Failure And Faithfulness

Take your Bibles this morning and turn to Genesis chapter 12. Genesis chapter 12 and we'll begin in our text this morning in verse 10, reading through chapter 13, verse 2. Genesis chapter 12, verse 10, through 13, verse 2. 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 Sarai, 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 will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake. When Abram 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 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, Abram's wife. So Pharaoh called Abram and said, What is this you've done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say she's 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. So Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had, and lot with him into the Negev. Now Abram was very rich in livestock and silver, and in gold. Let's pray.

Our God and our Father, we thank You again for Your Word. It is clear to us. It brings us into Your very presence. It shines the spotlight on our sin. It shines the light on our path that we may know how to live. I would pray today, Father, that this again would not just be some history lesson for us about Your people, but this would truly be something that would cause us to live differently We thankful for your word Help us now as we listen to you as you speak to us here In Jesus name amen John Stossel from the ABC Network has decided to do a piece on people who live by faith and lo and behold, you're one of the people that he calls.

You're one of the people he wants to interview. So you're sitting in the living room. He looks at you with the cameras running, and he says, do you trust God? And you say, yes, of course I do. I am a Christian. You say with great emphasis, because you know this may be the opportunity to tell millions of people about the Lord.

And John says, yes, yes, I've heard that from dozens of people, but tell me this. Tell me this. how have give me some examples of how you've trusted God from last year last month yesterday tell me about that tell me how you've trusted God your mind whirs it's going a thousand miles an hour you start thinking let's see last year was the car accident and the police report said that the conditions were the reason why I went off the road but actually I was fooling with the radio and took my eyes off the road and that's the real reason why I went off the road but but then if I would have told that to the insurance company. I'd been out thousands and thousands of dollars, and I'd be probably without a car.

So, well, of course, yeah, I know God's promise about he's going to take care of us if we seek his righteousness and kingdom, but that was a lot of money. That was a lot of money. And then all of a sudden you start thinking about your doctor's appointment last week where the doctor gave you some really, really bad news. He told you you got this degenerative bone disease that you're going to have for the rest of your life. and man you just panicked just gripped your heart and you were grumpy all week with everybody that you met because the only thing you could think of was how your life had changed and even yesterday as you're reading in second corinthians you read so we do not lose heart though our our outer self is wasting away our inner self is being renewed day by day especially as the text goes on to say as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are not seen but god this is serious business.

And then when your wife said to you, honey, remember the Lord's promise and we know that for those who love God all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose and you shot back oh stop being so trivial Don just shoot Bible verses at me Then of course there was yesterday when the temptation seized you to look at that very attractive woman at work and you knew you shouldn't, but you did in a way that wasn't right and even what Jesus said didn't even cross your mind when he said, blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God. You refocus again on Stossel who's sitting in front of you and you say, well, John, this whole idea of living by faith is kind of complicated. It's not easy to describe, right?

Well, it is easy to describe. You can find it described for us all through the Bible. And one of the texts that we can look at is the one that we've looked at this morning, that we've read through already. Here is a story of faith. But it's not the story of one exercising faith. It actually is the story of one who lacks faith.

And that's Abram. Now, we've already seen Abram exercise tremendous faith already in the text right before this one. When God calls him to leave his home, to leave everything he's familiar with, to leave it all and go to a land that he hadn't heard of, to go to a land that God had promised him, and he radically obeyed God on the basis of the promises that God made.

And he believed those promises and he left. But in our text this morning, we see how this man of great faith forgets those promises and embarks on a course of action that reveals his lack of faith. Now if you really want to get to the point of this text, the main character is not Abram. It's God. He's the main character. And it's God who remains true.

It's God who is faithful to His purpose and His promises. now what does God intend to do with this text this is the question I ask every week every week when I sit down to look at the text I'm always asking this what I consider the most important question you ever ask of a text and that is why did God put it here what does he intend to do with this text God intends to motivate you God doesn't intend to just give you a history story or a story from long ago and far away. God intends to motivate you to live by faith To help you live a life trusting God and believing His promises He intends to get you ready for that interview. So that you can tell someone how you do live by faith.

