While all mankind makes mistakes and experiences personal failure, it is God's desire that invaluable lessons are learned. The last series of messages entitled "Recovering from Failure" is intended to show how it is possible to return to God and reaffirm commitment to Him, to understand more fully God's abundant faithfulness to the repentant believer and to focus on practical steps in pursuing righteousness.See the Marriage Series Description for more information on this lesson.
How do we recover from sin?
How do we come back from sin once we’ve refused to trust God, once we’ve taken off on our own, once we’ve exposed our family to the danger and pain that sin brings, once we’ve revealed our true character and been caught in an effort to deceive or misguide others?
Suppose you decided to go for the gold, and determined that you had to deceive to do this. Suppose you saw a tremendous opportunity to make a ton of money. The opening was there, all it required was for you to be clever and take advantage of the situation. You were committed to Christ, i.e., you believed in Him and are counting on Him for eternal life. Your faith was known and evident to your wife, and both of you were seeking to obey Him and walk by faith in Him. Then came a hard time when your security was threatened, when it looked as if all you had built up was going to be used up because of these difficult moments. The market for your previous opportunity dried up, virtually without warning. It was going well, but orders seemed to slow down, at first almost imperceptibly, and then in a big rush.
You stood on the edge of a total wipe out; your assets were melting away faster than anyone could have possibly imagined and you had to do something or all would have been lost. You had always given God the credit for your success. “I’ve been blessed” was your way of saying, ‘God has done it all for me.’” But now He didn’t seem to be doing anything to help you.
Then you had an idea.
It wasn’t that a door was opened for you; it wasn’t that you felt a leading of any kind; it wasn’t that you had really spent a huge amount of time seeking God. Of course you prayed, as you had always prayed. But you didn’t set aside some time to seek Him out, to be in the Word, to fast and pray. You had never done that before; you had never needed to do that before.
You had worked, worked hard, prayed for help in a simple sort of way, read the Bible at times, usually with the help of some devotional booklet that made more sense to you than the Bible, and went after it, using your cleverness and business smarts to make it, and make it you did. So now you sit down and look for some opportunity in the midst of this terrible biblical famine.
Up until now you had always attempted to follow God and to obey Him in all that you did. But now He wasn’t delivering, and you faced the loss of everything in the time of the greatest need in your life.Then came this opportunity. Well, it wasn’t exactly an opportunity; it was more like an idea that could be turned into an opportunity with some cleverness on your part. It was something you could do from your home even.
All you had to do was to reach out and create a new dimension to your network, a dimension of the greatest and most powerful people you could ever reach, but you could do it. You had the ability to relate to such people because you were already relating to a few of them in your current situation. But this idea would take you to the very top, in touch with the most powerful people in your world. There was just one problem: to do this you would have to deceive these people by claiming something about your credentials was true that wasn’t and you would have to involve your wife in this deception because she was essential to the accomplishing of your plan. She has great social skills, makes a tremendous impression, and is worth ten times her weight in gold to this business idea you have.
So you do it, and you prosper. You come out better than you have in any other business deal. But then Mr. Big, the Biggest of the Big, figures out your scheme and discovers your deception. He confronts you publicly, kicks you out of the deal, and forces you to leave the business. You are certainly done in his circles.
Now you stand unmasked, rebuked for your deception, shamed as a man and a husband, and forced out of this business you had dreamed up. Now you stand rebuked for your deception by a man who has no commitment to Christ whatsoever.
Now you must put the pieces together again. Oh, you did fine. Your wealth is stable and secure. Your wealth is greater than ever. You are richer than you ever could possibly have been. Even in your deception you are forced to admit God has blessed you. But you have sinned and are a moral failure.
How do you return? How do you come back to God? What do you do when you are forced to return from sin?
This is exactly the question we come to this morning in Abraham’s life.
This is exactly where Abraham is as we come upon him today. He has been rebuked by Pharaoh for his deception, together with Sarah, which has made him rich and delivered him from famine in the place where God had put him and where he committed before God to stay. He has been driven from Pharaoh’s presence and kicked out of Egypt.
And now he must recover from his sin. This leads us to principle #3 in our study of Marriage God’s way. We have seen principles one and two:
Obey God at Home No Matter How Tough It Gets
and
Trust God for Career and Financial Success.
Now we see principle #3.
Learn from Your Sins.
And in this we see three R’s, three words beginning with R that help us understand how we can learn from our sins.
The first word is RETURN.
The second word is REALIZE.
And the third word is REFUSE.
We begin with our first word, RETURN.
1. Abraham left Egypt and went into the Negev, i.e., the wilderness in the southern part of the land God had promised him, the land of Canaan (Genesis 15:1-2).
a. He brought all that belonged to him along with his nephew, Lot who was like a son to him (Genesis 15:1).
b. He also brought all he had gained in Egypt which was so great that the writer notes that he was very rich in live-stock, silver, and gold (Genesis 15:2).
2. But Abraham doesn’t settle in the Negev where he had lived before he went to Egypt (Genesis 15:3).
a. Instead he goes further north, some distance north of what will some day be Jerusalem, near to a place that Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, will call Bethel.
Where is this journey taking him? Why does he seem to head straight for Bethel?
b. He doesn’t just go anywhere; he’s headed for a particular place in his journey, a place pinpointed with specific accuracy as being between Bethel and Ai.
c. There is one key phrase that tells us all” “. . . where his tent had been at the beginning.”
The beginning of what we ask.
The beginning of his walk with God in the promised land.
The spot between Bethel and Ai is the last place where we saw Abraham before he journeyed to the Negev and then to Egypt, the spot where Abraham was last in touch with God.
3. It was there that he honored God and made his commitment to God public.
a. It was in that specific spot that Abraham built and altar and called on the name of the Lord (Genesis 12:8)
b. This wasn’t the first time Abraham had built an altar.
c. He first built and altar a few miles to the north of this spot in Shechem (Genesis 12:6-7)
d. But he had done something different at Bethel, he had called upon the name of the LORD. (Genesis 12:8)
e. This means he had publicly proclaimed his commitment to the Lord in the presence of those who lived in the land around him, the Canaanites mentioned in (Genesis 12:6)
f. This means he had declared himself to be a follower of the Lord who made the heavens and the earth, that he had publicly declared his total faith and trust in this God.
g. Then he had moved on and gone into Egypt with his clever plan to save and increase his assets.
4. Now he’s back, back to the place where he had proclaimed his commitment to the Lord and he does this same thing again (Genesis 13:4).
a. Perhaps he confessed his failure.
b. Perhaps he told others of God’s faithfulness to him despite his unfaithfulness.
Whatever he did, he recommitted himself to God.
5. When he built his altars, Abraham took a public stand for God in the presence of those who dwelt in the land.
a. He worshipped God, exalting Him and extolling His character, His faithfulness, and His loyalty; He declared the greatness of God.
b. He gave thanksto God for safety, blessing, and even protection now that he had sinned.
Even his sin did not nullify God’s faithfulness to him. We, too, can say this, but we don’t have the same guarantees as Abraham. God has not promised to bless us in the same way He promised to bless Abraham, and we may end up broken and shamed because of our sin.
c. He expressed his submission to God after his own acts of independence and self reliance.
He had been anything but submissive to God when he hit his hard times in the Negev. He had taken off on his own to solve his own problems.
d. He declared his dedicationto God as the exclusive object of his dependence and trust.
He is saying that he never again will act as he did by going to Egypt. He will trust God alone for his financial security and career success.
e. He made an assertion of the rule of God, an assertion that there is only one true God, no matter how many other gods might be worshipped in this land.
What did Abraham do to recover from sin?
He returned to the last place where he had been in touch with God and recommitted his life to Him.
When we take over our careers and decide we can do it on our own and leave God behind, we must RETURN TO GOD.
This is exactly what we must do when we wander away from God and our trust in Him.
1. Now there are many ways to fail.
a. We don’t have to deceive to fail.
b. We can be scrupulously honest (many unbelievers are) and still be in charge of our careers.
c. We can see the fruit of our independence in different ways than Abraham did.
d. It may not be that the rich and powerful rebuke us.
e. To the contrary, they may welcome us into their clubs and circles and societies.
f. It may be in our families that we see the fruit of our independence and ambition.
g. It may be in our bodies that we feel the pain of our drivenness and control.
h. There are many ways to fail when it comes to our trust in God.
2. However we find out about it, there is a decision we must make.
How do we return to God?
1. Return to the place of commitment when you were depending on Him, to the place where you said you would follow Him no matter what.
2. This may take you many years back in your life, back to your teenage years before you had any real idea of what the commitment you were making would mean to you.
