FEB 6 2022 | Genesis: Behind the Curtain S1E3 | Abraham

Sea Change Church · Genesis: Behind the Curtain · "Abraham" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · February 6, 2022
Genesis 27:30–38
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

I'm Jen Immersion, and I serve on the greeting team intermittently. Sean puts up with me, but it's a great ministry just to get plugged in and get to know everyone. So I'm going to read our scripture today. The reading is from Genesis 12, 10 through 20. Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife, Sarai, I know what a beautiful woman you are.

And the Egyptians, when they see you, they will say, this is his wife. Then they will kill me, but let you live. Oh, excuse me. As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife, Sarai, I know what a beautiful woman you are. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, this is his wife. Then they will kill me, but let you live. Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake, and my life will be spared because of you.

When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarai was, in fact, a very beautiful woman. And when Pharaoh's officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. He treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels. But the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram's wife, Sarai.

So Pharaoh summoned Abram. What have you done to me? He said. Why didn't you tell me she was your wife? Why did you say she is my sister, so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go. Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him away on his way, with his wife and everything he had. The word of the Lord. Great to have you here this morning. It looks like a lot of people are enjoying the beautiful weather out there.

Hello, patio people. I love you guys. What's up, patio people? What's up, online people? And obviously, all of you beautiful people in here with us. Good to see you. We are, once again, in following Abraham's journey of faith into the promise of God. A promise that is sealed by a covenant that is then sealed, once again, with the flesh of Abraham's body and all the Jews going forward. In today's message, we, and in the scripture here, we find that there becomes a kink in the plan to the promise.

We find that there's something happens where all of a sudden the promise is in jeopardy. Now, I just want to begin. I was thinking this week, if you could quantify the financial value, not that you would, but if you could quantify the financial value of God's blessing, what would God's blessing be worth on the open market? If you could quantify the favor, and what is blessing? Blessing means you've got God in your corner.

It means he opens doors that no one can open. He closes doors that no one can close. He provides provision. He provides, you know, like I said, blessing. He provides security. All of these things. If you could quantify that, and if you could understand that the blessing of God is guaranteed to those that are righteous. The scripture says that. I'll say that in a moment. And so, you have the ability to have this blessing.

Maybe we can't quantify it. Now, here's the next question. What would you be willing to sell your blessing for? You see, if you could quantify the worth of God's blessing on a lifetime of following God in righteousness, and then how often we're willing to sell our blessing or trade our blessing away in order to get the shiny thing that we want. We saw this, you know, later on with one of Abraham's descendants with Jacob and Esau, who sells his blessing, it says, for a bowl of lentils, a bowl of soup.

And so, we oftentimes are willing for one reason or another, and sometimes for reasons that we feel justified, as you'll see with Abraham here, to sell the blessing that God has promised the righteous in order to have the thing we want or because we feel that the promise that God has given us is under threat. I want to read just two scriptures as we jump into this that are not in your notes. It is Psalms 37, 25. And I believe it's David says, when I was young, and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging for bread.

This is King David saying that in his whole lifetime, that those that are righteous, he has never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging for bread. But his son, Solomon, says this in Proverbs 10, 6, blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked. I wanted to begin this by saying in the 25, I don't know, maybe 35 years that I have followed Jesus, while I have seen many righteous people go through difficult things, I personally have never, ever been able to categorize something as a righteous person being forsaken by God in my entire life.

I knew that that was true for me, but I wanted to find it in scripture, and that is backed up by scripture. And so the question to you is, do you believe that God blesses the righteousness, that God blesses the righteous, and that blessings are upon the life of the righteous? And are you willing to sell righteousness for what cost, and lose the blessing that comes upon the righteous? So that's the question as we look at Abram here.

Abram, not Abraham yet, is now walking in a promise. He's not gotten to the covenant part. Last week we skipped ahead to that in chapter 17. But God's made this incredible promise. Has God made a promise to you, you think? Do you feel that there's things God has said to you, and you're waiting on them, and you're being patient on those things? Or sometimes have we conflated what is a personal promise we feel God has given us versus some of the doctrinal promises of God that he promises for all believers?

