Stop Scheming | Part 2

Genesis 12:10-20 | Part 2 | 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?

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SPEAKER_01 0:04

When someone on your team withholds information from you, maybe they withhold it from you because they don't want to make you upset or they don't want to get in trouble, but when they withhold information from you, it stunts your ability to lead well.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

You're listening to The Bridge with Junior Ziggler. Junior's the lead teaching pastor at the bridge in Chicagoland. Have you ever noticed that one bad decision rarely stays one bad decision? One compromise usually lends itself to another compromise to cover it up. One lie leads to having to tell another lie. One shortcut creates a problem that requires another shortcut. It's amazing how quickly life can unravel when we stop trusting God. Today, that's exactly what Abraham is about to discover. His plan looked smart, his way seemed practical, it even appeared to solve the problem for a moment. But every scheme eventually asks for another one. Last time we saw fear make its way into the car, but today we're gonna see what happens when we decide to let fear drive. Wherever you're listening from. Thanks for joining us. Now here's Junior.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Has anything had your head spaced 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 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 didn't you 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 time out here in this. We're gonna get back to the text. I just want to take a time out 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 ironically, it's actually about me, 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 one's like, no, I was late before then. That's a it was a hap- is 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 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 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's kind of goes with exaggeration is mimicking tones. When we retell the conversation that upsets us, we change the tones to make the other person sound worse. The other day, my daughter, she'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's like, Well, how do you know? You weren't there, Dad. I said, Because nobody talks like this. I 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 on 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. So remember the avatar fad during COVID? When we all got stuck inside and we were, we were like, you know, we couldn't get to the gym or the barbers. We were like fatter and had bad hair. And so instead of posting like selfies, we just went out and made avatars of ourselves that 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 were 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 where 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 and 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 that is that is not what it is to follow Jesus. 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 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 what we're going. So let's scheme on this one. And you think about it this way. Let's say after the service, we all head to uh over to O'Hare. We're gonna take a trip. And we, you know, we we board a plane and we got our little biscuits and our little ginger ale. You know, we find our show on our TV, and and maybe we're gonna go across the plane. You ever go like uh you ever go across like the pond and and they give you um the slippers on uh an economist? It's the best. I always put those slippers on. My wife hates flying with me. But um, you know, we're sitting there at a little blanket and and watching our show, and and as we're up in the air, we hit turbulence, and the seatbelt sign comes on, and uh, you know, the plane starts shaking a little bit, and then a little while later the oxygen masks fall, and and you're sitting there on the plane, you're like, I'm kind of getting kind of getting concerned here. So you're you're sitting next to me and you look over at me and you're like, all right, screw this. You unbuckle and you walk to the cockpit, you knock on the door, and you tell the pilots, hey, I'm concerned, so I'm gonna take over now, okay? That'd be ridiculous. Ridiculous, wouldn't it be? So then why do we think we can do that with God Almighty with our lives? Difficulty comes, some turbulence in our life, financial, family, work, kids, image. We're running late. There's some life turbulence. And it's like, all right, I'm gonna nudge God out of the way here. Instead of riding this out in faith and trust and do what's right, it's I got an idea, okay? I'm gonna slant this, I'm gonna play this game, I'm gonna manipulate that, I'm gonna exaggerate this, I'm gonna hide this so that I can survive that. Then when we're through, I'll give you the, I'll give you the wheel back, God. So Abraham right here, he grabs the wheel and he's gonna send the plane into it. Tailspin, verse 14. He says, When uh Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praise her to Pharaoh, and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. I just find this kind of funny. It's like apparently Pharaoh has his wingman scoping out the land. They see Sarah, they're like, dang girl, introduce you to my friend Pharaoh. And they bring her in. And you just imagine being there with like Abram. And then it even gets worse. Verse 16, it says, And for her sake, he, meaning Pharaoh, dealt well with Abram, and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels delivered to Abram. Like this has to be the worst feeling. Animal after animal is being delivered. Servants are showing up, big royal delivery servants. Like, there's more on his doorstep than the Amazon guide delivered to your house this next week. And just like the mess is getting deeper and deeper, and the plane is spiraling into a nosedive. Now, thankfully, God, the only hero of the story, he steps in here and he grabs the wheel. Verse 17. But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife. So Sarah's, as soon as Sarai moves in, Palace starts getting sick, court officials are getting sick, Pharaoh's getting sick, can't really sleep with someone when you're really sick. So God is brilliantly protecting Abram and Sarah. Verse 18. So Abram called, or so Pharaoh called Abram and said, What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say she's my sister? So I took her as my wife. Now you can see, I like this because you can see the offense that Pharaoh took here. And I don't blame him one bit, because to have information withheld from you is a very serious thing. Those of you who are in like leadership positions, like you lead a team or you lead a business, um, you know this. When someone on your team withholds information from you, maybe they withhold it from you because they don't want to make you upset or they don't want to get in trouble. But when they withhold information from you, but they withhold the truth from you, it stunts your ability to lead well. Because now you're kind of you're leading with with blind information. You're you're you're driving without a clear picture. Reminds me of what uh Victor Hugo wrote. Other than smelling like tobacco and jerky, at least what it looks like. He wrote this men hate those to whom to whom they have to lie to. You lie to somebody just really that's hate. And maybe that seems too strong. Because after all, we've been all we've all been guilty of like lying or fudging things of half-truth, slanting information, exaggeration. And we think, well, I don't hate them. But well, let's think about it for a second. What is it to destroy trust? It was certainly not love. To pull the wool over somebody's eyes and give them misinformation to operate in? It's not love. So what then is that? Pharaoh's ticked, so can't blame the guy. End of verse 19. It says, now then here is your wife. Take her and go. And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had. Now there's some interesting parallels playing out here that happens later in Exodus. So when Abram's descendants, the children of Israel, when they leave Egypt, um, it'll be because of plagues on Pharaoh, and the Israelites will actually leave with Egypt's spoils. So what Pharaoh gave Abram, the cattle, the servants, all of that stuff, Abram leaves with. Though Abram is rightfully embarrassed, acted completely out of bounds, with no faith, hyper-focused on his fear, scheme to survive, he still leaves with undeserved blessing. It's a wild story. What do we do with it? A few things that come from this text to take home with us. Number one, expect turbulence in life. Expect turbulence. I just imagine Abram sitting in the Negev in southern Israel during a famine, thinking, like, what is God doing here? Just because there's difficulty in life doesn't mean that God hasn't led you to that. I remember my my youth leader when I was uh in youth group growing up, and he'd say things like, um, you know, well, if God's in it, it's gonna, you know, it's gonna be uh it's gonna be smooth. And I remember thinking, like, oh, that's awesome. It's gonna be, but then I was like, no. You look throughout scripture, when God leads us, leading into the desert, it it it God can lead us into turbulence. Take up your cross and follow me. That's not a smooth road. Life is going to get turbulent, and we have to decide how we're going to respond when it comes. You predecide what you're going to do before the bumps come.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

