Main Idea: Walk with God; His promises are sure.
0:13
Morning, everybody, it's good to be with you this morning. My name is Ian Rush, for those of you that don't know me, I'm the youth pastor here at the church, and it's my privilege to bring the word to you and to have studied the word this week. It's great, a great text, and trust that you guys will be as encouraged by it as I have been over this last week or so. Yeah, let's stand for the reading of God's Word. We're going to be in Genesis chapter 12, and Dan was two weeks ago. He finished off in verses one to three. But I'm going to read that as well, and we'll, we'll just read the whole chapter Genesis 12, because it sets a it just sets an important foundation for what we're actually going to look at in verses four through 20. Okay, so we'll repeat verses one through three so that we understand better what verses four through 20 are about, as you can see, it's on the screen behind me. If you don't have your Bibles, otherwise, please follow along as I read Genesis 12 one. Now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you, and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and Him who dishonors you. I will curse and in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So Abraham went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abraham was 75 years old when he departed from Haran. And Abraham took Sarah, his wife, and lot took and lot his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had gathered and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, Abraham passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Morah. At that time, the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abraham and said to your offspring, I will give this land. So he built there an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him. From there, he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and I on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord, and Abraham journeyed on, still going toward the Negev now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarah, his wife, I know that you are a woman, beautiful in appearance. And when the Egyptians see you, they will say, this is his wife. Then they'll want to kill me, but they'll let you live. Say you're my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake. When Abraham entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful, and when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house, and for for her sake, he dealt well with Abram and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys and camels. But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai Abrams wife. So Pharaoh called Abram and said, What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say she is my sister? So that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go. And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray together, Father, we come to you this morning with great Thanksgiving in our hearts for your goodness to us. We're thankful for the salvation that we have in Christ. We're thankful that you've revealed yourself to us through Your Word. You've made yourself known and knowable. And just pray that as we come to this chapter now that. You would teach us that you'd help us to be attentive to what you teach us, help us to live according to it, and help us to grow in our dependence upon you. Because of it, etch these things onto our hearts. We pray together in Christ's name. Amen. Please have a seat. What I was going to say before, when I awkwardly paused, was the songs this morning were just great. It's almost as if John plans it the messages of the songs, just like if you listen to them again after the passage that we're about to go through, you'll hear like all of the themes that are in the songs come straight from, straight from this passage. So I encourage you to do that afterwards. Just listen to the listen to the music again, and let that be a way of speaking and singing the truths of these verses to to yourself again, just to remind you. So the message this morning, we're in Genesis 12. It's a message to those of you who experience difficulties in life, those of you who feel like life can often be a series of unfortunate events, or maybe in your life, it might seem like one increasingly unfortunate event. So what we see in this passage is an answer to the question, how should I respond in these moments? How should I respond in these seasons of life that I consider unfortunate, that are difficult, Moses, divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit, tells us in this passage. So the main idea this morning, this is the really the thought that encapsulates this whole chapter, is walk with God, His promises are sure. Walk with God, His promises are sure. And all we're going to do is, I'll do a little bit of review of verses one through three, which is where we ended a couple of weeks ago with Dan, and then we'll get into verses four through 20, and there we'll just see two ways that we can walk with God. Like, what does it mean to walk with God? Well, he's going to give us two examples of of what that means to walk with God. So the first example is respond appropriately to God. By the way, if you picked up one of these on your way in, it does have a little section at the back with the outline and the main idea and all that kind of stuff, where you can take notes if you want to, and don't have your own notebook or that kind of thing. So point number one, respond appropriately to God's word. So that's found in verses four through nine that we'll get to in just a few minutes. But before let's just recap on where we were with