Because there are promises of God that we can stand upon. But then there's also personal promises where we feel like God has said this to me. They're in two different camps, and they need to be treated differently. We're going to look at Abraham as he goes through this. Go to verse 10. Verse 10 shows a threat to the promise. Now, there was a famine in the land. There was a famine. Circle the word famine. And Abraham went down.

That's intentional. Abraham went down. See, when you go to Jerusalem, you go up. Abraham went down to Egypt to live there for a while. Now, why? Because the famine was severe. One of the things that I want to look at is this promise. And as we relate it to you, have you ever felt that on the way to your promise, there is a famine? Perhaps there's an emotional famine. Perhaps there's a financial famine. Perhaps there is a mental famine in your life where you're struggling with your thoughts or something like that.

On the way to the promise, there is a threat to the promise. And I guess the main point that we're going to look at today is how do we live when there's a threat to our promise? And are we conflating what God says is the promise of the righteous with some things that we believe God has promised us, and he very well might. But are we conflating like he has said, one day someone has prophesied over you, your book will be a national bestseller.

And so we begin to hold on to that promise with the same type of authority, with the same type of longing as we do for one of the promises of God that says, I will bless the righteous. That can mean a lot of different things. So he might have said both, but we know that he said the doctrinal promises of God. We're going to look at those and how to live upon the promises. So the first thing is he went down. Our tendency when our promise is in threat is to go down to something.

We go down to something that's easy. We go down when we're lonely to perhaps a relationship we shouldn't be in. We go down when we're frustrated to perhaps a substance that makes us feel better in the moment. We begin to try to appease the flesh before, as opposed to waiting for the promise. Like I said last week, you can't back your way from the flesh into the promise. You have to always start with the promise, live in the covenant, which brings righteousness.

That covenant is by faith, as we saw. And then God takes the things of the flesh and he purifies them through the spirit. And so are you going down? Have you been tempted to go down? Because whenever we go down to something less than the promise, we are selling God's righteousness short. And we absolutely, absolutely can step outside of some of the blessings that God has for us and wants for us. So are you tending to go down?

Why? Because the famine was severe. Now let's just make this realistic. Abraham's a real person. They had a real issue. There's a migrant crisis in the world now. We know that. We saw it. We see that. We saw it in Belarus. We saw it in Turkey. We've seen it on our own border, just a few miles away from here. Abraham was an economic migrant to Egypt. You have to realize that. He was an economic migrant to Egypt. Abraham was in a vulnerable position and it made him fearful.

He was in a vulnerable position. He thought he might starve. And this incident dramatically indicates both the moral quandaries posed by great disparities in wealth and poverty and the dangers of losing faith in the face of such problems. He was in an incredible instance of fear versus faith. Now what is interesting is he went down to Egypt on his own volition. You know, God did not say and he told Abraham to go to Egypt.

God had actually promised, as you remember, what is the promise? I will bring you to this land and I will make you a great nation and I will provide for you and I will completely provide for you. But famine comes and this is the first test of faith. And we see that Abraham slowly hedges his bets with God until we get to Isaac, when he's willing to sacrifice Isaac for the promise. And that is when he moves to one of the heroes of the faith.

Now let me just encourage you. If you're sitting there right now and you're thinking, I've sold my blessing away. I'm such a failure. I've gone down when I shouldn't have gone. Watch the story of Abraham. Abraham doesn't start as a hero of faith. It's because he hedged his bets over and over again and God still proved faithful to him that he became that righteous person. What are you becoming? Are we moving towards faith?

Are we moving away from faith? So the first thing was this. Go from your land and take no one with you. What does he do? He takes Lot. That causes a problem for him. God says, stay in this land and I will make you a great nation. But a famine comes and puts a threat. So what does he do? He goes down to Egypt. He gets to the border of the promise. And as he crosses over the border, he needs to make a Faustian bargain in order to trade his wife into, basically traffic his wife, and breaking commands, because it is his wife, into what would be a concubinal slavery is what would happen.

