Hey Gang,
We continue this week with our series question: How do I find life after failure? Last week we examined the immoral failures of the woman at the well and her thirst for the living water of salvation that only Christ could provide. There are times when our failures can overcome our ability to move forward - Canada was in uproar Friday over a 15-year-old schoolgirl who was found dead, an apparent suicide, five weeks after she uploaded a video to YouTube describing years of bullying that drove her to drugs and alcohol - sometimes failure can defeat us.
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Sometimes we dismiss the importance of our failure and never realize how far reaching the consequences and ramifications of our choices might be as in our lesson this week. There is always a redemptive path we can take and sometimes we just have to get back on God's path! God will show you how, and He will give you the power.
Just how true is Steppenwolf’s 1969 hit “Born to Be Wild” in your life today?
When you’ve missed or ignored God’s direction, don’t hide or deny it. Get back on His highway.
I. LISTEN TO GOD – GENESIS 15:4-6
4 Now the word of the Lord came to him: “This one will not be your heir; instead, one who comes from your own body will be your heir.” 5 He took him outside and said, “Look at the sky and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then He said to him, “Your offspring will be that numerous.” 6 Abram believed the Lord, and He credited it to him as righteousness.
God previously had made four promises to Abram: (Gen. 12:1-3)
1. Abram would be given land.
2. He would become a great nation.
3. His name would become great.
4. He would be involved in a blessing.
Abram could have felt better about his future if he had an heir who would carry on his name. Years earlier, he had listened to the Lord and moved from his home to live in the distant land of Canaan (12:1-5). The Lord had promised to give Abram an heir, someone who would provide him with descendants for generations to come. So far, however, Abram still did not have that heir. Consequently, he had apparently resigned himself to the fact that Eliezer, a servant who lived in his house, would receive his promised inheritance (15:1-3).
The Lord came to Abram and addressed his concerns in two ways.
1. He assured Abram that Eliezer would not be his heir.
2. He confirmed that Abram’s heir would be his own flesh and blood (v. 4).
When we reflect on the story so far, we find ourselves drawn to the Lord’s comforting reassurance. As we take the time to be with Him, He speaks to us so we can know His plan for us and how to live it out in ways that honor Him. Of course, we have an advantage over Abram. We have the Bible to give us God’s direction and reassurance.
What details did God give Abram? How can we obey without knowing much of the plan? Does the word of the Lord come to us today as it did to Abram? How can we know what we’re hearing and seeing is from God? Why can we trust God even if His method of communicating is not as overt as it was to Abram?
- If we want to trust God, know His plan, and recover from failure after missing His plan, we must study and apply the Bible. We have words from God in Scripture.
- God’s promises are trustworthy.
- Faith involves not only belief in God’s word but also a relationship of trust.
- A righteous life is one of the fruits of a life of faith.
Two conclusions to these truths:
- I will trust God to work in me and through me to accomplish His plan.
- I will listen to God’s Word through the Bible. I will not assume I can change these words, or adapt them to suit my preferences.
This familiar story gains a new perspective when viewed from Sarai’s viewpoint. Sarai, Abram’s barren wife, may have seen herself as the holdup to God’s promise. With every year of unanswered prayer and unfulfilled hopes, her humiliation and bitterness appeared to deepen.
II. DON’T TAKE MATTERS INTO YOUR OWN HANDS – GENESIS 16:1-5
Hagar and Ishmael
16 Abram’s wife Sarai had not borne any children for him, but she owned an Egyptian slave named Hagar. 2 Sarai said to Abram, “Since the Lord has prevented me from bearing children, go to my slave; perhaps through her I can build a family.” And Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So Abram’s wife Sarai took Hagar, her Egyptian slave, and gave her to her husband Abram as a wife for him. This happened after Abram had lived in the land of Canaan 10 years. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she became pregnant. When she realized that she was pregnant, she treated her mistress with contempt. 5 Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for my suffering! I put my slave in your arms, and ever since she saw that she was pregnant, she has treated me with contempt. May the Lord judge between me and you.”
Do we always create messes when we take matters into our own hands? Why or why not?
What messes did Abram and Sarai create?
- So she sadly decided she knew better than God and took matters into her own hands. She implied the Lord was the reason she was not enjoying life’s blessings (16:2). Sarai took her slave and gave her to Abram (Gen. 16:3). This was culturally acceptable, but not acceptable in God’s eyes.
- Rather than stay faithful to God’s instructions, Abram agreed with his wife’s plans (16:2-4). Sarai’s and Abram’s choices had long-reaching ramifications. Sleeping with Hagar resulted in a child named Ishmael. This led to generations of hostility between Ishmael’s descendants, the Muslims, and Isaac’s descendants, the Jews.
Sometimes we get impatient waiting for good things to happen. Sometimes we become convinced we know the right thing to do even if God has prohibited it. In both cases we get deep into a situation before realizing our time was off and our decision was ill-advised. A wiser life joins the journey of listening to God and following His instructions. We discover that only God has no ulterior motives; His approach is more pure than even our own plans for ourselves.