Dan. Two weeks ago, we were introduced to this new character in Genesis named Abram. He is a man through whom God would reveal His grace. He is a man through whom God would bless the world. So let's see some of what we see in these verses, verses one through three, because they provide us with the important foundation for what comes next in verses four through 20. Okay, so first look again at verses one through three. I think the first important thing to notice is the name of God that is used in these verses, but also throughout this entire chapter. What you probably see in your bibles is the Lord in all caps, right? So if you've got, like, an NIV and ESV, those translations of the Bible, that's what it will say. If you have a, if you have a legacy Standard Bible, it says Yahweh instead. Okay, so when you see that word Lord in your Bible, and it's all in caps. Maybe you've wondered what it means. It's like, why do they put Lord sometimes all in capital letters and sometimes not in capital letters? Well, I'm gonna let you in on the secret. If you don't know this is what it is when it's all in caps. Is a translation of the Hebrew word Yahweh. And Yahweh is God's name, like it's the name of God that is most commonly used throughout the Old Testament. Okay, so all caps is a translation of the Hebrew word in. Yahweh. And it's a name of God that is descriptive of him. There are other descriptions of him in Scripture, but this one is also a description of him. You might be
10:14
familiar with Exodus, chapter three in Exodus, chapter three, that's the the story of God coming to Moses. He appears to him, it's the story of the burning bush. The Israelites are in captivity in Egypt, and God comes to Moses, and he says, I want you to go, and I want you to tell Pharaoh that he needs to let all of my people go. And then Moses is like, you think Pharaoh is gonna listen to me like, Oh, you want me to go there, show up on Pharaoh's doorstep and say, God wants you to let his people go. Please, please. What do you think he's going to say he didn't say it quite like that. Moses wasn't rude, but he did doubt, right? So what does God say to him? He says to him, yeah, Pharaoh, he might question you. The people of Israel when they hear what you say, they might think that you're crazy, but here's what I want you to say to them, tell them that I am, has sent you. Tell them that I am, has sent you. I am is really what this name Yahweh means. It's a description of God. It's a name that describes who he is. He is the self existent, eternally existent one. He is always present, and that should have given Moses confidence, and in fact, it did for him to go and communicate God's message to Pharaoh and to the Israelites in so rather than Lord in all caps in our Bibles, or even if you've gone LSB, rather than even Yahweh, you could just change this word here to say, now I am said to Abraham. It sounds weird in English, but really, that's what it means. Now I am said to Abraham. So just as it was intended to comfort Moses and the Israelites as they sought freedom from Egypt, as God called him to something radical, it was also to comfort Abram as he called him to something radical. It was to comfort the Israelites later on, as Moses retold this story of Abraham to them, and as they were reminded that God was in the story the whole time. And for these same reasons, this name of God should be a comfort to us as well. We should be brought to consider and remember whenever we see that name in Scripture, that this God who's working these things out, this God who's calling us to do these things, is I am. He's the self existent one. He's the unchanging one. He's the one who has been here from eternity past and will always be here. He's always present. It's this God. He exists always. I am is God's name second in verses one through three, I want you to notice what Yahweh says. What does I am say to Abraham? Look at it again. Now the Lord said to Abraham, go from your country, from your kindred, and from your father's house to the land that I will show you, and I will make you, make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great. In a nutshell, what he says to Abraham there in those verses is leave everything that I tell you to leave, trust me and follow me. That's not an uncommon thing for God to say, right? When God shows up in the person of Jesus Christ, what do we hear him say to fishermen and tax collectors, leave everything and come and follow me. What's his message to us today? Leave everything and come and follow me. Leave behind whatever I call you to leave behind and come and follow me. Come and be my disciple. That's exactly what he calls Abram to do in this passage, anything that you might lose will pale in. Comparison to the eternal blessing that you will inherit from me, the eternity of blessings that you will inherit from me that's exemplified there in verses one and two. Look at what God says. He says, first go. So that's a command that he gives him, go from your country one. And he says later to the land that I will show you actually country and land. They're the same word in Hebrew. Go from your land to the land that I'm going to show you. He says, go from your kindred, and I will make of you a great nation. And he says, go from your father's house, and I will bless you and make your name great. You see what God does there as he speaks to Abraham, everything that you everything that you might be leaving behind, that you might be tempted to cling on to, I'm going to give you the same thing, but better. I'm going to give you something better you're worried about leaving your house and your possessions and