It's not a great decision. But at the time, they were living in a different time, and he had this threat, and he thought it was the only way to survive. What decisions do you make when you feel that you only have one way to survive? Do we believe in the promise? Do we believe in the covenant of living righteousness and waiting for God? Or do we make bargains? Do we go down? Do we accept less? I will say that one of the things I realized a very long time ago is that there is great blessing in trying to be righteous, in trying to walk along righteousness.

And one of the things I realized a long time ago is I didn't want to be willing to sell my blessing for something lesser, for something of the moment. I think if we understand how important the blessing of God is upon the righteous, and how valuable the blessing of God is, you will be very hesitant to do anything to sacrifice the physical blessing God gives you, the emotional blessing God gives you, all those provisions to have that shiny thing now.

Now, obviously, there's a big difference between wanting a shiny thing and starving to death. I get that. But he didn't believe the promise yet, and we see that he moves toward that. So he went down to Egypt. The next thing he did is he sinned. He actually lied. In order to sustain the promise that he would survive, which God didn't say you wouldn't only survive, God said you're going to have a nation. I mean, God's promise to Abraham is so far beyond survival that it doesn't even compare.

It's existentially greater. But what does he do anyways? He makes a bargain in order to survive. Excuse me, the thing keeps hitting my face. So he makes this bargain to survive, and he ends up lying. He ends up actually sinning in order to sustain the promise. Do you see the difference there? He ends up deciding that the only way to keep this promise is to sin. I said, wait, you could never sin your way into the promise.

And so we see here, if you want to go to verse 12 or verse 11, as he was about to enter Egypt, let's stop there real quick. As you are moving towards selling your blessing in order to sustain the promise, realize there will become a moment when you will reach a border. And in the shadowlands, before you cross that border, you will have a decision to make. Will I cross the border, or will I keep righteousness? He was about to enter Egypt, and then he said to his wife Sarah, he comes up with a plan, plan B.

I know what a beautiful woman you are. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, this is his wife. Then they will kill me, but I will let you live. That's so antithetical to the promise. He's going to become a nation. He still doesn't believe God yet. Say you are my sister, so that I'll be treated well for you. And for your sake, my life will be spared because of you. Well, there's a lot of things that are interesting that are happening here.

Just quick theology. One, this is just the first time we've gone to Egypt, and someone of Jewish nature has been sold into Egypt. It happens with Joseph. It happens with Israel as a whole. So you see that. This is another time where the human race and the promise of the messianic promise is saved through a woman. So we know that it says in the scripture that women are saved through childbirth. That doesn't mean that your sins are forgiven because you have children.

It means women are saved through childbirth because through women, the Messiah will be born. It is through a woman. That's what that scripture means. And so women here, once again, are key, and he is being saved because of a woman. So you have these tie-ins that go into other scriptures, just an extra theological understanding as we move into this passage. So he goes down, and then he lies in order to do that. And so the question, once again, is are you willing to lie?

Are you willing to take shortcuts to the promise? There are no shortcuts to God's promise. There are no shortcuts to righteousness, and you never need to rationalize righteousness. You will never need to rationalize righteousness. I meet couples, and they say, well, we can have this in our relationship because this is going to happen. And so they end up forsaking. They're living in the promise. They're forsaking the covenant in order to have the flesh.

Or one reason or another, or it's a piece of property that you want, and you're willing to sacrifice your integrity on a statement for one reason or another, and you rationalize it for this reason or another. Righteousness never needs to be rationalized. If you find yourself with but or a statement after why you shouldn't do something, realize you're probably walking away from righteousness. What happens, the problem with this is sin is contagious.