Now as you read the story, two questions pop up. Two questions come to mind as you read the story. The first is this. What happens when you do not trust God? What happens when you do not live by faith? That's the first question that comes up as you look at this text.

What happens when you don't live by faith or when you don't trust God? And the second question is similar. Can you trust God? Can you trust Him? Those are the two questions that come to mind. So let's look at the first. what happens when you do not trust God?

What happens when that's the case? Now the whole story of Abraham, as we read from this chapter all the way out to chapter 25, when you read the entire story of Abraham, it is propelled, it is moved along, that whole story is moved along by Abraham's faith or the lack of that faith through a number of conflicts that test his faith. So this whole story of Abraham is the story of faith and how he enters into these different conflicts that test his faith all the way along.

So his faith, the story of his faith is what moves this story along. Now let's look at where he is here. Abrams just entered the land having come to Canaan believing the promises of God. But no sooner has he pitched his tent in this land of promise when he finds the land unable to support him and his family. What hope then is there for this great nation that God has promised in this land?

It can't even support us. We can't live here. At the very beginning, the whole project starts to fall apart. Abram's faith is at once put to the test and he falters. And he leaves and goes to Egypt. Just before he enters Egypt, he finds that he's confronted with this insurmountable problem.

It's this. It's set up by this one issue. His 65-year-old wife is drop-dead gorgeous. Okay? That's what sets up the problem. I mean, she's 65, but she looks like she's 32.

Right? At her prime, as it were. All right, don't even go with that. As soon as that came out of my mouth, I thought, oh boy, I'm in trouble now with you. She is beautiful for 65. All right?

And he knows that if some Egyptian wants her, he's going to kill him to get her. And if he dies, what's going to happen to the promise? If he dies, what's going to happen to all these things that God has said. There's going to be descendants from you. And you're going to inherit this land. What happens to that if he's dead?

Right? Insurmountable problem. God's purposes won't be carried out if I'm dead. And so he comes up with a plan. He says, look, we'll tell everyone you're my sister. Now let's get something straight right now.

Abram was not willing to sell Sarai's, to sell her honor just to save his own skin. I don't think that's what he's doing. If he told everyone she was his sister, then any potential suitor would have to come and negotiate with him for her hand. All right? And that might buy them some time. All right?

Keep him alive. Give them some time to get out of trouble. In other words, his reasoning goes something like this. If they know you're my wife, the only way to get to you is to kill me. But if they think you're my sister, then they'll at least have to negotiate. That might give us some time to deal with any problems that'll come up.

But he hadn't counted on something. There's one thing he hadn't counted on, and it happened. You know what it was? Someone gets interested in his wife who doesn't have to negotiate. He is the king. He is the ruler of Egypt.

He doesn't have to negotiate with anyone. His staff is out there like bureaucrats always are out there And they see this woman and they say man she is a knockout and they go tell pharaoh this so pharaoh says okay so he takes sarah and makes her part of his harem all right makes her part of his harem look with all his planning abram ends up absolutely what powerless All the plans he's made gets him in a pickle. Now, Pharaoh's not entirely unreasonable.

What does he do? If you look at the text, you will notice in verse 16 that he graciously gives Abram a dowry for his sister. You know, at this point, I can almost see Abram going, Ah! How did we get to this point? How did it get so complicated? How in the world did we end up here?

This wasn't supposed to happen this way. I'm smarter than that. Well, Abram, with all his brilliance, lacked one particular thing that's absolutely essential. You know what it is? It's faith. He lacked faith.

Now remember, you've got to remember what God's promises are at this point, which we saw a couple weeks ago in verses 2 and 3 and verse 7. Let's look at those. And I will make of you a great nation. 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.

Verse 7, Then the Lord appeared to Abraham and said, To your offspring I will give this land. It is the land of Canaan. Now what had He promised him? He promised him a great nation. a great name that will prove to be a blessing, a channel of blessing to all the nations, the land of Canaan, but most importantly, he had promised that he would be honored and protected.

Anyone who dishonors you, what? I will curse. That doesn't mean God's going to say, blankety-blank-blank-blank-blank. It means he's going to deal with them. Alright? He's going to deal with that person.