your securities behind trust in me for your security. I'm going to make you more secure. You worried about leaving people behind? Trust in the people that I will bring, the people that I will provide. I'll make it better. It will be it will be better if you follow me than if you do not follow me. And there's another command in verses one through three that's a little bit hidden in our English Bibles, but let me, let me help you uncover it a little bit. It's where he says so that you will be a blessing at the end of verse two, that B is actually a command. It's him saying, You Abraham, be a blessing. So if we put all the pieces together, then of what came before in verse one and two, and then what comes after in verse three, essentially, what we get is another message that we see throughout Scripture, which is just as I have blessed you, I want you to go and bless others just as I have loved you. So I want you to have love for one another. That's like we see that throughout throughout Scripture. We see it in New Testament, church language as well, right? We we replicate, we mirror what God has already done for us. We're to forgive others in the way that God has forgiven us. We're to love others in the way that God has loved us. And here is really no different. I will give you all of this so that you will then go and share it with other people. Abram, I don't want you to hoard it all to yourself and just think how lucky am I that God chose me. Look at all he's done for me, and you have in your own little worship party over here with your household. I want that to to fill you and invigorate blessing of other people with the abundance that I have blessed you. You go out and now do that for other people. Share it with other people. I want everybody to have a chance to experience this, and it should come through you. He says, I will bless those who bless you, him who dishonors you, I will curse and in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed as I bless you. So bless others share the abundance that you have received from me. I will bless your allies, but my hand will hinder those who dishonor you. My blessing is intended for and it will indeed reach all nations Abraham through your family line. And so we arrive at verses four through 20. So let me remind you point number one, respond appropriately to God's Word. Now we can get into verses four through nine first and understand look at Abraham's response. Okay, so first we see in verses four to six that Abraham obeyed. Abraham obeyed. We just heard that Yahweh, I am, spoke to Abram, and here we see starting in verse four, Abram simply listened and obeyed you. So Abraham went, as the Lord had told him,
20:06
You can't get much, like, much simpler than that, right? It's like, what do I really need to say? Like, why am I up here? Like, we could just, we could just read Genesis 12. God said something, and Abraham obeyed. We need to respond appropriately to God's word. Think, think about this for Abram for a moment. It tells us how old he was, right? He was 75 years old. He was an established man, like he'd been working, he'd been saving, he'd been accumulating, he'd been investing in relationships for 75 years of his life, and now all of a sudden, he's to let it go, and I'm going to take you somewhere else. I'm going to take you somewhere else. He'd been around the block a few times. So Abraham uprooted his whole household and he headed west, and they came to the land of Canaan, specifically, we're told, a place called Shechem. There were many unknowns when Abraham and his household set off. They didn't know their final destination. God. God hadn't told them where they would end up, yet. He just said, go to the land that I will show you at the end of verse one. He doesn't say, up and leave and go to Canaan. And when you get there, we'll check in. He says, I want you to go. I want you to leave all of this and you're going to go to the land that I will show you. Like he doesn't know where he's going to end up, yet. He doesn't know where that's going to be. So he heads off. He heads off. So there were there were uncertainties, there were unknowns. There were also improbabilities and impossibilities in what God had said, in which Abraham, though he didn't understand it, he would just need to trust God. For example, I'm 75 years old. My wife is barren and has never been able to have any kids, and yet you say you are going to make a great nation of me like that sounds impossible, right? But Abraham needed to trust. He needed to trust, and his action of upping and moving and obeying was an expression of his trust. He didn't know how it was all going to happen yet, but he listened and he obeyed. He trusted God. So just for interest sake, for those of you that want to know how hard of a journey this was Abram began in Haran. So if you remember the story, his father, initially, who would have been the head of their like clan or tribe, had decided, let's let's move and this, this wasn't uncommon for Abram. I don't know exactly what to call him, but he was kind of a nomad wandering. He had a farm that wandered with him. So really, in like that kind of life that he had, they needed to be wherever there was enough food for the animals to eat, to sustain to sustain the household and to sustain the farm. So Ip Man will be here for a time, but when they've eaten everything, then we need to move over here, and then we need to move over here. So it's a little bit of a nomadic lifestyle, kind of around and that was pretty common in Abraham's time. So his father, before he died, had been moving them up to this place called Haran. So if you're looking at