Stop Scheming | Part 1

Genesis 12:10-20 | Part 1 | Do you ever find yourself telling half truths or scheming to make your life a little bit easier? While it may feel helpful, working around God isn't a lasting solution. So what is?

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_01 0:04

We're tempted to scheme. We do the same thing. Now we may not consider it scheming. We might not call it scheming, but we look for loopholes, we entertain a little sin, we fudge some things, we withhold information just so that we can get by.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

You're listening to The Bridge with Junior Ziggler. Junior's the lead teaching pastor at the Bridge in Chicagoland. And today we're jumping back into the story of Abraham. Have you ever noticed how quickly fear can make you do things you thought you'd never do? Maybe you've tried to force a relationship because you were afraid of ending up alone. Maybe you've stretched the truth a little bit because you didn't want to face the consequences. Or maybe instead of waiting on God, you decided to take matters into your own hands because waiting felt too risky. There's one underlying question that we subconsciously live out every single day of our lives. Can I really trust God to take care of me? Today in God's Word, we're gonna see that very struggle. We're going to see a man whom God has great plans for, however, he's waiting. And while he's waiting, that fear starts to surface, and he is left with this same question Can I really trust God? Let's look at the life of Abraham. Thanks for joining us. Now here's Junior.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

So there I was, somewhere I thought I would never be, and I shouldn't have been. It was after midnight, standing in an illegal chop shop looking for anything in my car that I could hold as a weapon. And it started two weeks earlier. My buddy and I wanted to buy a motorcycle together. He and I we grew up in Wisconsin, and now we were in Chicago. We're not really wise to the whole like city life, still trying to get used to areas. But regardless, we wanted a motorcycle that him and I could share. We didn't have enough money to buy one, but maybe we could like pull some money together. And uh, we didn't have one for like a good one. So we got to to scheming to figure something out. And a friend of our guy that he went to college with had a brother with a storage locker that he said was full of cheap bikes who's on the south side. We said, Well, that sounds great. Maybe there's like a small startup or something. Let's just buy one of those, one of those bikes. And so he gave us a number to call. And for most people at this point, you'd say, like, okay, well, red flags are coming up. You gotta be very careful. But not us. Like, we're young, we're dumb, we're from Wisconsin. Uh, so we we called the number and we said, Hey, we heard that you had some cheap bikes. Can we come and can we come and see them? And the guy said, Well, you can come after dark. Like, all right, well, that's kind of weird, but maybe like he works during the day or something like that. And they're like, All right, sounds good. So nighttime rolled around and we called the number back. We said, Hey, we're we're on our way. Uh, can you give us the address of where we're going? The guy said on the other line and goes, Yeah, it's not like that. What do you mean it's not like that? You just give us an address. Like, yes, I'm not gonna give you the address. Meet me at Walgreens, you'll follow me there. So we met him at Walgreens. There we are, it's after midnight. We're following a guy through West Englewood, down an alley, through an old fence, into an unlit storage facility parking lot. Now, at this point, it started hitting us like this is not a good idea. Like, I don't think this is a good spot that we're in. And we begin rifling through the car for anything we could use to defend ourselves. My buddy found a pen. He's like, Here, just hold this pen. I said, I don't want to die with holding onto a pen as a weapon. Like, it looks like an idiot. So you step out of the car, our contact opens up the garage door, revealing the storage room of like 50-some bikes and parts and car parts and VIN numbers that are all scratched off. And I stood there and I asked, like, how did you, where do, where do these, where am I right now? And the guy he said, My brother didn't tell you where you are. He said, No. He said, You don't know what this is? I have no idea what I'm looking at right now. He went on to explain to him and his buddies, a gang, run this job shop. I said, Okay, um, so we can't, like, how do we register a bike and insure it? He said, You can't. You have to ride dirty. It's like, well, can the two of us just talk for a second? He's like, Yeah. So my buddy and I would start arguing. He said, I'm not gonna buy one of these bikes. My friend goes, like, we have to. I think he's like, I'm worried that he's gonna hurt us if we don't buy one of his bikes. He's like, Well, what are you gonna say, Junior? So I looked up, I was like, I don't think you have the color of bike that we want. Now, there's like 50 some bikes of all colors. And he started getting angry at this point. He's like, What are you talking about? I gotta, you know, every color here. My friend's like, here, here's the money. Um, we'll take whatever. And I'm whispering, I was like, dude, I'm not driving that bike back. He's like, then I will, but can I park in your garage? Because I don't have room in my garage right now. And so for months I had this bike from who knows where. Vin number scratched off, sitting in my garage. I had trouble sleeping at night. I was