3. This may take you back to when you first married and you and your mate committed yourselves to live only God’s way.
4. This may take you back to a previous career struggle when you realized the futility of your own efforts.
5. Take a block of time, a week-end or a week or two weeks, and think back across you life.
Go back to the very place where you made your commitment, even as Abraham did. Go to the place where you built your spiritual altar, to the camp or the conference center or the church or the home or wherever it was. Go back to the sights and sounds and smells and feelings and even some of the people who surrounded you at that time. If you cannot go back physically, go back mentally or go back electronically over the telephone or the tape recorder or the computer to visit the very place where you first made your commitment.
Consider what it has meant for you to be in control of your life. Think through the grace of God in giving you the gifts and abilities and education and opportunities and experience to get where you are. Think through what He has done and what you have done with what He has done. Remember and repent and confess.
Go back to the passages that meant so much to you at that time and review their meaning for you. Read them in the light of where you are now and what you now know they must mean in your life. Reaffirm their new meaning in you life.
Spend time in prayer confessing, acknowledging your independence and God’s faithfulness, and giving yourself to Him once again.
Do what Abraham did: go back to your spot between Bethel and Ai.
Next,
1. Look at your life as you now know it.
Look at your opportunities.
Look at your family.
Look at your possessions.
Look at your successes.
Look at your failures.
Look at what brought you to this point in life.
Look at it all with the mature understanding and judgment that you now have.
2. Think through what you are now doing.
Make this decision with the full knowledge of what it means for you.
Don’t make it with the naive enthusiasm of youth.
Make it with the full understanding of adulthood.
Now make a full commitment to God with a full understanding of what the altar between Bethel and Ai means in your life, even as Abraham did.
1. Hold a public event in your home in which you invite in those who have a right to be there and declare that you are going to trust God no matter what.
2. You may not know all that this means, but you are going to rely on Him for your security and well-being, no matter what.
3. Be humble about this.
Acknowledge your fear that you will fail God again.
Invite those who know the Lord to pray for you and to support you.
Establish an accountability group to stand with you and join you in this same kind of public commitment.
4. Do what Abraham did and proclaim the name of the Lord.
Do what Abraham did and take a public stand by building an altar to God.
You cannot build a literal altar, of course, but you can build an altar in your heart that expresses your worship and thanksgiving and submission and dedication and the assertion that God alone will be the master of your career and financial security.
How do we recover from sin?
First, we must RETURN,
We Must Decide to Return to God
and Reaffirm Our Commitment to Him.
In continuation from last week’s message on Marriage God’s Way: Recovering from Failure we are going to focus on Principle #3 – Learn from your sins.
In that moment that individual learned the principle we are about to learn today.
On your way back from sin to God you must learn three R’s. There are three words beginning with R that describe our pilgrimage back from sin to God.
There is a core principle which is principle #3 in our study of MARRIAGE GOD’S WAY.
Within principle #3 we said there are three R’s, and we are looking at one a week, last week, this week, and next week.
Last week we saw a very simple reality that when we sin we must
Return to God.
We must go back to where we last left God and return to Him by confessing our sin and committing to turn from sin.
The problem, however, is that such a return doesn’t take care of the results of sin.
James describes temptation and sin as the conception of a child, and the reality of the matter is that children don’t go away. They stay and grow and act and impact our lives.
So it is with sin.
Sin doesn’t go away.
Once it is conceived it stays and grows and acts and impacts our lives.
This is what my friend learned when he learned the second R in the pilgrimage from sin to God.
Realize Your Past Sin Will Impact Your Present Life.
All too often what you’ve done in the past will impact you in the present.
There’s a commercial running right now that makes this very point.
ILLUSTRATION
It’s a semi-dark scene set in a kitchen. A woman, obviously a wife, is seated there with a sad and troubled look on her face. Her husband walks in, sees her look, and asks, “What?” He then goes on to ask some questions.
“Is it about the diamond I gave you? A zirconium looks just like a real diamond.”
She looks at her ring finger.
“Is it about my time in prison?”
She looks at him with a deep, sad look.
“You drank all the milk,” she says.
Realize Your Past Sin Will Impact Your Present Life.
We see this reality in Genesis 13:5-18 where Abraham continues his pilgrimage from Egypt to the altar of worship and now on into life.
At this point in time,
1. He brought Lot with him against God’s will – (Genesis 13:5), cp. 12:2.
a. Lot traveled up from Egypt with him.
b. Lot had also become wealthy because he was Abraham’s kinsman, and Pharaoh was paying both of them off for Sarah’s beauty.
c. But God had told him to leave his father’s house.
d. There was provision for Lot.
e. Although it would have been painful, Abraham had another brother who could have cared for his nephew, Lot.
f. This disobedience was destructive both to Abraham and Lot.
2. Now a further disobedience made the first one even worse. (Genesis 13:5-12)
a. His disobedience in Egypt created division between him and Lot.
b. They had obtained wealth apart from trusting God.
c. Wealth gained apart from God’s purposes divides families.
d. Lot did not work for this wealth.
e. Lot got this wealth because Abraham deceived Pharaoh.
f. This was easy money for Lot.
g. Easy money makes for hard feelings.
h. One of the worse things you can do in your life is get money apart from obedience to God’s ethical standards and trust in God’s faithful provisions.
i. Another of the worse things you can do in your life is give your children easy money.
Sometimes I wonder what parents are doing with their children when it comes to money. They’ll take teen-agers and give them things that took them ten, twenty, maybe even thirty years to get for themselves. They’ll take twenty- somethings and give them things that took them twenty or thirty years to build for themselves. They’ll take thirty-somethings and set them up so they don’t ever have to work again.This is a tragic mistake.
If someone ever came to me and asked me what should I do with my wealth, here’s what I would say.
First I would say, “Don’t make your children rich before they have had to learn what riches mean.” You may not agree with my timing. Much of my thinking is based on what I experienced. I would raise them with an understanding that money is hard to come by and is a great stewardship from God which can bring utter destruction in their lives if they don’t handle it properly. I’d help them get their first new car once they finished college, but they would have to put some of their own money into it, either by having it on hand or by making some kind of payments with interest to me along the way.
I would help out with a good used car before that. I’d help them get into their first house with a generous down payment so their monthly costs wouldn’t overwhelm them. If they needed more, I would make a favorable loan to them, but I would expect them to pay that loan back, at least for an appreciable period of time. I would provide for their children’s education, so that wouldn’t be such an overwhelming burden in a difficult period of life. I would establish some kind of a trust fund for massive medical emergencies that insurance would not cover completely. I would help them get their own investment program started by giving them some seed money and also by contributing to it in some strategic ways annually according to their desires.
If I were going to leave them significant money, I would set it up in a trust fund that wouldn’t kick until at least age forty. There may be some variation with this depending on the quality of the child, but fairness might very well demand that I treat everyone the same way.
Whatever you do, watch out for the danger of easy money.
Now we see our core principle,
He may have to live with their results, but he has learned from them nonetheless.
1. Strife develops between Abraham’s men and Lot’s men (Genesis 13:6-7).
a. The land could not support their livestock (Genesis 13:6-7).
b. The Canaanite and the Perizzite had the best land (Genesis 13:7).
2. Abraham acts to avoid the strife (Genesis 13:8-10).
3. Lot hasn’t learned the same lessons Abraham has (Genesis 13:10-13).
a. Abraham knows that money isn’t everything, that possessions aren’t all that life is about.
b. Abraham could have claimed everything for himself and told Lot where he could live.
c. Instead, he chooses not to do this and gives Lot the first option.
4. Lot has greedy eyes.
a. Lot lifts up his eyes (Genesis 13:10).
b. Lot sees (Genesis 13:10).
c. Lot chooses for himself (Genesis 13:11).
d. It looked so good, but it was so bad!
5. Lot’s future was seen in his greedy eyes (Genesis 13:12-13).
a. Abraham settled in the land of Canaan (Genesis 13:12).
b. Lot settled in the cities (Genesis 13:12).
c. Lot moved his tent as far as Sodom, but not yet in it (Genesis 13:12).
d. Abraham stayed in the place of God’s provision while Lot moved to a place of exceedingly wicked sinners (Genesis 13:13).
Here we see the reality that
Abraham’s Past Sin Will Haunt Him
and Haunt Him and Haunt Him.
Realize Your Past Sin Will Impact Your Present Life.
Realize also that God will stand with you in faithfulness.
But this raises another question.
If sin is so destructive, if it is an illegitimate child that will haunt us, in some cases for the rest of our lives, isn’t there something we can do about preventing sin?
Exactly, and his is where I want to spend our last few minutes together.
I want to give you some insights into how to prevent sin from gaining mastery over you.
By God’s grace, you have been identified with Christ on His cross and delivered from the reign of sin as you king and master. Now you have a choice, although it seems so overwhelming because you seem so powerless. Think according to this reality.