me, it's more like this up. It was up the Euphrates River, and they were heading west, so they're in that kind of Middle East area. And then his father died while they were in Haran. So now all of a sudden, Abram, he becomes the main guy in the family, and it's up to him what happens next. And it's at that point that God appears to him and he starts speaking to him. So Haran, where they are when God speaks to him and tells him to go, is actually about 400 miles from where they end up in Shechem, okay, so they do this like they kind of go up like this, and then they go down like this. So they're just, they're going, they're obeying. They don't know when the journey is going to end. They don't know where the land is that God is going to say that this is the land, but the 400 miles that they traveled are. I don't really know where this is, but I looked it up on Google Maps. And about 400 miles from Spokane is Salem, Oregon. Do you guys know? Yeah, we got another. We had some of those first hour too. That's, I'm glad. So it's that's about 400 miles away and from everything I saw, it said, if they would go in like, average walking pace, and I assume they were going way less than average walking, probably walking pace. There was a lot of them, and there was animals and stuff, so I imagine it was a bit slower. But even if they were going average, it said it would take about a month for them to walk. And that's like, if you walk a solid amount of hours per day with the rest at the end, and then you do it every day, non stop for a month, that's about how long it would take. So that's a big task, right? Like, this is an easy thing that he's about to do. It's his whole household, it's the farm, it's the animals, it's the whole thing. It would have taken a long time and a lot of effort to do, but Abram obeyed. He listened to God and He obeyed. Now think about this, Abram and his household were in a really similar position to Moses, who recorded this story, and the Israelites who were Moses original audience, okay, those that Moses delivered this story to, in fact, it was almost the exact same situation, almost the exact same wilderness that they were wandering through, and they probably experienced a lot of the same temptations as well. As they were wondering these Israelites that were with Moses had just left everything that they knew, and they weren't really sure how the things in the future of where they were going. Like, how is this going to happen? Like, how are we going to get there? How are we going to be sustained? How are we going to get in there already people that live there? Like, we don't know how this is going to go, and it is probably similar things were happening for Abram and his household as they trekked as well. We don't get all of the details, so we can't read between the lines too much, but a very similar situation. So God's message to Moses and the Israelites that were with him in the wilderness is this, when God speaks, listen. When God speaks, obey, and when God speaks worship, no matter what he says, no matter how difficult it may seem, it will always work out best for you Israelites in the wilderness, if you listen to God, if you obey God, and if you worship God, and Abraham. Abraham is just the current illustration of this in chapter 12. Now, God doesn't speak to us face to face or in visions or in dreams, like we see it happen at times throughout the Old Testament and sometimes in the New Testament, because he's given us His Word. So what has God been communicating to you through his word? What has he been communicating to you through his word that you need to obey today? You maybe you're thinking, Well, I'd spend time in the Word, but I never really, like, I never, I don't even know if he really communicates anything to me, like, I never really take anything, like I read it, but I don't like it. I don't think he's communicating anything to me. I want to encourage you and all of us, really, whenever you go to God's word, anticipate that he's going to tell you something. Anticipate that he's going to instruct you, that he wants to instruct you through the passage that you're reading. So as you go anticipating that when you read the word, it makes you think about it differently when you're reading it, it makes you go to it and look, then for the instruction from his word. So you look for that instruction and then reform your life in obedience to it.
29:46
So Abraham listened, and he obeyed. Look at verses seven to nine, and we see that Abraham worshiped. Abraham worshiped here we see God comes good to something that he had promised. He'd said in verse one, i. He said he would show Abram the land that he would give to him to his descendants. And in verse seven, he does just that. And it's emphatic in the Hebrew that it was written in he's like this. This one is the land. This is it. This is the one I was telling you about. Here we are. You've arrived this. This is the land that I'm going to give to your descendant. And then notice who it is that God says He will give this land to. It's not to Abraham, but to his offspring. Certainly, Abraham's descendants would enjoy the land. But God here uses the word seed. Seed, the same word as is used in Genesis 315, that same seed, who God says to Adam and Eve will come and crush the head of the serpent, that same word seed, he then uses here and says to your seed, to your descendant, I will give this land. So again, certainly, Abrams descendants would live in the land and enjoy the land and get the benefit of the land, but a particular chosen descendant of Abraham would inherit this land and would rule over it and over the rest of Abraham's