thinking, like, I have do I have a stolen bike in my garage? Can I get in trouble for this? Like, how does this work with the law? And for months, this just like ate away at me. You know, I like paid for a bike. I can't even ride and uh and I don't want this thing in my garage. And my scheming of saving money and cutting corners came back to bite me. I ended up just giving the bike back to him. It's like, just take it. I don't, I don't want it. And we just kind of cut our losses. Now, I realize you're not dumb enough to put yourself in a position like that, but the reality is, we've all been guilty of scheming to get what we want. And in minor ways, I would argue that you schemed this week in some sort of way to get something you wanted. You manipulate a situation so that we come out on top, or you manipulate a person in order to get something from them. You manipulate to look a certain way. We manipulate information all the time. And if you think you're safe, the text today might convince you otherwise. We're in Genesis chapter 12, Genesis chapter 12. We start in verse 1 last week. Last week was so fun. It was such a fun text to unpack. And if you missed that message, you got to go back. And Jordan just knocked it out of the park. But Genesis chapter 12, verse 10 is where we're we're going to start. It's page nine in the Bibles and the chairs. Otherwise, no phones and tablets are good to. Well, as the lens of scripture zooms in, welcome to the Negev or Negev, be southern Israel. This is a super highway of trade routes as it connects Africa to Asia. Now, it's a view, if you're ever here, it's a view that looks almost otherworldly. Very harsh elements. You have dry ground, hot sun, giving it, I mean, just amazing overlooks. But it's a difficult place to travel through, much less exist, which is exactly what Abram is trying to do. He sits in the shade of his tent deep in thought, the door of the tent flapping in the dusty wind. Others in his group rest in their tents, trying to conserve what little energy they have left. And rations are quickly depleting. Crops are very scarce. The few cattle that they have are very thin. They've been mainly surviving on dates, which is really the only thing you can survive on out here, one of the only crops that grow in these conditions. But as sick as they are of dates are becoming precious as the storage is shrinking. And Abraham's wondering, what is God doing? Like it wasn't long ago. Abram was living 400 miles north in Haran in the fertile crescent, like the farming was a dream here. And now they're staring at dry rocks. Why would God lead me from a prosperous land to sit here in hunger? Is this his plan? And Genesis chapter 12 picks up the story, verse 10. It says, Now there was a famine in the land, so Abram went down to Egypt. Now hold on one second before we continue on. Abram, uh why why Egypt? Did God tell you to go to Egypt? No, I mean, so far, throughout Genesis chapter 12, Abram's been following what God's lead. Here he's just making a decision to weasel out of really something that where God put him. And I think you and I can be guilty of the same thing. That God brings us to situations, situations that can be very difficult. Maybe you're in a situation right now that's extremely difficult, but God placed you there. And there are times where we're tempted, can I just kind of weasel out? Weasel out of this. And this is what I believe Abraham's doing. I'm gonna go to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. What does sojourn mean? I feel like that's one word that we just kind of say, we think we know what it means, but I don't know if many of us know what that means. To sojourn means to live as a temporary resident. Now, at this point in scripture, this doesn't really seem like much. It just kind of seems like a setup to what's what's going to happen. But who else would sojourn in Egypt? Abram's descendants, the Israelites, would live in Egypt, though that's not their home. Then who else would so sojourn in Egypt? You'd have Jesus would sojourn in Egypt. Remember when his family had to flee King Herod. So right here on the first few pages of Scripture, there's this interesting theme developing that God's people would know how to live as temporary residents wherever they are. Now, this is even us today. If you've given your life to Jesus Christ, this earth is not your home. You're a sojourner here, and you're supposed to act like a sojourner constantly. That our stock and our hope and our eyes are not on anything in this world but the kingdom of God, which is eternal. Uh, Jim reads, other than looking like he smells like grandpa's aftershave, he he wrote a hymn. And uh, even if church isn't your thing, you you've probably familiar with at least words of the hymn that he wrote. He wrote, This world is not my home. I'm just passing through. Some of you are like singing in your head right now, aren't you? My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue. The angels beckon, I love this line. The angels beckon me from heaven's open door, and I just can't feel at home in this world anymore. And for many of us, this is our biggest problem. We're way too at home in this world. Our hearts are on the things of this world, the image of this world, the values of this world, but instead, you and I were designed to be like these homesick sojourners.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