Sin never comes forth as a fully developed baby. There is a gestation period for sin, even as there is for a baby. If the thought is never entertained, the baby will never be conceived. Therefore, pay attention to the way you think. All of us think in ways that give sin mastery over us and don’t even know it. We think anger thoughts or pride thoughts or fear thoughts or any of a number of other kinds of thoughts without even knowing it.
Pay attention to the thoughts you think.
Once sin settles in the mind, it moves as rapidly as it can to the heart as a desire. It moves from dream to desire, to longing, to something I must do or I must have. All of my values are being pushed aside in such a situation, and I am being hurried along by a current of lust. Thus, if sin breaks loose from my mind, I must pay attention to my feelings.
When sin breaks loose from my mind it is like a blood clot breaking loose from my leg and moving to my heart. I am headed for a heart attack unless I do something about it.
If I do not stop it, once sin moves to my heart it is only a matter of time before it acts through my hands.
How do we prevent this?
Here are some decisions I have made. There are many better approaches, I’m sure, but this has helped me.
I present them to you in a series of decisions we need to make.
I can sin and I can sin in some very serious ways.
What are you most likely to do? What are your strongest driving desires?
Each of these drives takes on a particular sin form, and you must note what form such desires take when you act on them in your life.
DECISION #3: Determine that You Will Not Commit These Sins.
Erect an altar and proclaim the name of the Lord. Make a private commitment to God and some kind of an accountable commitment to your mate or some other trusted friends who share the same values you have.
The vital disciplines are prayer and the Word + accountability with others who know and love you.
Too often we think of sin as behavior. Behavior is surface.
Sin is soul.
It is not enough to deal only with behavior. We must recognize the root of sin. Behavior is fruit: sins.
Sin is root: energy, force, power. We sin because something is more important to us than God. We sin because something is more satisfying for us than God. We sin because something is more powerful in us than God.
I will rely on the Holy Spirit. I will involve others with me in the battle with sin.
On your pilgrimage from sin to God,
Realize Your Past Sin Will Impact Your Present Life.
Therefore, prepare yourself to prevent sin, whether it be patterns from the past or temptations in the future. Act by God’s grace to be as sin-free as He enables you as you learn to know yourself better and better.
In recent years, the disciplines of preventive medicine have burst upon us.
These disciplines consist primarily of diet, exercise, and stress control.
We are inundated by diet information.
Butter is not good for us.
But, more recently, margarine isn’t good for us either.
Eggs are not good for us.
But, more recently, eggs, in moderation, are good for us.
Red meat is not good for us.
The skin of the chicken is not good for us.
Eating six meals a day is better for us than eating three meals a day and snacking constantly in between.
If it flies or swims eat it; otherwise, it will eat you in its own way.
Grandma’s cooking was never good for us; that’s why grandpa died so soon.
The question though is how did grandma live so long? Probably because all she ever did was sample her own cooking since she was so busy making it she ran out of any appetite to eat it. So our refrigerators are full of food that’s good for us. Here’s a sample of what’s in our refrigerator.
low fat spread;
low fat cheese;
low fat lunch meat;
lot fat ice cream bars;
low fat yogurt;
low fat jelly;
skim milk.
In our pantry we have
low fat cereal;
low fat munchies;
low fat pretzels;
low fat chips;
low fat candy bars;
low fat cookies.
Now what I’m learning is that eating all that low fat stuff will keep me pretty high fat!
Nonetheless, we are into a low fat diet and have been for some time.
We are also told how important exercise is.
Aerobic exercise is the best. And the best aerobic exercise is simply walking twenty minutes a day three days a week. Of course, if you are willing to risk your knees, jog twenty minutes a day three days a week. If you are into machines at least one of the most recent studies tells us that the tread mill is the best, even though it doesn’t work your arms. However, if we have read what they put out, we know that swimming is the best exercise in the world for everything that we want to get. Golf is useless, no matter how many steps we have to take from the cart to the ball on days when the course is too wet for carts to leave the cart path.
Basketball, interestingly enough, is not all that helpful, although I can jog a whole lot longer than I could play any size court basketball. Weight lifting is very helpful for older people. Studies show that wheel chair bound people were able to get out of their chairs after only a few times of working out with weights.
So I have joined a health club and am over there on the treadmill (because of a somewhat faulty knee) three days every week and also work out somewhat when I can.
Stress is another story. Because it is so self-imposed in my life I don’t know that I’ll ever get rid of it. I live on a steady diet of stress and exercise my tongue grandly to get rid of it.
Preventive medicine is a good thing and because of it we may add eight months to our lives, but raise the quality of our lives significantly because of it.
But if preventive medicine is a good thing, what about preventive righteousness?
After all, isn’t a great deal of our physical breakdown due to our spiritual breakdowns?
Think of all the unnecessary stress my ego has brought into my life. Maybe we’d just as soon not think about this. Think of what anger does to us.
Or fear.
Or bitterness.
Or resentment.
Or immorality.
Or drugs.
Or alcohol.
Would we not be wise to pursue preventive righteousness as well?
What would Abraham’s marriage have been like if he had pursued preventive righteousness?
We are learning about life and marriage at the expense of Abraham and Sarah. They were committed to the Lord and to each other, but they made serious mistakes with their lives which cost them dearly, and we are gaining the benefit of their mistakes.
For example, Abraham committed two key sins.
First, he went against God’s direct command as revealed in Genesis 12:2.
Second, he acted on his own when he ran into a situation in which he did not have a direct command even though he did have general information.
These are the same two kinds of situations we face.
We do have direct commands from God:
Do not commit adultery;
do not steal;
do not bear false witness;
do not covet.
Question: What do we do with direct commands from God?
Answer: We obey them.
We also face situations when all we have is general information with not specific direction.
Question: What do we do then?
Answer: Stop, pray, listen, and do what we can with the information we have without ever resorting to the untruthful or the deceptive.
Chafer on May 6, 1929: $10,000, 5:00 A.M., Anderson +.
So then, how do we pursue preventive righteousness?
This is what I want to talk about this morning.
Act to Prevent Sin From
Controlling Your Life.
To help you understand how you can make progress toward doing this, I want to give you one “truth in lending” disclaimer and one core principle. From this we move to three insights we must have and six decisions we must make. That’s enough to keep you busy for a while!
I want to give you some insights into how to prevent sin from gaining mastery over you.
By God’s grace, you have been identified with Christ on His cross and delivered from the reign of sin as your king and master. Now you have a choice, although it seems so overwhelming because you seem so powerless. Think according to this reality.
Sin never comes forth as a fully developed baby. There is a gestation period for sin, even as there is for a baby. If the thought is never entertained, the baby will never be conceived. Therefore, pay attention to the way you think. All of us think in ways that give sin mastery over us and don’t even know it. We think anger thoughts or pride thoughts or fear thoughts or any of a number of other kinds of thoughts without even knowing it.
Pay attention to the thoughts you think.
Once sin settles in the mind, it moves as rapidly as it can to the heart as a desire. It moves from dream to desire, to longing, to something I must do or I must have. All of my values are being pushed aside in such a situation, and I am being hurried along by a current of lust. Thus, if sin breaks loose from my mind, I must pay attention to my feelings.
When sin breaks loose from my mind it is like a blood clot breaking loose from my leg and moving to my heart. I am headed for a heart attack unless I do something about it.
If I do not stop it, once sin moves to my heart it is only a matter of time before it acts through my hands.
How do we prevent this?
Here are some decisions I have made.
There are many better approaches, I’m sure, but this has helped me.
I present them to you in a series of decisions we need to make.
I can sin and I can sin in some very serious ways.
What are you most likely to do? What are your strongest driving desires?
Each of these drives takes on a particular sin form, and you must note what form such desires take when you act on them in your life.
Erect an altar and proclaim the name of the Lord. Make a private commitment to God and some kind of an accountable commitment to your mate or some other trusted friends who share the same values you have.
The vital disciplines are prayer and the Word + accountability with others who know and love you.
Too often we think of sin as behavior. Behavior is surface.
Sin is soul.
It is not enough to deal only with behavior. We must recognize the root of sin. Behavior is fruit: sins.
Sin is root: energy, force, power.
I will rely on the Holy Spirit. I will involve others with me in the battle with sin. In a recent time of discussion with Christian leaders who have fallen, one after another these fallen leaders told me that the two key realities of their lives were that they had failed in pursuing daily time with God and they were never in any true form of accountability.
Let’s do this. Let’s, every time we do something to practice preventive medicine, also do something to practice preventive righteousness. For example, every time we eat something low fat, let’s take a few minutes just to worship the Lord in prayer or praise.
Not necessarily in the same moment nor even overtly. Perhaps on the way back to the office or walking down the hall or brushing our teeth just to think words of praise and thanksgiving and dependence.