descendants within it. Now you can read the other covenants in Scripture. Here's a plug for the article that Dan wrote in the Faith Magazine, come on. Lynn, help me out. Living Faith Magazine, it came out this week. You can pick one of those up. John told you about it, but Dan has read an article in there about the covenants. And as the covenants come up throughout Scripture, they give you further details on who this chosen one would be, what he would be like, and the kinds of things he would do. So we won't get into that now, but look at it in your living faith magazine. Okay, I even had it written down Lynn Living Faith Magazine. So Abraham responds. Then we see his response here, right? God confirms this is the place. He confirms there will be a descendant who will inherit this. And Abraham's response is, he builds an altar, he worships God. And then we see again, he moves on, and he builds another altar, and he worships God again. So this act of building an altar and calling upon the name of Yahweh were acts of worship by Abram. It was an act of worship which involved him proclaiming the name of the Lord, declaring the greatness of God. It also expressed his dependence upon the Lord, having met with God, having heard from him, having realized his own frailties and his own inabilities, the only sane response for Abram was to call upon the Lord independence. So Abrams responses here, they weren't just him weighing up the options and the sim. Which 1am I going to do? Would it be better for me to stay in Haran with with all the people, or does God's option sound more appealing? Which? Which one shall I pick? I'll pick God, so now I'll go worship him. That's not what's happening here. Abraham had just encountered I am. He'd met with him, he'd heard from him, he'd spoken to him, and I am had changed his life. I have some experience with babies. Babies cry out instinctively. They don't sit there and sum up their needs or recognize their needs and then cry out because they realize they're frailty. There's something within them that just says, cry out when you're in discomfort, when there's some kind of discomfort, cry out. Now I was thinking through it as I was writing that, and I thought, You know what? It's not just babies like we're all like that too, really, aren't we like in our flesh? We don't assess our state and cry out because of our neediness. We just have desires and wants and we follow our impulses in a vain attempt to try and fulfill them. That's not what happened. Abraham here, it wasn't just this natural impulse to obey and worship God. He'd been living without God for his whole life. He'd been living according to his own impulses in his wisdom, but then God intervened in his life, and the moment that God revealed Himself to Abraham and spoke Abraham's life was changed. He'd had a real encounter with the true and living God. I am. God had opened his eyes to the truth. He now saw life through a different lens. When your eyes are fixed upon God, your perspective changes. All of a sudden, the things of this world seem less significant. We see our own weaknesses. We see our own need for God. It's like that song that we sing, Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full on his wonderful face, and the things of this earth will stroke will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. When we look at Christ, when we encounter God, everything else just falls away. That's what happened to Abraham here. And the only response was, I have to do it. I have to do it. I have to worship like this. This is, this is the that's why I say this is the only sane response from Abraham. Do you worship God? Do you worship God? Do you only obey Him? Because it seems like the best option. Do you only perform acts of worship because it's what you've been trained to do, or do you know him? Are your eyes fixed upon him? Does what you read, what you learn and what you hear about him, bring you to your knees so that the only sane response is obedience and worship. If you don't know him in this way, if your spiritual life feels dry and stale, pray to God for refreshment, and he'll give it. Take yourself to passages in the Bible like this, and look for truth that shows you how insignificant you are. It's really good to do that. Look for passages. They're not hard to find the reveal and highlight our humble estate as people, but how substantial and how glorious God is. That's what we need. We need a real life, Abraham like encounter with God, because that's what drives us to obedience and worship. So the second way we can walk with God, so we've looked at a an appropriate response. Number two, we need to depend upon God's faithfulness to his own word. Depend upon God's faithfulness to his own word. Verses 10 through 20. We see here Abraham. Abraham and the household, they're in a tough spot, right? He feared for his life, and he feared for his household on many levels, so he comes up with a plan that he thinks will provide the protection and security that they need. Verse 10 tells us there was a famine in the land, and the famine was so bad that they had to leave, and they had to go to Egypt, a foreign nation. And then Abraham comes to his wife just before they're going to enter, just before they get to border control in Egypt, and he says to her, Look, Sarah, you're a beautiful woman. You're a beautiful woman. I wonder what she's thinking as this like conversation is unfolding. She's kind of like,
39:49