You're listening to The Bridge with Junior Ziegler. 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 juniorziglar.com and give a gift of any amount towards this show, and we'll send it to you. That's juniorzyg l-er.com. Now let's get back to junior's message.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

So my mom is a she's a flight attendant for United, and my dad is a private pilot. So I've flown commercially a lot for free, and I fly with my dad in a small plane a lot. And you would think, you would think that turbulence would not bother me. It does. I hate turbulence. I know I'm such a baby. I get homesick a lot and I hate turbulence. By the way, do you know that there's a few tricks when you're experiencing turbulence on a plane? If you lift both feet off the ground, turbulence doesn't feel as bumpy. It's like an ab workout and you look like an idiot, especially if you're wearing slippers. But it really, it really does, it really does help. Also, keep your eyes on the flight attendant. If they don't look concerned, you're fine. But the main thing, just expect it. It's like, all right, it's gonna be a bumpy ride today. And if I come to terms with that on the ground, I don't have to come to terms with that up in the air. It's the same in life. You just expect it. Life's gonna get turbulent at times. And I don't mean to sound doomsday, but 2025 is we're gonna have some turbulence. It's just life. Jesus said, in this world you will have trouble. Life gets bumpy, marriage isn't always smooth, parenting gets messy, work comes with stress, friends can be annoying. Just like on a plane, fix your eyes on the right one, the author and perfector of our faith. Like Jesus has a way of pulling us from the hyper focus to a bigger picture. It's one of the reasons I love the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is so practical. It just keeps on pulling us from this hyper and get the bigger picture, get the bigger picture. You're a sojourner. Yeah, it's a turbulent land, but you're a sojourner. This is not your home. It's okay. Keep your eyes on him. But the very moment that we forget that we're sojourners is the moment that we take our eyes off him and we hyper focus back on our problem. And it's then we attempt to like take the steering wheel and scheme, sending life into a tailspin. Come to terms with turbulence and pre-decide to do what's right. There's no half-truths. I'm gonna go into this with full truth because the truth sets us free. Number two, schemes complicate problems that they're meant to solve. Every time schemes complicate problems they are meant to solve. Every time. So just 10 chapters before Abram, you have Satan creating chaos and the perfect garden of Eden. Satan loves to create chaos. Chaos in marriage, chaos in families, chaos in churches, chaos in our mental state. Satan is the king of chaos. Actually, I just learned this. Maybe you knew this, but um, I went out to lunch a while back with a buddy of mine who was a Satanist, and we were having lunch, and I was like, dude, what does it mean to be a Satanist? Like, just like you like worship, like in a worship setting, like you worship Satan and sing to Satan. He's like, well, maybe the fanatics do. He said, but as a Satanist, I saw it as my job to create chaos everywhere I could. Like I got joy out of just creating chaos. Satan is the king of chaos and complicating things. The scariest part though is Satan is highly intelligent. He disguises that chaos with an attractive option. This is what he does with Adam and Eve in the garden. That forbidden fruit was very inviting. It was appealing, as scripture says, very appealing, yet it hurled humanity into chaos. This is what Satan does with Abram. He says half truth, it's the best route. Yet it hurled Abram into chaos in Egypt. This is why Paul in Ephesians warns us of the schemes of the devil. The enemy will market a scheme to you as attractive. Hey, just slant the information, just lower the expectation, exaggerate the tones, manipulate this, justify yourself. Here's a good excuse. Keep it quiet. Don't come clean, just kind of fake it. Get it always, ever since the garden, every single time, it complicates the problem that it's meant to solve. It takes the turbulence of life and it sends us into a tailspin. It's exactly what happened to Abram in Egypt. And I venture to say some of us have some chaotic part of our lives, and maybe it's just natural because life gets turbulent. But I bet some of us, if not all of us, are experiencing some chaos in our life because