Or every time we jog or workout, take some time to cleanse our souls be confessing sin and thanking God for His patience with us. Or let’s get rid of stress by giving our fears or our concerns or our angers to the Lord.
Not only might we live longer; we’ll certainly live better!
It is always fascinating for me to be with someone who has had a recent life threatening experience. Sometimes it may be an accident, but most often it's someone who has had a heart attack or by-pass surgery or some other terribly frightening moment in life.
There's always some evidence of God's providence involved in their story.
My observation is that all heart attack victims who live to tell the story are alike.
First of all, they are knowledgeable.
They know exactly what led up to their heart attack. They know all about the factors that contribute to a heart attack, all about the risks involved, all about what it takes to avoid another heart attack.
Secondly, they are changed.
They are committed to people like they have never been before. Family and friends take on a new dimension. Knowing God becomes the highest priority ever. Children become the most important people in the world.
Thirdly, they are committed.
They are committed to never having another heart attack. Things they never paid attention to before like diet and exercise and stress relief now become the center piece of their lives.
They become evangelists for PREVENTIVE MEDICINE.
And well they should!
But what about spiritual heart attacks?
What about the devastation of sin in our lives, the attitudes and actions of the soul that often lead to the destruction of the body?
If the threat of physical death brings us to a commitment to preventive medicine, why doesn't the threat of spiritual loss bring us to PREVENTIVE RIGHTEOUSNESS?
By preventive righteousness I mean the knowledge and practice of trusting God to avoid sin in our lives.
Sin is so devastating in our lives that we must take the same kind of radical steps to prevent it as we take to prevent physical trauma.
We are learning this from Abraham as we see his marriage to Sarah and the impact sin had on it.
Our aim is to learn from Abraham and Sarah so we don't have to make the mistakes they made. We are seeing this from Abraham's sin in Genesis 12:10.
One of the things we are learning is what to do when we come back from sin to God.
What do we do when we have sinned and now need to find our way back to God?
There are three R's that give us the answer, and we have looked at two of them in the last few weeks.
First, we must return to where we last left God when we went off on our own (Genesis 13:1-4). Second, we must remember our past sin will impact our present life. Abraham helped Lot get rich, and now their men were fighting over the grazing areas needed to feed their herds.
This is going to lead to deep pain for both Lot and Abraham, all of which could have been preventable had he never gone to Egypt.
This is what leads me to the practices of preventive righteousness.
We begin with an action we must take and make the focus of our lives as long as we live.
Act to Prevent Sin from
Controlling Your Life.
To help you understand how you can make progress toward doing this, I want to give you one core principle. From this we move to four insights we must have and six decisions we must make. That's enough to keep you busy for a while!
You Must Know What God Has Done
Before You Can Do What God Wants Done
I want to give you some insights into how to prevent sin from gaining mastery over you.
SIN IS NO LONGER YOUR KING AND MASTER.
By God's grace, you have been identified with Christ on His cross and delivered from the reign of sin as your king and master. Now you have a choice, although it seems so overwhelming because you seem so powerless. Think according to this reality.
SIN BEGINS AS A THOUGHT IN THE HEAD.
Sin never comes forth as a fully developed baby. There is a gestation period for sin, even as there is for a baby. If the thought is never entertained, the baby will never be conceived. Therefore, pay attention to the way you think. All of us think in ways that give sin mastery over us and don't even know it. We think anger thoughts or pride thoughts or fear thoughts or any of a number of other kinds of thoughts without even knowing it.
Pay attention to the thoughts you think.
SIN MOVES TO THE HEART AS A DESIRE.
Once sin settles in the mind, it moves as rapidly as it can to the heart as a desire. It moves from dream to desire, to longing, to something I must do or I must have. All of my values are being pushed aside in such a situation, and I am being hurried along by a current of lust. Thus, if sin breaks loose from my mind, I must pay attention to my feelings. When sin breaks loose from my mind it is like a blood clot breaking loose from my leg and moving to my heart. I am headed for a heart attack unless I do something about it.
SIN EXPRESSES ITSELF THROUGH MY HANDS AS AN ACT.
If I do not stop it, once sin moves to my heart it is only a matter of time before it acts through my hands.
How do we prevent this?
Here are some decisions I have made. There are many better approaches, I'm sure, but this has helped me.
I present them to you in a series of decisions we need to make.
REALIZE I CAN SIN.
I can sin and I can sin in some very serious ways.
NOTE THE SINS YOU ARE MOST PRONE TO COMMIT.
What are you most likely to do? What are your strongest driving desires?
Each of these drives takes on a particular sin form, and you must note what form such desires take when you act on them in your life.
DETERMINE THAT YOU WILL NOT COMMIT THESE SINS.
Erect an altar and proclaim the name of the Lord. Make a private commitment to God and some kind of an accountable commitment to your mate or some other trusted friends who share the same values you have.
DEVELOP DISCIPLINES TO RESIST SIN.
The vital disciplines are prayer and the Word + accountability with others who know and love you.
REMEMBER SIN IS MORE THAN SKIN DEEP.
Too often we think of sin as behavior. Behavior is surface.
Sin is soul.
It is not enough to deal only with behavior. We must recognize the root of sin. Behavior is fruit: sins. Sin is root: energy, force, power. We sin because something is more important to us than God.
We sin because something is more satisfying for us than God. We sin because something is more powerful in us than God.
I WILL NOT FIGHT THE SIN BATTLE ALONE.
I will rely on the Holy Spirit. I will involve others with me in the battle with sin. In a recent time of discussion with Christian leaders who have fallen, one after another fallen leaders told me that the two key realities of their lives were that they had failed in pursuing daily time with God and they were never in any true form of accountability.
Let's do this.
Let's, every time we do something to practice preventive medicine, also do something to practice preventive righteousness. For example, every time we eat something low fat, let's take a few minutes just to worship the Lord in prayer or praise. Not necessarily in the same moment nor even overtly. Perhaps on the way back to the office or walking down the hall or brushing our teeth just to think words of praise and thanksgiving and dependence. Or every time we jog or workout, take some time to cleanse our souls be confessing sin and thanking God for His patience with us. Or let's get rid of stress by giving our fears or our concerns or our angers to the Lord.
Not only might we live longer; we'll certainly live better!
When I was a little boy just about five years old I was eating breakfast in the kitchen with my mother one day. Our kitchen table was small so we were very close to one another. The toaster was right next to her, and she could feel the heat.
So she said to me, "You should feel this toaster. It is really hot."
Now she didn't mean for me to do that. She was just talking about how hot the toaster was. But I didn't know that, so I reached out and touched the toaster.
It was hot!
Immediately, I had a blister developing on my finger and I cried at the shock of the pain I was feeling. Mom cried with me.
"I didn't really mean for you to touch it," she said as she doctored my now fully blistered finger.
There's one thing that came out of that experience: I never touch toasters in the morning because they're hot.
I Didn't Waste My Pain!
At about that same time, probably within months of the hot toaster event, maybe within days, I don't remember, I had another memorable experience. My mother was outside our house, just a short distance away, and I was in the house alone. There was no TV in those days, so I had the earlier version of a baby sitter to keep me occupied, the radio. Essentially Mom was really in the house since she had gone outside for just a moment. But that was just long enough for me to notice an empty light socket in a turned on lamp. It was one of those multiple bulb lamps that did not have a bulb in every socket.
I was curious about that empty socket and what might happen if I put my finger in it. So, overcome by curiosity, I did just that; I put my finger in that empty socket. Immediately, I felt a jolt go up my arm as I sailed across the room and I found out what would happen if you put your chubby little five-year old finger in an empty lamp socket. Although I have been around many lamps with an empty bulb socket I have never put my finger in another one since.
I Didn't Waste My Pain!
Several years later, now an adult and married but without children yet, I was pastoring the church we started in San Jose. In those days we had only one car, and that made life difficult at times. On one particular morning when I really needed to study for next Sunday, Lynna had to be at a meeting with some key women in our church, but she had no way to get there. So, I had to take her because we only had one car. I needed it before she could get back home, and she could get a ride home but not there.
But I also had to study.
So I took her, but I didn't like it much and I made certain she never did that again. On the way back I was continuing to fume thinking that many of my other pastor colleagues never took their wives to some dumb meeting when they had to study for Sunday morning when I came to a stop sign. There was a car stopped in front of me, I looked and saw there was a wide open road, and started forward, assuming the other car had already gone.
I had barely started when I stopped, suddenly. The woman driving the car in front of me got out slowly and met me at the end of her car and the beginning of mine. I had hardly gotten started so there was no damage to either car, but she showed me the scar on the back of her neck from her recent back surgery.
I was scared.