Yeah, go on, go on, you're a beautiful woman. In fact, it gets better. In fact, you're so beautiful. I. Think when we cross the border into Egypt, everybody's going to see how beautiful you are, and then they're going to want to kill me because they're jealous and they want you. That's always like Abra Abram fears. Abram fears, we can't read between the lines too much, okay, but there's definitely fear going on there. It's like, I don't know, he seems like he's doing well with all the you're beautiful. Maybe the romance is lost a little bit here. I don't know if this was romantic or if this was panic by Abram, but definitely, when he gets to the they're gonna let you live and let me die. Abraham, you just made it selfish. Come on, like you just made it all about you. But that's not, that's not what this is about. He comes up with a plan verse 13, and apparently Sarah, she's she's alright with going along with it. It seems. Let's just say that you're my sister, and everything will be okay. Let's just say you're my sister. So verse 14 and 15, we get to and Abraham seems he seems pretty smart, right? It happens exactly the way that he anticipates, except for one important oversight, she's so beautiful, Pharaoh wants to take her as his own wife, as his own wife, Abrams pretend Sister is taken into the household of Pharaoh so let's put this into perspective a little bit. Okay, because sometimes you read the story and you tend to have this That's so dumb response. But I don't think we can really do that, because if you think about the scenario like, this is real life, hard stuff that they're going through, there's a famine, and if they don't walk 250 miles to Egypt with the whole farm, they're probably gonna die, is what they're thinking. Okay, then they get to Egypt, and legitimately, they fear like we're about to cross the border and they're going to kill me. What should we do? We need to make a plan. Like it's no joke, like they're actually worried that Abram is going to be killed. So they need to make a plan. I don't think it's wrong that Abram has this feeling of wanting to protect the household and like he doesn't want to be killed just for being married to Sarah, and then as well, once the plan goes into effect and Sarah is taken by Pharaoh Abrams, 75 years old, I'm thinking they probably be married for a long time. I don't know about the rest of you, but I know if that was me, I've only been married for 17 years, but if this happened to me and my wife was taken like, that's no joke, right? His fear probably then just multiplied, like they've taken my wife, they've taken my wife. So in one sense, in verse 16, Abram got what he wanted. He was alive and he was rich, but at what cost he had lost his wife to the most powerful man in the world. How's he gonna get her back? How's he gonna get her back? We get to verse 17, where God steps in and proves Himself faithful. First, we've already seen that God abundantly provides for Abram and his household, but we also see here that God's plan was not only for Abram verses one through three. They weren't just Abram. They had Sarah in consideration as well. So God afflicts Pharaoh and his household. He brings suffering upon them, because Pharaoh has taken Sarai Abrams wife, just as he said he would do back in verses one through three, to anyone who made themselves an opponent of Abram, knowingly or otherwise, apparently, God would oppose them. He would hinder them. His hand of judgment would come upon them. So God steps in and he proves Himself faithful. I. And then we see Pharaoh's response to the plague, to what God brings upon him. This is the IAP, the Ian's American paraphrase of verses 18 and 19. And it's called the Ian's American paraphrase, by the way, because I thought Ian's uninspired version, but I wanted to get American in there, because I'm trying to, I'm trying, I'm trying to be cultural with you guys, like I'm trying to, try to communicate in your language. So here's Ian's American paraphrase version in verse 18 and 19. This is essentially what Abraham says, or this is what Pharaoh says to Abram. He calls Abram in and he's like, dude, listen, Pharaoh called Abram and said, What have you done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say she's my sister? So I took her from my wife like I think that encapsulates it, right, dude. So he sends Abram away alive with everything his wife, his household, and all the riches that he'd gained along the way, which was a lot, according to two verses later in chapter 13, verse two, where we're told that Abraham was very rich in livestock, silver and gold, and you just imagine like as they're leaving, what did Their faces look like? Isn't it, like it's pretty wild, like this is weird mixture of sorrow and fear and joy and relief, like they're back together again and they're going away, and somehow they've gotten everything that they need. And he's almost lost his wife, but now he's got her back again. It's an emotional time. I think we could say the least. So a few things to apply. Number one, and I think this is obvious, it doesn't need a lot to say, but Abraham lied to try and accomplish something good. We don't know fully what his intentions were, apart from preserving his own life. Maybe he was thinking, I need to help God work out his plan that he said to me in verses one through three, and if I die, that can't happen, so I need to do something to keep myself alive. I don't know. Maybe he was thinking that. Maybe he wasn't. But bottom line is his lie. Lies don't justify the ends, so lying is wrong. It wasn't the right thing to do. Number two, I'd say. And these are just kind of side applications that I think we think about as we're reading through, but they're not really the main thing, and we'll get to that after number two is you read particularly the last paragraph, and you