You don't sin in a vacuum. You don't sin. It is impossible to have hidden sin. And it's not impossible to have hidden sin, but it will affect you. If you have a problem with pornography or if you have an emotional affair or if you're dishonest, that will affect your other relationships. It is impossible to be involved in, perhaps let's just use it for an easy illustration again, pornography, without that affecting how you give dignity to other human beings.

It will destroy the intimacy you have with the closest relationships. It will be impossible not to objectify those that are around you for your own passion, and it will become part of who you are. And so we need to move away from that. And so sin is contagious. Go to verse 17. But the Lord inflicted serious disease on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram's wife Sarai. So Pharaoh summoned Abram. What have you done to me, he said.

I love that question. What have you done to me? What have you done to me? How many children could go to their parents because of their inability to figure their stuff out? I see it all the time. I look at the team my daughter's on. I look at the friends she's with. Very few have parents that are together still. That's not meant to be a guilt statement. But I want to say that our sin, our inability affects other people.

And how many children could call their parents and say, what have you done to us? Say, that isn't to be guilt, but it is to set a higher bar to say, we need to do whatever it takes to walk in righteousness because we cannot continue to sin without it affecting other people. He asking this question, what have you done to me? I want to say this, you never sin in a vacuum. You actually never sin in a vacuum. Now, there's a way then, if you find yourself at these crossroads, and maybe you do.

This isn't meant to be guilt. There's a difference between guilt and conviction. Conviction turns from sin and walks into righteousness. Guilt will tie you up into bondage. So if you find yourself in that place right now, if you turn to the back of your notes, you're going to see three ways in order to begin to walk in righteousness to change your path. And the question is, do you want to change your path? Here's the first one.

Stand on the promises of God. The second is be patient. And the third is never sacrifice your integrity for the promise. You see, in Genesis 12 too, he says to this, I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. Here's what I put, I added to the notes. Number one, stand on the promises of God and hold your promises loosely. Here's what I mean. Stand on the promises of God.

I put a footnote in there that you can go look at. I think there's 50 to 70 promises of God. What has God guaranteed promised you in the Bible? If you don't know the promises of God, you can't stand on the promises of God. You can hold God accountable to his promises. But then there's other promises. We think that we should be married by a certain time. We think that our career should be at a certain place. We think on and on and on.

And sometimes we conflate those with the actual biblical promises of God, those personal promises. I want to say hold those loosely. Hold the promises of God tightly. Never let them go. But hold everything else loosely. Be willing to let it go. Because so often, many people's faith is shipwrecked when the personal promises they think that God have given them don't pan out. But we walk on the promises of God. He says, I will make you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great.

Stand on the promises of God. Hold promises, your promises loosely. So, do you know the promises of God? Do you know that God says that if you are walking righteousness, your path in front of you will be like the sunrise that will go until full noon and it is bright wherever you go. It promises that for the righteous. God provides provision. It says he provides for the righteous. Never sell your blessing because the promises of God are so great.

Next is this. Be patient. A lot of times we don't understand this. Time is our friend. One of the best things you can do when you don't know what to do or when you sense that there is a famine in the land is to wait. Time is your friend. 2 Peter 3.9 says this. It says, The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise as some understand slowness. Instead, he's patient with you. Not wanting anyone to perish but everyone to come to repentance.

Have you ever taken the clock away from God and kind of tried to speed up the time? One of the things we used to do with our kids is we would celebrate New York New Year's Day but they thought it was regular New Year's Day because I didn't want to stay up to midnight. I haven't stayed up to New Year's for I don't know how long. 10, 15 years. I don't know. I just never stay up to New Year's. It's not one of my favorite holidays.

So just another day in my opinion. But nonetheless, my kids, we want to stay up. We want to stay up. We want to stay up. I'm like, we're going to stay up. And so I was like, let's stay up for New York. Let's watch what's happening in New York. And I turned it on and they were there and we watched it and I'm like, it's 8.55. I will be in bed by 9.10. Woo! They're blowing stuff up, whatever. I was out by 9.20. I was out.