I gave her my phone number and insurance information and drove home rather humbled and considerably less angry. Fortunately, I never heard from her. But I'll tell you, ever since then, when I come to a stop sign I look left, right, left, forward. I never assume a car has gone.
I Didn't Waste My Pain!
One more story.
Nearly twenty years ago I went to my doctor for a physical, and the first thing he said to me was, "What is that protrusion in your throat?" That protrusion turned out to be a potentially malignant nodule on my thyroid which I had surgically removed with no negative impact. At the time of the surgery, my surgeon said, "I want you to go on thyroid medication because these things have a tendency to grow back and if you go on thyroid that won't happen."
Well, I didn't want to become dependent on pills, so I didn't listen.
About two years later I had another nodule and I had to have my thyroid completely removed. Now I am totally, even desperately, dependent on pills.
I Wasted My Pain!
I'm sure you could tell many stories like the ones I have told you this morning, stories in which you didn't waste your pain and stories in which you did.
All of us have had experiences that have taught us not to touch hot toasters or put our fingers in lamp sockets or assume on other drivers or to listen to our doctors, and the majority of us have not wasted our pain.
But what about sin?
Have we learned not to waste our pain when it comes to sin?
We are in the process of answering the question what do we do when we have come back from sin to God? We have finding our answers from the life of Abraham who is our teacher. And one of the things we are learning is that we always bring sin home.
Our Sin Patterns Become Our Family Patterns.
We have learned that the first step is to return to God; to go back. We have learned that our second step is to realize our past sin affects our present life. As a result, we need to act in every way we can to prevent sin from gripping our lives.
Today we turn to our third and last answer found in Genesis 14. Come with me to Genesis 14 where we see a historical event designed to teach us our last critical step.
We begin with the fact that
In this passage filled with strange names and the description of a far-away skirmish, not even a blip on history's screen, we see two vital realities resulting in one key truth. We see Lot, the man who took his easy money and chose the fun life, in great trouble. And we see Abraham, the man who sinned and led Lot into sin in order to sin some more, complete his return to God.
Abraham Didn't Waste His Pain.
1. There was a group of five ancient kings who had been forced into subjection to another group of four ancient kings.
a. For twelve years they paid tribute to their conquerors.
b. In the thirteenth year they refused to pay any more tribute.
c. So in the fourteenth year the four conquering kings came to collect their dues.
d. The four eastern kings came from modern day Iraq and they swept down the east side of the Jordan river to the south and southwest of the Dead Sea before turning northward to confront their four rebel leaders.
e. Even though the odds were in favor of the five, the four easily defeated them.
Now it would be perfectly natural to ask why is this in the text?
We are talking about one of the most important men in all of God's program. Why do we interrupt it with this useless story?
Look at verse 12: they took the easy money man, Lot.
2. Easy money comes with a high price.
a. Lot had come into everything through Abraham.
b. He had not gotten his wealth on his own, but through his uncle, Abraham.
c. Like so many Christians who focus on money, Lot was attracted to the good life, not the godly life.
d. There was no reference to God's will or purpose in Lot's choice.
e. He lifted up his eyes and saw (Genesis 13:10) and chose for himself the Jordan valley (Genesis 13:11).
f. Lot was attracted by the lust of his eyes.
g. Unfortunately, the lust of his eyes was not balanced by any values in his soul.
Lot found it easy to live among immoral people.
Now we all have to learn to live among immoral people, as the Bible tells us in I Cor. 5:9-13.
h. But we cannot allow ourselves to enjoy the escapades of immoral people.
Kelly and Tosha Williams are starting a church for Generation X'ers, and they are ministering to immoral people--but not enjoying their lifestyle.
Lot loved the life in Sodom.
And he was only there because Abraham disobeyed God and had to live with the results of his previous sin.
3. Abraham risked a rescue (Genesis 14:13-16).
Past sin presents a present obligation to Abraham, because past sin sometimes stays for the rest of our lives.
a. He had allies (Genesis 14:13).
b. He had resources (Genesis 14:14).
c. He had wisdom (Genesis 14:15).
d. He won (Genesis 14:16).
Now we begin to see the point of this chapter.
Why all this information about these strange sounding names, these irrelevant places, and these useless battles?
Let's see.
Again, we are faced with another strange name and another strange event.
1. At this point Abraham faced a test, a choice between the old way and the new way.
2. The king of Sodom came out to meet him (Genesis 14:17).
3. At almost exactly the same time, the King of Jerusalem comes out to meet him (Genesis 14:18).
4. The King of Jerusalem is a man with a strange name who plays a great role in the Bible although this is the only time we meet him (Genesis 14:18).
a. His name means the King of Righteousness.
b. He is King of Jerusalem, so he is the King of Peace, since Salem means peace.
c. He is identified as a picture of Christ (Hebrews 7:2).
5. Acting on God's behalf, Melchizedek comes to bless Abraham (Genesis 14:19-20).
6. Melchizedek focuses Abraham's attention in the right place.
a. He speaks of God Most High, the mightiest and most powerful of all, greater than any king or potentate or president or prime minister or anyone in all of history.
b. He possesses heaven and earth.
c. All things are His, and there isn't anything that He does not own.
6. Abraham chooses to trust God by giving to His representative (Genesis 14:20).
a. Abraham is a changed man.
b. Before he acted to get.
c. Now he gets to give.
d. Abraham is beginning to understand the source of his true security.
e. It is found in the God Most High who possesses heaven and earth.
Now we see the point of this chapter, the third of our steps back from sin to God.
This is the point of it all.
When It Comes to Sin Don't Waste Your Pain!
Return To God.
Realize Your Past Sin Will Affect Your Present Life.
Remember to Learn from Past Sin So You Don't Do It Again in The Future.
This is exactly what Abraham does.
1. The king of Sodom offers a great deal, such a great deal that only a fool would turn it down.
a. It was a valid offer because Abraham had earned it.
b. It made great sense.
2. It is a temptation in exactly the same area where Abraham had sinned before.
a. It was a temptation in the area of financial security.
b. He had turned to a king before.
Would he turn to a king now?
No!
3. Abraham had a new source of security (Genesis 14:22).
a. It is not his own cleverness.
b. It is not his own self-reliance.
c. It is not his own scheming.
d. It is the LORD Most High God.
4. Abraham rejects this offer.
a. In the eyes of most this is a stupid thing to do.
b. This is a valid offer.
c. He had earned it.
5. But the King of Righteousness and Peace taught him to trust the Most High God.
a. God was gracious to Abraham to send him help at just the right moment.
b. God knows our hearts and responds to them.
6. From now on, Abraham would trust God for his security.
The key point of our lesson today is this:
DON'T WASTE YOUR PAIN!
But there is an additional question we need to consider.
How can you tell when you should turn down a deal?
How can you tell whether it's the king of Sodom or the the King of Righteousness and Peace?
This is what I want to talk about in the next message.
Remember when you were young--or at least younger-- when you were a teenager, and you really wanted something?
Perhaps you wanted a car. Maybe it was a ‘64 Mustang, a 287 V-eight with four on the floor, a fire engine red as smooth as silk. Or maybe it was a ‘57 Chevy with those fins and that gold colored paint. Or maybe it was a ‘35 Studebaker with a rumble seat. And remember what your father said? “I’m not going to buy it for you. I’ll go with you and make sure you don’t get taken, but you will have to save your own money to get it--and you will also have to buy your own insurance for it.
Or maybe it wasn’t a car, maybe it was a trip. Perhaps you were into drama and it was a trip to New York, to Broadway. You were going to go see “Hello Dolly” and the Empire State Building and Central Park and Radio City Music Hall at Christmas time. Or maybe you were in the band and you were going to march in the Rose Bowl Parade. But anyway your parents couldn’t afford to pay you way, so they told you, “You’ll have to earn your way. You can do some work here, but you’ll have to get a job or do some odd jobs or whatever, but you can’t go unless you pay for it.”
Or maybe it wasn’t something that exciting and exotic. Maybe you were younger. Maybe it was in hard times and all you wanted was a baseball glove or a doll house. But your parents still didn’t have enough money for it, so you had to save and save and scrimp and scrimp just to get the money you needed to buy that wonderful prize.
Do you remember how difficult that was?
Do you remember how it meant giving up a lot of things you really wanted as well?
No cokes.
No movies.
No ice cream.
No new clothes.
Even no dates or parties.
If it wasn’t free you didn’t do it.
That was hard, especially when you thought about what you were giving up.
Did your friends ever come to you and say,
Come on, let’s go, have some fun.
It’s just this one time. You won’t even miss the money. Just work a few extra hours to make it up. You’re becoming a fanatic about this thing. Nothing is worth this!
That choice, as difficult as it was, is a picture of life, a picture of the choice we must make every day of our lives.