Middle East Conflict between the Jews & Arabs
- Just as the choices by Abram, Sarai, and Hagar had an immediate consequence, it also had consequences we are still feeling today. The next time you turn on a world news program, look at the conflict in the Middle East. Arabs will call themselves sons of Ishmael the son of Abram and Hagar, while Jews call themselves sons of Isaac the son of Abraham and Sarah. But they all call themselves sons of Abraham.
- The OT hostilities were mostly between Israel and Egypt (non-Ishmael), Israel and Moab/Ammon (descendents of Lot, Abraham's nephew), Israel and Canaan/Philistia (no relation to Abraham), Israel and Amalek (descendants of Esau), Israel and Esau/Edom (descendant of Isaac). The major wars with Assyria and Babylon would have involved SOME Ishmaelites, but those nations were pre-Abrahamic in origin and of mixed nationalities by the time of the wars with Judah and Israel.
Ishmael, from the Hebrew word meaning God hears, was the son of Abraham and Hagar, the Egyptian maid of his wife Sarah. When Sarah had found herself not having children, she arranged to have a child with Abraham by Hagar acting as a surrogate mother (Genesis 16:1-4), even though God had specifically stated that a child would be born to Sarah in due time (see Isaac). The result was bitter conflict between Ishmael and Isaac, and their descendants that has gone on right to the present day.
Ishmael was born at Mamre, when Abraham was 86, 11 years after Abraham's arrival in what would become the land of Israel (Genesis 16:3). He grew up to be a man of the desert wilderness, with a wild and hostile attitude toward people, exactly as God described him to his mother before he was born: "Behold, you are with child, and shall bear a son; you shall call his name Ishmael; because The Lord has given heed to your affliction. He shall be a wild ass of a man, his hand against every man and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen." (Genesis 16:11-12 RSV).
When a feast was held to celebrate the weaning of Isaac, who was born 13 years later, Ishmael caused trouble by insulting and mocking his little brother (Genesis 21:8-9). After Sarah, who by then had come to dislike both Hagar and Ishmael, saw what he was doing, she said to Abraham "Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac." (Genesis 21:10 RSV)
Abraham at first resisted Sarah's demand - despite Ishmael's difficult personality, Abraham loved him and did not want to see him go. God however settled the matter: "But God said to Abraham, "Be not displeased because of the lad and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for through Isaac shall your descendants be named. And I will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also, because he is your offspring." (Genesis 21:12-13 RSV)
Hagar and Ishmael were sent away, but they were not abandoned. God appeared and spoke to Hagar, assuring her that He would watch over them and see them prosper (Genesis 21:17-19). "And God was with the lad, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt" (Genesis 21:20-21 RSV).
Isaac and Ishmael apparently did not meet again until Abraham died: "Isaac and Ishmael his sons buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron the son of Zohar the Hittite, east of Mamre, the field which Abraham purchased from the Hittites. There Abraham was buried, with Sarah his wife" (Genesis 25:9-10 RSV). The place today is known as the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, where the conflict for control of it still rages between the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael.
Ishmael lived 137 years (Genesis 25:17). He had 12 sons, who became the founders of Ishmaelite tribes that spread from Egypt to what is today Iraq. Many of the modern-day Arab peoples correctly recognize that they are the descendants of Ishmael, while the Jews, and the rest of the Israelites, are descendants of Isaac - but all are descended from Abraham.
What consequences have you seen from people choosing what may look acceptable but actually disobey God? How do we deceive ourselves in such situations? What can we learn from this episode about making decisions as couples?
- Spouses’ agreeing doesn’t make it right.
- We must resist the urge to play the blame-game.
- Don’t turn on each other when things go wrong; turn to God together.
- Faith in God’s promises requires patience.
- God does not operate on human time schedules.
- We should not seek to fulfill God’s promises by taking matters into our own hands.
- Can you imagine how differently things may have come out if Adam and Eve had considered the consequences of their choices?
- What if Cain had considered his choice to get angry and take out his frustration on his brother, Abel?
- What if Lot’s wife had not made the choice to turn back to Sodom, Lot would have had his wife and his daughters would not have done what was despicable in having children for their father. Those children, by the way, became an almost constant source of trouble for the children of Israel during their initial time in the Promised Land. So, the choice by Lot’s wife had not only an immediate consequence but also one that would have an effect hundreds of years later.
Three life lessons emerge from this portion of the story. These life lessons can help us avoid temptations to take matters into our own hands.
1. Getting ahead of the Lord can become a bad habit.
Abram had a history of taking matters into his own hands. In each case he got into trouble because he acted on his own instead of turning to the Lord. Similar outcomes await us if we develop a pattern of launching ahead with our plans, not waiting on the Lord to work out His plan.
2. We often grow more fretful about our unmet need as time passes.
Without deliberate discipline, we’ll give in to taking action on our own. Before long, we’ll find ourselves pushing hard to make things happen. At the same time, we’ll ignore that God can be trusted to keep His promises.