You're listening to The Bridge with Junior Ziggler. We'll get back to Junior in a moment. We want to tell you about one of his books, The Manual. If you're a man or raising a man, married to a man, maybe dating a man, there's a lot of confusion around what real manhood actually is. In the manual, Junior cuts through the noise, both the over-the-top macho stuff and the politically correct definitions, and he gets to the raw core of manhood. He exposes the toxic masculinity for what it really is, not manhood at all. This book is simple, honest, powerful, and it might just change how you view men, strength, and leadership. We'd love to send you a copy of the manual. Just visit juniorzigler.com and give a gift of any amount towards this show, and we'll send it to you. That's juniorzygle.com. Now let's get back to junior's message.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

Um, even when I was a kid, very homesick. It was like a bad homesick. I would leave sleepovers constantly when I went with my friends. I left camp in middle school because I got way too homesick. Um, and you can make fun of me for that. I got made fun of constantly and I deserved it. But I just so, so homesick. We're all to embrace that homesickness in our spirit. Romans 8.23 says we ourselves groan inwardly while we wait. That while we wait for eternal home, there's this groan, this homesickness in us that we're to embrace. And you felt that groan. You felt that homesickness. We feel it in different ways. You bury a loved one. And you feel just that unease. It's that groan in you that this isn't the way it's supposed to be, death. Or feel that groan when we turn on the news and we see the acts of terror, human trafficking, or we pass by an accident and they're laying sheets over bodies, and we look at this like it agitates like deep down in our souls. Like, man, this is not how it should be. There's that groan in you and I. Now, sadly, what so many of us are very guilty of is we misdiagnose that groan. We try to silence that groan by forgetting that we're sojourners. We silence that homesickness by forgetting that we're not home. And we chase the things of this world: money, sex, power. And all of that has just been this dangling carrot distracting you from the reality that you're being hurled toward eternity. And most of this is not gonna matter at all. And we are most fresh, we are firing on all cylinders spiritually when we embrace that inward groan. No, we're just sojourners, we're just here temporarily, we're living in tents as we talked about last week. But the moment we forget that, we begin to mess everything up, which is exactly what Abram is about to do. He's about to forget that sojourner part of him. He says, When he was about to enter Egypt, said to Sarai, his wife, I know that you were a woman beautiful in appearance. I like this. 75 years old, my man still got some Riz. It's like, you go, bro. Riz means like charisma, is where Riz comes from, by the way. I just learned that this summer when I was at camp at the high schoolers, they taught me that. It's like I think I'm cool now that I can use that term. Now you can use it too and feel cool. But Mary Fellas, when's the last time? When's the last time you you said something like this to your girl? Like, I know this isn't a marriage text, like, come on, this is this is some good stuff. Like the guy's 75. He looks at his wife, who's probably also in her 70s, like, sup, baby. You're like hotter than these sands in this desert. Now, maybe he's looking to get lucky. Maybe. I I like doing this kind of stuff in front of my daughters to mess with them because they get very grossed out easily, and it's just it's the best. But this is this is healthy. You're just keeping the marriage fun, you're keeping the marriage fresh. Now, unfortunately, Abram is about to follow this up with a scheme. He says, and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, Well, this is his wife, and it will kill me, but they'll let you live. Now, this wasn't out of the ordinary for ancient times. It's like, all right, let's off the husband. That way she's back on the market, um, either to marry, or really what was more common is hey, if her husband is gone, her only way to produce an income is prostitution. And so she could potentially make the owner of a brothel a lot of money, is what a lot of ancient societies would um would would believe. Um, it also would not be uncommon for to unto trafficker. So to be fair to Abram in this whole text, it's like, man, I get, first off, I don't think you should be here, Abram, but I get your this is a legitimate concern. And when there's a concern, this is the same way with you and I, when there's a concern, we begin to scheme things. It goes with us too. Those things that tend to get our headspace. Has anything had your head space this past week? Anything that's been eliciting a little bit of anxiety and worry, anything keeping you up at night? It's in those moments that we're tempted to scheme. We do the same thing. Now we may not consider it scheming, we might not call it scheming, but we'll look for loopholes, we entertain a little sin, we fudge some things, we withhold information just so that we can get by. And this is what Abram is about to do. Look what he comes up with. He says, Say, say, uh, say you're my sister. That may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake. No, that's when the romantic moment kind of crashes here. So this is what some would call. I I don't like to call it this because I just don't think this really exists, but this is what a lot of people call this. Is what you call like a half-truth. No, I'm sure that half truths really exist because truth is truth. But but technically, his wife, Sarai, is his half-sister. Is that gross? Yeah, of course. Why even ask that question? Of course it's gross. But keep in mind they were raised in a very pagan, godless society. So this is very normal in many ways. Half