It’s THE choice,
The Choice between the King of
Sodom and the King of Righteousness.
It’s interesting in Abraham’s life that the King of Sodom shows up after a great victory.
This should not surprise us, of course, because that’s exactly when the King of Sodom shows up in our lives.
Abraham has just won a great battle and delivered his nephew, Lot, from captivity as a prisoner of war.
And so it will be with us when we face our own “King of Sodom”.
The King of Sodom only comes when we’re successful or moving toward success. When we’ve proven ourselves to be effective, capable, able to make an impact, then comes the temptation to trust ourselves and our resources rather than God’s.
That’s the point of THE choice.
I want us to see three things this morning:
The Choice We Must Consider,
The Facts We Must Face,
and
The Decision We Must Make.
We begin with
Immediately you discover three contrasts between the King of Sodom and the King of Righteousness.
And the significant thing is that the King of Sodom makes a legitimate offer, even as your friends from those teen-age years made a legitimate appeal to you. Just as they offered you fun and a good time, all of which were legitimate, so the King of Sodom offers us some very legitimate things. The difference is that your friends wouldn’t pay for your car or your trip, and the King of Sodom won’t give you what you most want either.
The King of Sodom Gives--The King of Righteousness Takes.
The King of Sodom | The King of Righteousness |
GIVES Opportunity The opportunity to add to your well-being. He entices you with money, with a way to get rich and be successful--a good thing. Security With wealth comes security, financial security, social security, personal power--a good thing. Freedom Freedom from the usual conventions, the way others expect you to live. The King of Sodom and those who followed him lived as they willed and not as others told them to live--a good thing Pleasure They enjoyed the pleasures of life--a good thing. | TAKES Requirements The requirements to give rather than to get. He calls you to live a focused way of life marked by discipline and denial--a tough thing. Sacrifice To take part of that which is yours and give it up, even if it threatens your security. He is more concerned with giving up than he is with security--a tough thing. Discipline The discipline to draw limits and to accept restrictions on life. The King of Righteousness and his followers give up rather than give in--a tough thing Dependence No more independence, but dependence--a tough thing |
So this is the choice:
The King of Sodom gives while the King of righteousness takes,
and we must choose between the two.
To put it another way, we must choose between getting and giving a tough choice.
But is it really a tough choice?
Let’s look at the facts we must face.
But there’s another thing we need to know.
If we think ahead, the choice isn’t really so tough after all. Because the King of Sodom leads to destruction while the King of Righteousness leads to fulfillment.
The King of Sodom Brings Judgment While the King of Righteousness Brings Blessing--and Blessing from the Most High God!
1. There is no God like God.
2. God is sovereign, greater than any other god there is.
a. God is greater than the gods of opportunity.
b. God is greater than the gods of security.
c. God is greater than the gods of independence.
d. God is greater than the gods of pleasure.
3. God defines life, determines what is right, and controls all.
And most of all, God is for us!
God is so for us that He gave His Son for us. We do not live under the burden of a spiteful God but under the blessing of the Most High God!
1. Simply put, God owns all things.
a. Nothing I own is mine alone.
b. It is mine to use as a stewardship.
c. As far as you are concerned, what I own is mine and as far as I am concerned what you own is yours.
d. But God owns it all.
2. God determines what is good.
a. Sometimes we face the tough choice between the King of Sodom and the King of Righteousness, between short-term gain and long-term reality.
b. Sometimes we have to trust God’s good intentions even as we had to trust our parent’s good intentions when they told us we had to earn what we wanted so greatly.
3. So we come to the essence of the facts we must face and the choice we must consider:
We Must Choose to Trust God to Meet Our Needs, and Sacrifice Our Desires According to His Will--A TOUGH CHOICE.
With this in mind, we turn to
In essence, there are six decisions you must make.
Let’s look at each one of them.
1. The Most High God is on our side.
a. Remember Paul’s powerful question asked when he was talking about the most confusing and distressing experiences in life.
b. He spoke of suffering and persecution and tribulations and great hurt and pain.
c. And he asked,
If God be for us who can be against us?
2. Now the answer to that question is quite obvious--just look around us.
a. If God be for us and we be for God there are many candidates who can be against us.
b. When Paul asked that question he was not suggesting that no one would be against us if God is for us.
c. His whole life after he came to Christ bears that out.
d. His answer was that no one could overcome us, not in time but in eternity.
e. Choosing for the King of Righteousness can cost us in time, but never in the long run of eternity!
Choose to trust God and submit to
His sovereignty in your life--a tough choice at times.
1. Start with your life.
2. Go to your possessions.
3. Give control of everything over to God.
4. Sign a full deed of trust over to God releasing all ownership over to Him as the full Owner of all!
1. Make the same decision Abraham made.
2. Don’t let anyone make you rich but God.
a. Abraham knew the King of Sodom was an evil man at heart.
b. Abraham knew that the deception and lack of integrity he practiced with Pharaoh cost all he truly valued.
3. Join Abraham in deciding evil people will not make you rich.
a. Now don’t misunderstand me.
b. You will have to do business with evil people.
c. Some of your customers may be evil people.
d. Some of your vendors may be evil people.
e. You may have a boss who is an evil person and you may have to stay in that situation for a difficult period of time.
f. But where you can choose, you certainly don’t have to enter into an alliance with an evil person.
A friend of mine told me a story one day about an event that happened on the golf course. He was playing with a man--someone with whom he might do business some day--when he started to boast about how he was having an affair and keeping it from his wife. At that point my friend made a decision: I will not do business with this man.
Join Abraham and determine you will not do any more business than you must with evil men and women.
4. Also join Abraham and determine you will never deceive or deliberately mislead.
a. Unfortunately, unintentional misunderstandings happen all the time.
b. But Abraham deliberately deceived Pharaoh.
c. Do not ever do that to advance your career or anything else.
d. Trust God and be honest.
1. Short-term, the deal the King of Sodom offered was a lot more attractive than the one the King of Righteous offered.
a. After, it certainly looked better to get than to give.
b. Profit is better than loss, unless the long-term profit costs you more than the short-term loss.
c. Anyone who runs a business must take this into consideration.
d. Anyone who runs a career must take this into consideration.
e. Anyone who lives a life must take this into consideration.
2. So much of life looks so good until the long-term implications are factored in.
a. Immorality looks good until one considers its fully developed fruit.
b. Alcohol looks good until one meets an alcoholic and the members of his family.
c. Dishonesty looks good until we see executives doing time in a minimum security prison with their careers destroyed.
d. Racism looks good to some until it shows up in the headlines and it costs your company three billion dollars.
Pay attention to the difference between short-term and long-term realities and realize God looks at the real long-term realities.
1. This is life.
2. The Most High God, Possessor of heaven and earth, can meet every one of your true needs.
3. None of us needs as much as think we do.
4. Remember God in every decision you make.
1. Never put yourself in a position of obligation to godless people for short-term gain.
a. I understand that you cannot leave corporate America.
b. I don’t want to be some kind of Pollyanna preacher.
c. I understand that you may end up as Daniel did in Babylon.
d. But Daniel chose to trust God and live according to His way.
e. If God puts you somewhere He will also give you a way out that doesn’t include sin.
f. You don’t have to give into the King of Sodom if you will trust God the way Abraham and Daniel did.
2. Don’t let anyone but God make you rich.
3. Maker sure you control the core values in every commitment you make.
a. If you have made a commitment you can’t control, as Abraham did when he went to Egypt, do what Abraham did when he came out of Egypt: remember to learn from your sin.
b. Get out of such a commitment as soon as you can and never enter into another one as long as you live.
c. Define your values ahead of time and never break them, no matter what it costs you.
d. Remember, you are not saving up for a car now.
e. Now you are saving up for your character, and that’s worth far more than a car or a trip or anything else.
f. You are saving up for the heritage you want to leave behind.
g. You are saving up for God’s glory.
4. Make less and stay away from bondage to the King of Sodom.
I want to close this morning with two stories.
One I have told you before and one I have heard many times. The first is the story of Bob Johnson who took what the King of Sodom had to give and then spent ten years trying to give it back so he could give to the King of Righteousness. The second is the story of many people who have made difficulty ethical and family decisions in the course of their career only to discover that choosing the King of Righteousness meant God stood by them, protected them, and promoted them.
Everything that God wants of us can be reduced to one word.
If we are willing to do the one thing described by this one word we'll please God in every way.
Now the call presented by this one word is a challenging call, an overwhelming call, a call that goes against everything within us. It is a call that demands great risk, the greatest risk possible. It is a call that means giving up everything. When I say this, I'm not talking about material things, as we often think, although material things will certainly be affected by taking this risk.. When I say this, I'm not talking about career, as we often think, although career will certainly be affected by taking this risk. When I say this, I'm not talking about lifestyle, as we often think, although lifestyle will certainly be affected by taking this risk.