3. Getting wise counsel can keep us on track.
It can help us to keep obeying God when circumstances seem to be pushing us to do something on our own. A variety of biblical proverbs affirm the value of getting the Lord’s guidance by seeking the counsel of believers who have grown in godly wisdom. Abram’s and Sarai’s decision teaches us the value of sharing ideas about how to solve our problems with mature Christians who can give wise feedback and advice.
Something being culturally common doesn’t make it godly or wise. Sarai and Abram did what was culturally accepted at the time, but oh what pain it caused.
Two conclusions to these truths:
- I will be patient and not get ahead of God. One way I’ll do this is to remember past messes I’ve made by trying to compromise His standards.
- I will refuse to dwell on past failures or to blame them for my current actions or inactions.
III. REFOCUS ON GOD’S PLAN – GENESIS 17:3-6, 15-19
3 Then Abram fell facedown and God spoke with him: 4 “As for Me, My covenant is with you: you will become the father of many nations. 5 Your name will no longer be Abram, but your name will be Abraham, for I will make you the father of many nations. 6 I will make you extremely fruitful and will make nations and kings come from you.
15 God said to Abraham, “As for your wife Sarai, do not call her Sarai, for Sarah will be her name. 16 I will bless her; indeed, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she will produce nations; kings of peoples will come from her.” 17 Abraham fell facedown. Then he laughed and said to himself, “Can a child be born to a hundred-year-old man? Can Sarah, a ninety-year-old woman, give birth?” 18 So Abraham said to God, “If only Ishmael were acceptable to You!” 19 But God said, “No. Your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will name him Isaac. I will confirm My covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his future offspring.
Abram was 86 years old when Hagar gave birth to Ishmael (16:16). Thirteen years passed before Abram’s next recorded encounter with the Lord. He was 99 years old. The encounter would be a critical turning point for Abram. In this pivotal meeting, Abram would learn more about God’s plan (17:1-2).
Despite these failures, Sarai becomes the mother of Isaac and the nation that grew from his line. God did not give up on Sarai even though she missed His direction. He gave her a new name indicating His authority and blessing. He also gave her a son. Sarah, by the grace of God, moved from being the “hold-up” to the “how” of the blessing.
Abram was 86 years old when Hagar gave birth to Ishmael (16:16). Thirteen years passed before Abram’s next recorded encounter with the Lord. He was 99 years old. The encounter would be a critical turning point for Abram. In this pivotal meeting, Abram would learn more about God’s plan (17:1-2).
Recognizing that the Lord had appeared before him, Abram assumed a posture that reflected awe and reverence in God’s presence. By falling facedown, he showed the sincerity of his worship as well as his willingness to be submissive to God. When we seek to get right with God so we can refocus on His plan for us, our first step involves coming to Him with a submissive spirit and heart. As we come before Him in humility, He meets us in love and grace. He shows us what to do next.
What new details about the plan did God give?
- God shared more details about His covenant. A covenant served as an agreement between two parties. It had legal as well as relational implications for each of the parties engaged in it. As a part of God’s covenant with Abram, He affirmed that He would keep His promise to Abram about his future. Because of God’s faithfulness to His promises, Abram’s descendants would make up families, tribes, and nations. God changed Abram’s name to Abraham. Abraham’s new name would call to mind God’s promise to provide him with an ever-growing number of people who would fill the land for generations to come.
What’s significant about Abraham’s and Sarah’s name change? How did God include Sarah?
- Abram – in Hebrew means exalted father.
- Abraham – means father of a multitude.
God would make two changes to Sarai’s life:
1. He changed her name to Sarah, a princess.
2. She would give birth to a son who would fulfill God’s promise of an heir. She would give birth to nations and have kings come from her.
Why do you think Abraham laughed? How was he still trying to help God with His plan?
- We laugh to express or hide nervousness, fear, anger, joy, stress, surprise, humor, sorrow, sarcasm, doubt, excitement, or other feelings.
- It can be encouraging to know that even though Abraham and Sarah still had doubts and faults, God in His grace and mercy helped them refocus on His plan and receive His blessings.
- As Abraham listened to God, he again assumed a humble posture. His posture reflected his heart of worship and awe of God. He laughed…to himself. Interestingly, the son born to Abraham and Sarah would be called Isaac, a name which meant laughter.
- When God makes a promise, the laughter of joy and wonder is more appropriate than laughter of doubt and cynicism.
- God accepts honest questions addressed to Him as prayers. He does not always give a clear answer, but He does respond in His own way.
- God is able to do all that is needed to fulfill His promises.
Two conclusions to these truths:
- I will take steps to live out God’s directions, rather than assume I can fix things through willpower.
- I will choose confidence that God still works in me.
Prayer of Commitment
Lord, forgive me for trusting myself to do what only You can do. Amen.
Lord, forgive me for trusting myself to do what only You can do. Amen.
Be in prayer this week as we continue in this series on life after failure - God's redemptive plan, think about it!
Hope to see everyone this Sunday.
In His Love,
David & Susan