truth. Abram's schemes. And again, so do we. We just don't call it that. And so here's what I want to do. I just want to take a timeout here in the text. We're gonna get back to the text. I just want to take a timeout here, and I want to make things a little bit uncomfortable, just for fun. But really, in order to get the value from this text, we have to go here. I just want to I just want to list some common schemes today that we can be very guilty of or at least tempted by. And it might get a little awkward up in here, but sometimes awkwardness is a good thing. All right, so you ready? Abram scheming. Here's how we often scheme excuses for being late. You ever done this where you're running late? Like you woke up late, or you're like zoned out too long, sat there scrolling on your phone on the couch for too long, you waited for your coffee in a line that you knew you didn't have time to wait for, but then something happens on your way to work. You hit a train, and you're like, oh my goodness, I can blame the train now. Like, sorry, guys got stuck in the train. It's really not my fault. Now, no, you were like late before the train. Now, I'm again, I'm sure nobody in here is guilty of this at all. But I did this just this past week. I had a meeting at like it's like four o'clock meeting with Maddie. She's like the blonde, uh, what's happening, girl? And I had a meeting with her at four o'clock, and I totally forgot about it. And I ironically, it's actually about me, help her helping me get more organized. So I'm I'm racing to get to this meeting with her, and I'm late. And then I hit a train. And confession right now, I texted Matt. I was like, sorry, Matt, it's like I train, nothing I can do here. No, it's like, no, I was late before then. That's a is a happen, it was really a lie. Or how about this? Taxes. Taxes are another one. Just fudging some numbers, leaving out some income sources, not recording cash transactions. It's not truth. It's it's a scheme. Or here's a big one exaggeration. So common. Now, here's how exaggeration often goes down is I'll be upset about something. But in order for me to validate my own anger, I want you to get upset about this one thing as I'm upset about it. That'll make me feel better if you're as upset about me. So, what I'm gonna do is I'm going to exaggerate the details of what made me angry so that I can get you just as angry so that my anger is validated and justified. So, really, what I'm doing is I'm gonna lie to you to get you as angry as I am. This is very common. It destroys families, it destroys friendships, churches, workplaces. Those who exaggerate struggle with self-respect. Those who exaggerate struggle with respect from other people because people sniff out exaggeration after a while, and then you get taken less seriously. Or another way this works is I'm gonna go on Facebook and I'm gonna do this long romantic post about how awesome my spouse is, partly because I want people to think my marriage is cute and romantic. So I'm gonna exaggerate how amazing he or she is, and then people read it and they're like, Are we talking about? Are you still married to the same person here? Did you get remarried? Because I know I uh this just it's an exaggerated post that's leaving it all out. That's the problem with social media, but where there's a lot of exaggeration on social media. Here's another one that kind of goes with exaggeration is mimicking tones. When we retell a conversation that upsets us, we change the tones to make the other person sound worse. The other day, my daughter's complaining about like something someone said to her at like school or something, and she said, Dad, I was I was just minding my own business, and she comes walking over to me and she says, I don't want to hang out with you anymore. And I said, Oh baby, that didn't happen. She goes, How do you know? You weren't there, Dad. I said, Because nobody talks like this. I've never met anybody who talks ever like this. I just don't know anybody like that. We now we don't outgrow that. I hear adults doing this all the time. I've done it. Mimicking tones to gain support, and it garners no respect is just a lie. It's a scheme, and people take you less seriously. How are we doing so far in these? I told you, this is no fun. Here's another one business expenditures. It's like, hey, can I expense this round of golf? Like, we'll just talk like business for two minutes. You know, could have done that over coffee or a phone call, but like, hey, get a round of golf in. Another one uh might be online filters. Online filters are out of control. Can I just say that? They are. Have you seen these online filters lately? I feel like I feel bad for anybody in the dating world right now. Dangerous. It's like date, these filters are wild. Also, people do like wild stuff with makeup now. It is scary. Makeup art and filters. You see a picture of someone, you're like, who's that? Like, oh, that's so-and-so. I was like, no, it's not. I saw them yesterday. They look nothing like that. They don't have sparkles around them either. And and and we might think, okay, well, that's just kind of harmless. It's just kind of like the world today. I don't think so. It's a scheme to appease the image that we want. And really, what it does is it spirals our mental health because now I'm not achieving the way I'm coming across online. Don't get me started on those avatar fads. Remember the avatar fad during COVID? We all got stuck inside and we were, we were like, you know, we couldn't get to the gym or the barber, so we were like fatter and had bad hair. And so instead of posting like selfies, we just went out and made avatars of ourselves. It