we have made small decision after small decision after small decision to scheme and do these half-truths of slanting information. And it sends us into more and more and more chaos. Number three, we live scheming or trusting. We live either scheming or trusting. Your decision, my decisions, it's always one or the other. Scheme or trust. Now, this doesn't mean that we don't pray for wisdom and creatively problem solve. No, you ask for wisdom, get creative and problem solve and do what's right. But as we sojourn, there will always be this temptation to manipulate and stray from truth. Some of us might be right there. You've just been justifying it for years, scheming for years. May we always remember to follow Jesus is to resist those schemes. The path of Jesus will lead into turbulence, but you do the right thing. The path of Jesus is the harder road, but it is the road that Jesus walked, and it ends in true peace. And so you walk it and you do the right thing. And it just blows my mind every time I think about the hours leading up to the cross. You have an almighty, eternal God in flesh, armies of angels at his command. And he's walking with his creation. And it's such this like just this beautiful image to me that there he is in the garden the night before he dies, sweating blood, experiencing heavy anxiety, knowing the turbulence ahead with one command that legions of angels could just lift him out of that. In the first garden, Adam and Eve chose to scheme at a tree. But in this garden, God in flesh refused to scheme and went to die at a tree. And he trusted the Father, and he welcomed the chains, and he took a and he went through that turbulence, took a beating, accepted the nails, and he embraced the cross. He took that hard road and we're offered heaven for it. Like in a much smaller way, you and I, we are faced with that decision daily. Are you gonna scheme here? Are you gonna trust and do what's right and allow the truth to set you free? Are you gonna manipulate to take the easier road? Are you gonna take the harder road that Jesus walked? And may we never forget we are homesick sojourners in a foreign land. May your eyes never waver from the author and perfecter of your faith. May you recognize the schemes of the devil and resist them every time. Whether you deem them small schemes or not, it always leads to chaos. May you walk the harder road with your head held high, because in it all we believe the words of our Savior, the truth will set us free, far be it for us to ever veil, dilute, skew, or withhold that truth that sets us free.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

You're listening to The Bridge with Junior Ziggler. That was part two of Junior's message, Stop Scheming, from our series on the life of Abraham. There's one thing that we can all be certain on for our future. There will be difficulty. There will be. The path paved to glory is not a smooth chunk of I-90. It's more like a backwoods dirt road in the middle of the night and you only got one headlight. Following Jesus has never been the easy road. And that's not because God's cruel or he just enjoys making life harder than it has to be. It's because he loves us too much to leave us unchanged. That's exactly what God was doing with Abraham. God was about to make Abraham into a great nation. But first, he had to make Abraham into a great man of faith. And there are no shortcuts in becoming a person of faith. And I hate to tell you, the same is true for your life. God could remove every trial from your life, he could answer every one of your prayer requests immediately, he could smooth a nice paved road for you. But then what kind of faith would you have? It'd be a faith that only survives when life is easy. Real faith. It's forged, it's tested, it's refined. And so to you listening, what difficult road is before you? A troubled marriage? You have that wayward child? A diagnosis? A financial setback? Whatever it is, it isn't evidence that God has forgotten you. It's evidence that He's still working on you. So don't look for the shortcut. Don't settle for the scheme. Trust the God who's farther down the road than you. And let God build you into a man, into a woman of great faith. Thanks for spending part of your day with us. We'll continue Abraham's story next time, and I hope you'll join us right here on The Bridge with Junior Ziggler. 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, you're 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, Junior Z-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.