To understand what I'm saying, you need to understand what the one word is.
The one word is TRUST.
The one thing God wants from us is TRUST.
God wants us to TRUST Him in everything we do and for everything we have.
And when I say this means giving up everything, I am saying this means giving up ALL control.
You cannot trust someone and strive to control that person.
This is certainly the point of all the team building exercises the experts have developed.
When you go through a team building exercise, what is it they are seeking to get you to do? They are seeking to get you to work together by trusting one another. But as long as you are seeking to be in control of the situation and those involved in it you are not trusting them. You say, "None of you can do it as well as I can. I only trust myself to get things done. Therefore, I will do everything I can to be in control of what is happening here." And when you say this, you destroy any opportunity for those involved to become a team.
Now God is exactly the same way.
As long as we have to be in control of our lives, we cannot be trusting God. So God does exactly what the team building experts do: He brings us into life situations in which we must trust Him or fail--or die. He brings us into life situations in which we cannot maintain control over what is happening around us because life becomes so much bigger than we are.
Now God does not do this maliciously; He doesn't have to. Life is bigger than we are. All God has to do is let us go our own way under our own control and life will catch up with us. It is inevitable.
There are three primary areas in which God wants us to trust Him: finances, family, and life.
We see this in the life of Abraham. He was called to leave all that could give him financial security: his roots, his network, his history, everything that could guarantee him wealth. He was also called to leave his family except for his wife. And all of this affected his life and well-being, and, eventually the place and way in which he would die.
God expects us to TRUST Him in three areas:
FINANCES, FAMILY, AND LIFE
and often in that order.
Certainly that is the order for Abraham.
Now let me summarize what I have been saying as we move toward LIVING BY THE WORD IN OUR FAMILIES.
GOD WANTS US TO TAKE THE RISK OF TRUSTING HIM BY LIVING ACCORDING TO HIS WORD WITH OUR FINANCES, OUR FAMILIES, AND OUR VERY LIFE.
Come with me to Genesis 15 where we see this principle being developed in relation to Abraham's family.
The Word of the Lord Came to Abraham.
1. He determined to trust God.
a. But the alien kings could turn on him.
b. The King of Sodom could turn on him in a perverse meanness because Abraham refused to become his ally.
c. Abraham risked his personal security when he chose to trust God.
d. Abraham had some real reasons to be afraid.
2. But now God promises to be His shield.
a. You have made the right choice, Abraham.
b. You have taken great risk, but you have taken the right risk.
c. In all of life we must take the risk of trusting someone.
d. It is not possible for us to live life without trusting someone.
e. Anyone who cannot trust others is regarded as mentally sick.
f. The key is to make sure we trust the right person.
g. God is the right person.
h. Do not fear!
i. This is the first time these words appear in the Bible.
Do Not Fear Abraham When You Risk Trusting Me Because I Will Protect You.
But Abraham did more than risk his personal security by choosing to trust God.
1. He determined to trust God for wealth.
2. He determined that He would only pursue wealth on God's terms.
Now all of this has great implications for us. This means we must risk our personal security by risking our financial security. We do this when we must take an ethical stance that offends others. We do this when we use only God's means to gain financial security.
Now let me just say that this means we will have to have some kind of human control to do this. But our values will conflict with the values of others, and this will lead to moments when we need God's shield and God's reward.
Do Not Fear, Abraham, When You Risk Trusting Me Because I Will Provide For You.
I Will Be Your Shield and Your Reward.
Abraham has not heard from God in quite a while.
The last time Abraham had heard from God was in Ur of the Chaldees, a long time ago. But God had spoken to Abraham in His silence, and Abraham learned the point of his sojourn into Egypt. Abraham chose to trust himself for his security. In fact, this has been the primary test which Abraham has faced up until now. He has been tested in the area of financial and physical security, a burning issue to a homeless man. He had been tested in his ambition and his anxiety, but now God is going to move from finances to family.
From this we learn that
Family Is as Much Faith as Finances.
We all know that finances are a matter of faith.
What we are now learning is that family is also a matter of faith.
The point of it all is this:
When you are married, all you do centers on your marriage.
All you do, whether it be good or bad, impacts your marriage.
But there is a very natural question that comes at this point in time.
How can I know I can trust God with my finances and my family?
Abraham has already settled the first issue as a result of the bitter lessons he has learned in life.
Now he enters into new territory and raises new questions.
What is my reward? Where is the family you promised me?
God responds to his question.
1. Abraham asks for the reward he really wants, and it is not financial.
a. In Abraham's culture, a childless couple could select an heir to receive their goods and give them a burial if they have no son.
b. But Abraham doesn't want his servant to be his heir, especially since God had made a promise of a son.
c. It's interesting how utterly unconcerned Abraham is with his own physical and financial well-being.
d. His question rises out of faith: God has said He would protect him, and that is a settled issue.
e. Obviously, Abraham is focused on the original promise.
f. This is what got him to give up everything in the first place, and this is what has been keeping him going ever since then.
2. No matter how successful we are in our careers, there comes a time when our families mean the most to us.
a. We don't start out thinking this way.
b. We start out focused on our careers, our financial security and personal success.
c. But there comes a time when all of us would gladly sacrifice anything to have children who choose to walk with God.
d. This demands far more faith, far more trust, and far more risk than financial and career issues.
e. Money we can control; children we can't, whether it comes to having them or raising them.
This, by the way, is the first time the title Lord GOD is used in the Bible.
This title focuses on two things:
God is Lord, master, in control.
When you see LORD in upper case, you see God's proper name, Yahweh, the name that focuses on His complete and utter self-reliance, His independence from all except Himself, His total lack of need for anything or anyone. Lord in lower case speaks of God's ownership and mastery of all, of the fact that He is sovereign over all that happens.
GOD, on the other hand, is Yahweh when used with Adonai.
Abraham combines two of God's greatest names to say to Him,
You who control all things and who has the capacity to do all things,
You who can do all of this,
Where is my reward?
1. This man will not be your heir (Genesis 15:4).
2. One born from you will be your heir (Genesis 15:4).
This promise leads Abraham into his next great test.
Now he knows that he will father a son himself. Now comes the issue of whether or not Abraham will take the risk with God to trust Him to have that son through Sarah.
3. God promises to multiply Abraham (Genesis 15:5).
And all of this demonstrates Abraham's faith in God.
4. Abraham takes God at His Word.
Now the fact of the matter is this is not the first time Abraham has trusted God.
This statement is designed to show Abraham's response of faith to be one that marked him at the essential center of his being. Hebrews tells us that Abraham was a believer when he left Ur of the Chaldees several years before. Stephen tells us that the God of glory appeared to Abraham, and he responded by trusting him and obeying him. We have, at times, been critical of Abraham, and rightfully so. But Abraham is a man of great faith who falters and fails at times in his pilgrimage of risk and trust in God. Yet, at the core of his being, he continues to believe and trust God for His promise, and his hope in life is based entirely on God's word. Abraham is a man who chose to risk his life on God word, and his questions here show that. Thus, Abraham's question is an expression of his underlying faith. We realize that a man of faith can take control of his life and put his wife at great risk, but he is still a man of faith, struggling to trust God in the overwhelming currents and tides of life.
It is on the basis of this faith that Abraham is declared righteous. It is not because he does righteous things all the time, because he doesn't. It is because he has chosen to take the risk to trust God for life and death. What Abraham is doing now is working out the implications of that choice and that risk. And this is exactly the same thing we are doing in our lives.
There is one thing God wants us to do with our lives:
Take the Risk and Trust Him for Finances, Family, and Life.
Ultimately, this is the test of our faith.
Those Who Trust God for Eternal Life
Learn to Trust Him for Temporal Life.
We may struggle with our egos, with our fears, with our anger, with our bitterness, but those who trust God for eternal life learn to trust Him for temporal life. This is the working out of the righteousness God has implanted within them.
Recently I had a conversation with a member of the Berean Class who reminded me of a question I raised earlier in this series.
This morning I want to return to that question.
The question I raised before was this.
Why Would God Give Two Utterly Incompatible
People a Life Sentence to Live in the Same Tent?
Obviously, I raised this question concerning Abraham and Sarah, who, at times, had great tension in their marriage.
Why does God do this?
We all know the situation. She married him because he was steady, consistent, because she can count on him. And he married her because she was alive, spicy, because he never quite knew what she was going to do.
Now it’s several years into the marriage and now she knows what he really is: boring! And he knows what she really is: scattered brained!
Or it’s the other way around: she’s uptight, and he’s frustrated.
It’s fascinating to see this on paper.
