's name before the promise is even visible. Exalted father becomes father of many nations — a name attached to a son Abraham can't yet see.

Pastor Michael walks through what the covenant actually asks of Abraham (circumcision — a response to grace, never a way to earn it), and traces the same shift forward through Jeremiah's promise of a new heart, all the way to Jesus at the table saying "this is the new covenant in my blood." The sermon's whole engine is the gap between the deal Michael made his sister keep as a kid and the deal God makes with us: we haven't kept our end. He kept his anyway.

Three truths anchor the message: God is faithful even when the waiting is long. God wants your heart, not just your religion. And our hope was never in keeping our end of the bargain — it's in Christ, who kept his. Anthony and Jackson close things out talking honestly about what it actually looks like to wait on God's timeline instead of manufacturing your own Ishmael.

Key topics: El Shaddai and the name change before the promise | Circumcision as response, not payment | God's silence isn't God's absence | Contract vs. covenant | Why our hope rests in what Christ kept, not what we keep

Church of the Cascades | Bend, Oregon | Genesis series