They were happy and we celebrated New York. I didn't lie to them. It was New York time. So they had a great time. But you know what? I was playing with the clock of God. Not with the clock. I was playing with the clock. The question is, do you play with God's timing? Who's in charge of God's timing? Is it you? And are you willing to compromise the promise because the timing's not right? So you speed up the promise. You speed up God's timing.

So you can't back your way into the promise. One of the key things is to be patient. And when we are patient, patience is faith. And as we'll see in a little bit, that faith is equated to what? Righteousness. Remember, we're going to get there in chapter 15. It says that faith equates, God equated his faith as righteousness. And then what does the Bible say about the righteous? That God blesses the head of the righteous.

And it'll be like a crown on your head. Say, I want that crown. I want that crown of righteousness. You know why? Because I'm hungry for that blessing. Are you hungry for the blessing? I am so hungry for the blessing. And I don't have to be there and say, God, oh, bless me, God. Oh, God, just bless me. No, you just got to be righteous. You don't have to beg God for blessing. You have to be righteous. And God says righteousness is equated, is given by faith, patience is faith.

And when you walk in that, you will be righteous. And God will just bless you. Because I do believe that God has to stick to his promises. And he promised that he will bless the righteous. How's your time? How's that clock on your hand? How's your time? Are you rushing things? Are you moving things? Are you feeling tense? Like the windows are closing. The next one and the final one is this. Never sacrifice your integrity for the promise.

Never sacrifice your integrity for the promise. You know, Abraham in that passage, he got to the border of, he was in the promise. There was a threat to the promise. And then he crossed that border with a lie. He crossed it with a lie. And he sacrificed his integrity for the promise. You can't cheat your way into God's promise. You can't lie your way into God's promise. And it's going to have a trickle down effect. Now God, this is a cool thing about God.

He's totally faithful. Abraham comes out of this totally blessed. Like, and that's one of the weird things. At the end, he sends him on his way and Abraham's richer than ever. But lesson learned. And that's, I don't understand that. It doesn't make sense to me other than we just serve this incredibly gracious God. And sometimes God does what God is going to do because God had made a promise. And we know that Abraham is moving to that place.

But the scripture says in Romans 4, 3, as we close, what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. When it comes to the promises of God, when it comes to your life, do you believe God? And I'm just like you. I have so many times in my life where my promise is at threat. At times when it felt like the marriage was at threat, the family was at threat, the career was at threat, the financials were at threat, my health was at threat.

Had, you know, a cancer scare one time. It wasn't cancer, but I thought it was for a while, you know, and I had a couple weeks of figuring it out. So many times, just like you, crossroads of faith. And it's in those moments that we prove we are righteous. How do we prove righteousness? By faith. By saying, God, I believe. It isn't by doing a bunch of stuff, a bunch of good works, a bunch of, well, at the crossroads, I'm gonna go work a lot for God to show him.

No, it's just believing. It's waiting. So it's one, believing in the promises of God. Do you know the promises of God? Do you want the promises of God? I suggest that you learn them and you bring them up to God on a regular basis. These are the promises. God, I'm calling you out on this. You promised to provide. You promised to be there. You said, you bound yourself to the promise. I didn't bind you to the promise, God.

I call you out on it right now. Number two, be patient. Get the timer out of your hand and give it back to God. God understands what's on the clock. I watch a lot of basketball right now with my daughter. You got certain seconds. You always got to yell, you know, two, three, you know, three, two, one, you know, to shoot the shot or whatever. You don't need to do that with God. God is aware of the clock. He never makes a timeout at the wrong time.

He knows exactly what he's doing with your time. Be patient. Time is your friend. When you wait on God and God's timing, that is faith. Faith is equated as righteousness and God is committed himself to blessing the righteous. Do you want to be righteous? And the final one is this. Never, ever, ever sacrifice your integrity, whether it be your physical, sexual integrity, your word that you say, your honesty, never sacrifice it for the promise.