didn't look like us at all. And I know it's just kind of silly, but playing with the truth, playing with the truth to help our own cause. Another one on here I did not put on the screen, but this is like this is a big one is accountability. Maybe, maybe you're in a small group, hopefully in a small group. And uh, I've been in many small groups, and many of them are we're great. Um, but you get to the accountability time, you start going around the circle of accountability times. Hey, what's what's the thing we gotta keep you accountable for? What's the thing you're really struggling with? And now I'm gonna dress up my sin. So I got this sin that I got, but I'm gonna just gonna kind of hide that behind me because I need to keep my image up. I've been in these circles sometimes. It's like, man, I'm sitting with guys and I love these guys. But it's like, all right, all right, bro, what you know, what about you? He's like, Well, I gotta pray more. It's like, dude, am I in a small group of like Mother Freaking Teresa right now? Like, come on, man. Like, what's really bothering you? Like, let's let's let's get this is kind of a waste of time since we're all just trying to keep up our image and we're dressing up, we're dressing up our sin. And and that is that is now what it is to follow Jesus. With no, we're to be real about our sin to transparency for transformation. So, yes, we might not tell people our spouse is our sibling, but we half-truth it all the time. Filtering ourselves, exaggeration, mimicking tones, uh, train maybe late, fudging taxes, hiding in accountability, half-truths. Most dangerous of lies, because we can we can excuse them. And we would be better off spiritually, mentally, socially if we obsessively guarded truth. It was Jesus who said the truth will set you free. I said that to my daughter the other night. She's just talking about some situations, trying to help her navigate some social stuff. And I was like, baby, you got it, you've got to come clean to me on how you contributed because it's the truth that'll set you free. It's the truth that's gonna really set this whole scenario free. But when we get worrisome, we tend to scheme. We slant the truth, and every time we do, we take control away from God. This is what Abram's doing. I'm going to Egypt. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna take control of of what we're going. So let's scheme on this one.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

You're listening to The Bridge with Junior Ziggler. That was part one of Junior's sermon, Stop Scheming, part of our Abraham series. And I love the title of the message: Stop Scheming. Because if we're honest, most of us don't think of ourselves as schemers. We think of ourselves as planners, problem solvers, people who are just trying to make life work. But here's the thing there's a fine line between wise planning and trying to take God's place. And that's exactly what Abraham did. But the moment hardship showed up, fear started talking. What if God doesn't come through? What if I have to protect myself? He's asking himself all of these questions because fear started talking. And instead of trusting God's promises, Abraham started trusting his own plan. And while it's probably safe to say you haven't stretched the truth about your wife being your sister so the king of Egypt wouldn't kill you. But I'm guessing there may be some other areas where you've been tempted to scheme yourself. Maybe you've been trying to control your spouse, your kids, maybe someone at work because you're convinced that things are gonna fall apart if you don't step in. Maybe you're staying in a relationship. God's told you to leave because you're afraid of being alone. Maybe you're refusing to be generous because you're afraid there won't be enough. That fear starts growing. And so then so does the scheming. Fear always whispers that God can't be trusted. So we need to take matters into our own hands. But every time we do, we trade the peace that comes from trusting God for the pressure of trying to be God. So to those of you tuning in right now, before you leave, just ask yourself what is it for you? Right now, where do you feel tempted to scheme? To stretch the truth, to control when you know that God is calling you specifically to wait. Right now, you are living in light of that question. Can I really trust God to take care of me? Our prayer is that you would lean into him and find out. Whatever you're carrying today, you don't have to carry it alone. Bring it to the Lord, trust him with it, and let him prove himself to be faithful. As always, it's good to be with you. We'll see you next time. Well, you have been listening to The Bridge with Junior Ziggler, a listener-supported broadcast. Junior is the lead teaching pastor at the bridge in Chicagoland, and we're so glad that you joined us today. As we told you earlier, we would love to send you a copy of Junior's book, The Manual. Whether you're a man, you're raising a man, married to a man, dating a man, this book cuts through the noise and gets to the raw core of manhood itself. All you have to do is jump on Junior's website, juniorziggler.com, and give a gift of any amount towards this show, and we'll send it right to you. While you're there, you'll also find great resources like today's message, all of Junior's books and podcasts, plus a link to our church, The Bridge. If you're in the Chicagoland area, we'd love to see you at one of our services. Again, that's juniorziggler.com, juniorz-i e-g L E R. Thanks for listening. See you next time. The Bridge with Junior Ziggler is a production of the Bridge Community Church, a multi campus church in Chicagoland.