read it and you're like, wait, Abraham just did everything wrong, and he walked away rich. He got everything. So this is not an excuse to do, to do whatever you want, and God is going to bless me anyway. It's also not an excuse of, you know what? God just wants to make us rich. He wants to give us everything we want. This is God's interaction with one individual, Abraham, and it's a unique interaction to Abraham, between God and Abraham, okay, and I think it falls in line somewhat with what we see in Romans five and Romans six, where Paul's laying out the foundational truths of the gospel, which obviously includes the grace of God to save people in spite of their works. So Paul anticipates the natural question from that is, what should I sin all the more then so that grace can abound? Like Shall I keep sinning, so that I can experience more of God's grace? And what Paul says is, by no means, certainly not. No, no, don't do that. You need to walk in line with God and His righteousness and in obedience to Him, third side application, and
49:48
it's, again, not really the point of the text, but it's an important side issue for husbands and wives if you want to protect your marriage from these kinds of difficulties. And then I want you, I want to invite you to come to the family ministry Weekender in two weeks, where we are going to talk about the cultivating joy within our marriages and strengthening them and glorifying God in the realm of sexual intimacy within our marriages. So we've got speakers coming in to speak to us Friday night, Saturday morning. There's a sign up on the church website. I strongly encourage you to come couples of all ages. Please be there. Alright? So back to the passage to be sure this message is not a Hey, be like Abraham. Message like that's that's not why this passage is here. You know what? We're already like Abraham. Sometimes we obey and sometimes we don't. Sometimes we do the right thing, sometimes we do the wrong thing. Sometimes we take things into our own hands when we shouldn't. We're already like Abraham. The message is our lives are full of waves, often self inflicted, but God is secure. So come to him, abide in Him and rest in Him. He keeps doing no matter what Abraham does, God keeps doing what he said he would do in verses one through three. He stays consistent. It's not dependent on Abraham and his works. It's dependent upon God and His faithfulness. There's something bigger going on in this passage than Abraham, and there's something bigger going on here than us. God is working out his plan of redemption. He's bringing life and new creation to things damaged by sin and death. The consequences of the fall and his work is in no way dependent upon us. Yes, sometimes he obeyed, sometimes he didn't, but God always remained faithful to the promises that he made, and he will there is security and assurance here for us, isn't there your salvation, the blessings God has promised to those who believe are not dependent upon us. They're not dependent upon you. You can't earn salvation and you can't lose salvation. It is God who chooses, it's God who promises, it's God who gives, and it's God who works salvation through His Son, so you can depend upon him to remain faithful to His word. He always does it. That's the pattern that's being given to the Israelites. As I've said, there's great similarities between Abrams story and the story of the Israelites who would freed from the captivity of the Egyptians. Moses is preaching on the history of Israel and her patriarchs, people like Abraham to the current nation, now wandering in the wilderness after their freedom from captivity, and it's very important for them. Essentially, he's telling them, God's been doing this for years. God's been calling, promising, providing, being faithful for years, for years, and Abraham is just the current example. I will give you more. I'll give you tons more. Look. We'll go all the way through Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus. I'll keep giving you examples. He keeps doing it, and that's true for us too. He has a proven track record. So I'll walk with God of appropriate response to and dependence upon God should be motivated by our understanding of who he is. All of our lives don't go the way we want, necessarily. We suffer the effects of sin, our own sin and just sin in general, regularly. But know that there's something bigger going on. Get out of the My will be done, my kingdom come mindset, and into the Your will be done, your kingdom come mindset. Walk with God in appropriate obedience and dependence, knowing that he has provided his son and will rescue those who trust in him from this decaying world, He will deliver you now for eternity in salvation from sin and its consequences and is. Delivering you from bondage to your sin, he can break it. So there's no doubt that we experience miserable conditions. God wants you to bring them to him and to trust him with them and stop trying to do it on your own, let's pray together.
55:27
Father, we're so thankful for the example of Abram and the opportunity that it presents to us to know you understand your character and who you are in more depth, and I pray that it would motivate us to a right response of obedience and worship to you and to what you speak to us. And I pray that we would depend upon you because of who you are, because of your proven track record. Pray that we would do this to the glory of your name in Christ's name. Amen.
Ian is the Youth Pastor of Faith Bible Church. He and his wife, Claire, have 5 kids and recently spent a few years serving in a small church in England.
View Resources by Ian Rush