That's what he means by cursing. He's going to deal with that person. He's offering Abram protection. Even though Yahweh had promised him that he would bless the blessers and curse those who crossed him, that is he would protect Abram Abram still is manipulating and lying to guarantee his safety and his wife safety In other words, Abram leaves Canaan and devises his schemes as if God had not promised anything, or at the very least, he didn't believe what God had said.

Now before we start looking down our noses at poor Abram, let's think how many times do we forget the promises of God and act as if he hadn't said anything. Now notice, I want you to notice here what the absence of faith produces. What does the absence of faith produce? Well, the first thing it produces is a payoff, a reward. You say, what? Yeah.

Yeah. Adam gets wealthier in the process, does he not? I want you to notice something. And I think these phrases are parallel on purpose. Notice verse 13. Say you are my sister that it may go well with me because of you and that my life may be spared for your sake.

Now look down at verse 16. And for her sake, Pharaoh, what? Dealt well with Abram. Do you see what's going on here? Do you see the parallel statements? I'm going to lie so it goes well with me.

He lies and it did go well with him. He got richer. The question is, but at what cost? Right? At what cost? What did it cost him?

It cost him his wife. It cost him all kinds of things. Here's the thing you need to remember. You know, we kind of say, well, I don't have much faith. Well, I wasn't, you know, I didn't believe like I should. Oh, poor me, shame on me.

Here's one thing we need to remember. The lack of faith will lead to the birth of sin. The lack of faith will lead to the birth of sin. So when you're not living by faith, or when you compromise your trust in God, when you're not trusting Him like you should, It's not as if there aren't any horrible consequences. The thing is, whenever there is a lack of faith, it inevitably gives birth to sin.

You will then start sinning in some other ways Notice what happens here Let list them Let think about this Have you ever observed your garden When you go to your garden and you don't plant your seeds, if you don't plant your potatoes, your tomatoes, your carrots, your beets, anything, what happens to that ground? It's just full of weeds, right? The same thing is true when you are not living by faith.

You don't do anything, it'll fill up with noxious weeds of sin. Notice Abraham here. Notice the boatload of sin that he harvested. Let's just go through it. Fear of man. That's incompatible with faith.

He's afraid of man. Lying. There you go, lying. Thinking of himself more than others. Right? He's thinking of himself more than his wife.

Putting others in danger. Silence. When he should have spoken up. When Pharaoh made his move, he should have spoken up. But he didn't. Why not?

He didn't have faith that God would take care of him. Let's not forget this one. The loss of his wife! He loses his wife. Isn't that interesting? When sin enters, he loses the intimacy he had with his wife.

Just like Adam and Eve. There's the loss of the voice of God. You don't see anywhere God involved in this text, do you? It's all Abram. At least speaking to Abram. There's no building of altars.

There's no worship going on. Instead of being a channel of blessing to this nation, he becomes a channel of what? Affliction and plague. And what I think the most important, later, he brings rebuke on himself from a pagan king and obscures the glory of God. All of that follows because he did not live by faith. well if that's what the lack of faith looks like then what would the life of faith look like in this situation let's flip the tables what would a life of faith look like Abram would have been truthful about Sarah he would have told the truth believing that God would protect him.

Believing that if Pharaoh ever chose to dishonor him by taking his wife, God would deal with it. But that's kind of iffy, isn't it? No, no. No, I've got to make plans here. I can't just leave that to God, right? If Pharaoh would have left Abram and Sarah alone, he would have been blessed in some way.

God would have blessed him. But if Pharaoh would have made any moves towards Sarah, dishonoring Abram, he would have been cursed and Abram's family protected. Now all that seems impossible. You say, well God, yeah, you said you protect me, but we're going into tough country here. We're going into rough country. I've got to cover all my bases here, right?

It just seems impossible, God, that that's going to happen. Exactly. Exactly right. That's the essence of faith. Believing God's promises when it looks impossible. There's a gap.

We're living in the gap. You know what that gap is? Here's what reality looks like. Here's what God promises. And there's a gap between the two. They don't line up.

You're going into a tough country. You're going into a place where they're in the habit of taking beautiful women. You've got a really gorgeous wife. However, however, I'll protect you. Well, boy, you're living in the gap. Are you going to believe God or not?