You can do it through an tested and proven instrument called the Taylor-Johnson Temperament Analysis or the TJTA. This tool has been used for over fifty years and on thousands of people to tell each other what it’s like to live together. It is not a sanity test but a livability test, a tool that shows on paper what each of us is like day-by-day. The test covers a number of opposite categories. It tells you whether or not you are
nervous or composed,
depressive or light-hearted.
quiet or active-social
inhibited or expressive
sympathetic or insensitive
objective or subjective
submissive or dominant
tolerant or hostile
impulsive or disciplined.
It’s very interesting to have one partner take it on the other just to see how well they know each other.
What the TJTA tells us is what we’re like to live with one another on a day-to-day basis. Typical patterns go something like this. One may be nervous, depressed, subjective, and hostile. Such a person tends to be down, irrational, quite angry and could be unpredictably explosive. The other may be calm, inhibited, objective, and dominant. Such a person tends to be friendly, non-emotional, insensitive, and non-involved. You can see from this how one sets off the other. Or one relatively common pattern seems to be that one it disciplined and the other impulsive. This can go either way, but is not uncommon when he is the impulsive one and she is the disciplined one--at least at home. After fifteen years of marriage and three children, she is totally worn out from carrying all the pressures, and he is tired out from hearing her complain every time he comes home. And they are headed for the divorce court.
And why should they stay married?
Life is painful, overwhelming, angry, and disappointing.
Why should they stay married in such a painful situation?
I remember one such couple who came to me with that very question. When I told him he had no basis for getting a divorce he said to me, My God wants me to be happy!
It may be that his God wants him to be happy, but that is not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible wants him to be righteous.
Nowhere does the Bible say God wants us to be happy. It does tell us to rejoice, but joy and happiness are not the same thing by any means. Jesus spoke of joy on the night of His arrest, and Paul said more about joy when he was under arrest than at any other time in his writings.
Happiness is not a biblical priority; righteousness is.
The problem is very simple: we don’t understand marriage. We approach marriage in a self-centered way, as if it’s just for us and if it doesn’t work out we can pull out. Not so at all. We committed for better or worse, and we’ve just met some of the worse.
What we do not understand is that marriage is a covenant between us and God is designed to give us
security,
stability,
and
strength
so we can deal with our own root
selfishness,
insensitivity,
and
self-centeredness
in a setting from which we can never escape so we can grow up and mature.
This is God’s greater purpose for marriage because
A covenant is a formal, solemn, binding agreement.
God has made marriage a covenant within a covenant in order to demonstrate His sovereign faithfulness and accomplish His redemptive purposes.
This is exactly what we see through Abraham today when we see that
Marriage and Family Occur in the
Context of God’s Greater Covenant.
Come with me to Genesis 15 where we see that
1. God had promised him a seed.
2. Abraham wanted the seed God had promised him.
1. God had promised him land.
2. Abraham owned no land.
3. Abraham wanted the land God had promised him.
1. God gives Abraham direction to prepare for the confirming of a covenant.
2. Abraham prepares the ritual in order to confirm the covenant.
3. The steps that Abraham takes are the steps that two kings who were making a treaty would take to establish their covenant.
4. It is within the context of this covenant that Abraham’s marriage and family would develop and grow.
5. The birds of prey show that the covenant between God and Abraham will come under attack.
But something happens just before the covenant is confirmed.
Abraham falls asleep.
This shows that
1. God’s covenant is sovereign and one-sided (Genesis 15:12-17).
2. What’s even more important is the fact that God’s covenant is unconditional.
3. There are no conditions listed here at all.
4. God establishes this covenant completely of His own sovereign and independent will.
5. Nothing Abraham does affects God’s decision.
6. Abraham’s marriage and family will develop and grow within the promises of this covenant.
1. In Deuteronomy 29-30, God confirms this covenant with the Palestinian Covenant, a covenant that guarantees Israel the land as He promised to Abraham.
2. In II Samuel 7, God confirms this covenant with the Davidic Covenant, a covenant that not only guarantees Israel the land but also confirms the promise of seed by declaring that Messiah will be the Son of David and rule on his throne.
3. Finally in Jeremiah 31 God confirms the universal blessing dimension of the Abrahamic Covenant with the New Covenant, the covenant that takes the promises to Abraham and makes him a blessing to all the nations through his seed, Jesus, the Son of God.
4. These covenants, the Abrahamic, the Palestinian, the Davidic, and the New, form the structure of the Bible and are the sovereign, unconditional solemn, formal, unbreakable promises of God that guarantee us eternal life and form the context for our marriages and our families.
Now what’s the point of all of this?
There is a very vital point.
Abraham and Sarah show us a covenant couple trying to cope with God’s aims and purpose in the light of His covenant.
God has made a covenant with them, and this covenant defines their family and their place. All that will occur in their marriage depends on this covenant. The only they can fulfill their marriage is to live within the confines of this covenant.
So it is with us.
God has made a covenant with us as well, and our marriages and families depend on that covenant. We need the new hearts and the Holy Spirit of the New Covenant. We need the communion table with its self-examination and forgiveness. We are helpless to live out our marriages without His sovereign grace working within us. We thought marriage was for our happiness, but it is in fact for God’s glory and our growth. God uses marriage for those who marry as what may be the chief instrument to make us like His Son.
God gives us each other to make us like Him.
When we jump out of a marriage because it is tough, because he is dull or she is ditsy or because he is irresponsible or she is uptight, we jump onto a sidetrack of pain and struggle and confusion that introduces much unnecessary struggle and hurt in most cases. We don’t need to jump ship as much as we need to start listening to one another, really to hear one another, rather than trying to change one another and strong arm one another into becoming just like us or our dreams or our expectations. If we know Christ we shall all become like Him, but there is the hard way and then there is the hardest way! And divorce is by far the hardest way!
Why does God give a life-sentence to two incompatible people to live together in the same tent?
Because it is through this covenant the God works to make us what He designed us to be AND to accomplish an even greater purpose than this.
Look at something else, at what happens in the marriage covenant because of the greater covenant.
No matter what Abraham and Sarah to tear their lives apart God acts to keep His promise to put their lives together through His greater covenant.
Abraham has already disobeyed God two times, with Lot and Egypt, yet God reconfirms His covenant. Abraham will disobey God yet again with Ishmael.
Yet God will keep His covenant.
This shows God’s sovereignty.
This shows God’s faithfulness.
And this shows God’s grace.
God keeps His part even when Abraham doesn’t keep His.
And so it is with us.
God Keeps His Part Even When We Don’t Keep Ours!
God Is Faithful Even When We Are Unfaithful.
So why should we keep our part?
To experience the fullness of God’s grace, to avoid the destructiveness of self-imposed pain, to turn from the hurt that comes to our children, to grow and mature and overcome our self-centeredness, our selfishness, our pride and willful independence.
There are many such answers, none of which will mean anything to us as long as we are self-centered and not God-centered. And no one can do this apart from the New Covenant!
But there’s one more implication that comes out of the reality that our marriages are personal covenants within God’s universal covenants.
Here it is.
Our Marriage Covenant Reflects God’s Greater Covenant.
The chief way that those around us realize the greatness of God’s covenant is through our covenant.
Turn with me to Ephesians 5:31-32.
Our marriages show the love between Christ and the church to the world around us. If we are unfaithful to our covenant, we give the world the impression that God is unfaithful to His covenant. After all, if God can’t preserve our marriages and turn them into something others want, why should they trust Him for eternal life?
Are there no exceptions to this reality?
Physical adultery.
I do counsel separation for physical abuse, sexual abuse, and times when a wake-up call is needed. The laws of our times are against the healing of marriages, and we must seek to change these laws.
Yet, the question I asked a few moments ago does make sense.
If God can’t take a broken wreck of a marriage between those who claim to know Him, of if He can’t take a mediocre marriage and turn it into a vibrant and rich one, then why should anyone around us trust Him for eternal life?
This is a great and valid question!
Marriage is a covenant within a covenant. Abraham and Sarah show us a covenant couple attempting to understand how to live within God’s greater covenant. And they teach us what all who keep God’s marriage covenant teach everyone else:
God Works Through Our
Faithfulness to Show His Faithfulness.
This means that our unfaithfulness to the vows we have made makes God out to be unfaithful--or certainly unessential--to those around us. For this reason, we must be faithful to our vows. The point is this:
We Must Be FAITHFUL TO GOD’S FAITHFULNESS
So Others Will Come to Faith in Him.
Why, then, does God sentence two incompatible people to live for life in the same tent?
Is He sadistic?
No.
We must take some responsibility for our own choices. Opposites do attract. We are selfish and self-centered and self-interested and we choose what we get. But beyond that, having made our choice, staying with it is the key way we are faithful to God’s faithfulness so others come to faith in Him.