Never. Because you might get a version of the promise, but it won't be the promise of God. Be hungry for the blessing of God. Do you want the blessing of God? I want it. I am so hungry for the blessing of God and I don't want to sell it short. And sometimes I do. And I don't. Let's stand if you would. We're going to have communion today. If you have your communion, will you hand me that Bible, Chris, over there? The little blue one.

There you go. We're going to take our communion today and at this time, hopefully this is a message. I get that this is a strong word. This is not a word you're going to hear at Target. I get it. It's a strong word. And I try to end, whenever there's a strong word, I try to really end it with an encouragement to have the best that God has to offer you. If you're at that crossroads, you know it. I'm not there. Chris isn't there.

We're not following you around, watching your lives and all that. You know it. And the question is, do you want to be there? Do you want more of God? And so as we take this communion, at this crossroads, maybe you've stepped over into that. You've gone down. You've stepped over. And maybe you need to step back and say, you know what, second thought, no, I'm not willing to do that. I want the blessing of God. I want to wait.

If that's you, let's just close our eyes before we take our communion together and just say to the Lord, Lord, I want more faith. I want to be righteous, not because I do a bunch of stuff. I just want to wait. I just want to believe you. I just want to believe that you are going to take care of me. And God, I want the blessing of God on my life. Forgive me for where I've sinned, where I've made a mistake. Let me not walk in guilt, but from this moment on, let it be changed.

The blood of Jesus will forgive us for our sins. And if you have your communion cup, scripture says in Luke, when the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. And he said to them, I've eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God. And after taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, take this and divide it amongst you.

For I tell you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. Then he took the bread, gave thanks and broke it and gave it to them. So if you have your bread, take it. I learned this as a little Catholic kid growing up and I really like it. They would hold it up and they'd break it. It's a great symbol. Break the bread if Jesus' body was broken. And let's take the bread together. Now, this blood right here that represents the blood of Jesus, this cup, if you have any guilt, fear, sin, all that stuff, it says the blood of Jesus will set you free, believing in his blood.

And so we take this in remembrance. It says, in the same way, after the supper, he took the cup and he said, this is the cup of the new covenant, which is my blood. There's that flesh again I've been talking about. The new covenant, the flesh is his blood. The new covenant was in his blood, which was poured out for you. And so with that, let's take that off and remember that the blood of Jesus sets you free, believing that he sets you free and that he loves you.

Let's take the cup together. As I close, I'm always trying to find that balance between how much throttle to give on challenge and how much blessing and encouragement and inspiration to find in the midst of that. We want to be a church that challenges you in order that you might experience all that God has. If you want prayer today, if you need prayer, we have people that are going to be at the front. They always do here every week.

We want to pray for you. We want to pray for you. So please come forward for prayer. And if you have questions about our church, if you want to know about anything that's going on, small groups or whatever, in the back, we have people at the next steps table. We want to get you involved and connected. Most of all, God said to Abraham, whom you bless, I will bless. And I'm going to bless you and I want to bless you. This is a place of blessing.

So if you'd extend your hands, if you're comfortable with that, let me bless you. Lord Jesus, we want to bless these people, Lord God. We want to bless them, God, with your victory that they can stand in the promises, God, and that everyone who goes and seeks out the promises this week will experience the promises being brought to life, God. I pray, God, where some are on the border or some have already gone down to Egypt that they say, I don't want to live here anymore.

God, that you would bless them and call them, whatever the changes make, whatever it costs them financially, whatever it costs them emotionally, to go back into the land of the righteous, Lord God, and to live in the promise, Lord God, to live in the covenant. We bless you with the spirit of God. We bless you with his righteousness. We bless you with his provision. It says that righteousness will crown, it says that his blessings will crown the head of the righteous.

And so God, crown their heads with blessing, crown their feet, Lord God, that in the right way to go with their path being lit, it says that you will give like full daylight to their path as they go. And so God, bless them, raise them up in this congregation, bless this little church on the corner and all you're doing. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. God bless you. Have a great week. If you need prayer, come on forward.

We want to pray for you. We'll see you soon. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.