See? That's the essence of faith. Let me ask you this. What does the lack of faith look like in your life? What does the lack of faith look like in your life? What sin do you see in your life because you don't believe God's promises?

What are some of the sins invading your life right now? Are you full of fear? untruth and deception disobedience, disrespect envy and covetousness impurity you know what I'm convinced take whatever sin you can name trace it back to its roots and you will find a lack of faith you will find somewhere in the mix that you're not trusting God in some way if you're coveting if you're saying I gotta have that you have not believed what God has promised I meet all your needs If He hasn given you that then you don need it But you not believing You think you have to have it Alright? What about dishonor and disrespect, for example?

Some of you young people. You say, I don't want to obey my parents. They're fools. They might be fools. Let's not even argue that point. Let's just assume for the sake of argument, they are fools!

Do you believe that God's working for your good through foolish people? He says he is. He says he is. He makes the promise. I'm using everything for your good. If you're a believer and you've got stupid parents, he's using stupid parents for your good.

You're not believing God. Whatever it is. Unless faith grows, sin will blossom. I'll say that again. Unless faith grows, sin will blossom. Where are you not trusting God?

Now, this narrative was first heard by the Israelites as they're making their way to the Promised Land. And I don't know if you've noticed, but there's a lot of parallels between their experience and Abram and Sarai's, okay? Like them, right? You know the story. We're talking over 400 years in the future now when Israel is leaving Egypt. What do you notice?

Here's what you notice. Like Israel, Sarai and Abraham were threatened in Egypt. They're in danger in Egypt, just like the children of Israel. Like Israel, the promised seed was in danger. If Sarai remained in the king's harem, the promised seed would not come. Would it?

That's done. It's done. There's no descendants of Abram any longer. And with the children of Israel, the promise was endangered with the killing of all the male babies. The future of that promise was in danger at that point. Like Israel, Sarai and Abram left with great wealth supplied by the Egyptians.

You remember what it says in Exodus that God said to Moses, tell the Egyptians to give you stuff. And they just poured on all this wealth as they left, right? Same thing happened to Abram. Like Israel Sarah and Abram were sent out of the land Get out of here We want you gone Shoot Get out Okay Why Why are those parallels there? Those are written for a purpose.

To show the people of God that although those events happened some 400 years earlier, the same God was at work and could be trusted. That's the point. God can be trusted. You can trust God. So Moses wrote this narrative to drive you to this next question, the second question. Can you trust God?

Can you trust God? Well, of course you can. See, we all know the answer, right? Can you trust God? And the Sunday school answer is, yes! Yeah, I can trust God.

God's all these things. And then we walk out of here and start worrying about if we're going to make the bills and we start worrying about all these other things, right? Can you trust God? Well, let's look back at our stories. It picks up again in verse 17. God sends some kind of a plague or some kind of a sickness that overwhelms Pharaoh's household.

Now, I don't know how it all played out, but one possible scenario is this. It struck everybody in Pharaoh's household except Sarah. and so she was able to tell the king what was what well i'll tell you what i think's going on pharaoh i'm actually married to abram and god brought this on you well when he gets all this put together he sends her back to abram summons or summons abram into court and says to him what do you think you're doing? What are you trying to ruin me?

And then what does he do? He expels the family from his kingdom and even sends some officials to make sure they get out. What becomes obvious in this story is simply this, that although Abram did not believe the promises of God, God remained faithful to his promises you know what he does here he's protecting Abram and Sarah he is protecting them now here's the problem far from safeguarding the promise Abram's crafty strategy nearly destroyed the whole plan or so it appears it looks like he in trying to keep the plan going almost destroys it He's gone from the promised land.

Sarai was lost to Pharaoh's harem, looking like she would not be the carrier of the promised seed. And instead of blessing the nations, he becomes the source of affliction and plague, right? It doesn't look like, at first, like God's promises are going to come about. But listen, our sin can never thwart the gracious purposes of God. Do you believe that?

Your sin cannot thwart the gracious purposes of God. Despite Abram's failure, God remained faithful to his promise of protection. He protected them both. despite Abram's failure, God remained steadfast in accomplishing His purpose, which was what? The purpose of blessing the nations through Abram's seed. Alright? He remained steadfast to that gracious purpose.

It was not going to be thwarted by anyone. Can you trust God can you trust God? yeah, you can trust God because nothing will keep him from accomplishing his gracious purposes, nothing's going to keep him from accomplishing his purposes the God who called the universe into existence by the very breath of his mouth is not going to be foiled by the blundering and the sin of his human servants they can't mess it up circumstances folly even sin cannot stand in the way of God accomplishing his purpose of blessing the nations through the seed of Abram let me ask you do you ever think you've botched things up so badly that God won't ever use you again do you ever think you've botched it up so bad maybe at work you've done something at work and you say man I've destroyed everything I don't have a platform to stand on. Maybe it's with your children or your marriage.

Maybe you think you'll never be suitable for any ministry. You cannot frustrate the grace of God. So, is the lesson then that you can be lazy or fudgy? Without circumstances, God's going to win anyway. Is that the lesson? No, not at all.

The lesson is this. God's fame, God's glory, finds the greatest expression when His people exercise faith. When they live by faith. When they believe the promises of God. Then the glory of God shines like a beacon in the darkness. That's when God is seen.

And God's going to bring Abram face to face with difficulties over and over and over again until he learns the lesson. Isn't it interesting that God's not just interested in accomplishing His purpose, but He's interested in teaching us how to live and moving us and testing us until we get it. It's kind of like the trainer with a horse. He brings this horse to a fence and the horse balks.

That trainer's going to bring that horse to the fence time after time after time again until he finally gets the point. Jump it. Alright? So the lesson is God will teach you faith. He will teach you to live by faith because that's when His fame is most gloriously seen. You see, always remember, we live in a gap The gap between what God promises and what is reality If I tell the truth I lose my job But then God has promised that if you seek His kingdom and His righteousness, what?

He'll meet your needs. What if I don't get the promotion because I decided to spend time with my family as God intends me to do? Do you believe His promises? This marriage seems like it's going to kill me. But if I remain faithful to it and obey Jesus, Jesus promises me an abundant life. There's the gap.

What is and what God promises. My neighbor is always trying to take advantage of me, but God promises that I will experience peace, at least inwardly, if I do good whenever they do evil and when I bless them whenever they curse me. seems impossible but that's what god promises my body aches all the time with this chronic disease that i have but god promises joy when i focus on the things that are not seen rather than the thing whether than rather than the things that are seen you see we live in that gap we live in the gap that says you have to believe But you know what? Someone else lived in that gap.

Someone else lived in that gap before we ever did The gap between promise and reality The one who has promised all the nations as his inheritance came to his own people and they did not receive him The exalted Son of God pictured in Daniel chapter 7 is sitting in judgment over all the nations, stood before the Sanhedrin in judgment and was condemned. Unlike Abraham who lied to save his life, Jesus told the truth knowing. he would lose his. The one who was promised to rule the nations with an iron rod was scourged by Roman soldiers.

The only one who was sinless, the only human being who was ever sinless in the entire history of the world was hoisted up on a cross, condemned as a criminal. You want to see someone who lived in the gap between promise and reality, you look at Jesus. is God going to keep his promises to his son? Yeah. How do I know? He raised him from the dead. And so it is that you have to live by faith.

You have to trust God's promises every day. You have to live by the promises of God, not by the reality that you see. You live by what God has said. And the only reason you can do that, someone else lived in that gap and died. and was faithful in dying for you so that you have the power and the freedom to live by faith And because of that faithful death you now have the power to live by that faith.

And you can count on the promises of God because He raised His Son. So everything He says, everything He promises, He will do. See, you can trust the God of Abraham. because he's the father of the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, thank you for your word today. Again, Father, I earnestly pray that none of us, including me, would leave here without thinking, where am I not living by faith?

And then crying out to you for the grace to live trusting your promises. God help us to be truly a people of faith that would stand out in a dark world that lives by lying and manipulation and scheming and all the sophisticated plans that man can devise in order to make things right help us instead to live by faith Father we're thankful for your word which holds up to us these truths and holds up to us the very son of God who lived by faith and died by faith that we would live by faith. We thank you in his name.

Amen.