SPEAKER_01: Um, this is Genesis twelve, ten through twenty.
SPEAKER_01: Now there was a famine in the land, so Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land.
SPEAKER_01: When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai, his wife, I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance, and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, This is his wife.
SPEAKER_01: Then they will kill me, but they will let you live.
SPEAKER_01: Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake.
SPEAKER_01: When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful, and when the prince when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh.
SPEAKER_01: And the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house, and for her sake he dealt well with Abram, and he had and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels.
SPEAKER_01: But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife.
SPEAKER_01: So Pharaoh called Abram and said, What is this you have done to me?
SPEAKER_01: Why did you not tell me that she was your wife?
SPEAKER_01: Why did you say, She is my sister?
SPEAKER_01: So that I took her for my wife.
SPEAKER_01: Now then, here is your wife.
SPEAKER_01: Take her and go.
SPEAKER_01: And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had.
SPEAKER_01: And so reads God's word.
SPEAKER_02: I hope you've got that passage open in front of you.
SPEAKER_02: If you don't pull it up on your phone, Genesis chapter 12, uh verses 10 to 20, we're looking at the English Standard Version of the Bible.
SPEAKER_02: And as we begin, uh, one of the things, Jackie mentioned that we're a very international congregation, that's true.
SPEAKER_02: One of the things you need to know about Irish people is that we're not impressed by your success.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, we're not impressed by uh uh by successful people, by people who uh flaunt uh all of their achievements.
SPEAKER_02: Uh we are uh quite honestly sick of perfect people uh and their perfect lives.
SPEAKER_02: Uh perfection isn't uh something that we that we laud uh and are impressed by.
SPEAKER_02: English people are a little bit like this as well.
SPEAKER_02: English people call it tall poppy syndrome.
SPEAKER_02: You think of a poppy field and there's one that just sticks his head above the rest.
SPEAKER_02: That's the one that gets the scythe first, right?
SPEAKER_02: That's the one that gets cut down.
SPEAKER_02: That person who thinks that they're too good to stay in the in the pack, that they rise above the rest, we're not impressed by any of that nonsense.
SPEAKER_02: Uh Americans struggle with this because Americans love successful people and they love a good success story, and the rest of us, well, well, we're just more rooted in reality, I think.
SPEAKER_02: Um in part, I think that's because uh uh Irish people are resentful and bitter uh of uh of others.
SPEAKER_02: Uh uh we don't like the life that just seems unendingly perfect.
SPEAKER_02: Um we shouldn't really, especially today, have called this series being human.
SPEAKER_02: We should have called today certainly only human because that's what Abraham is.
SPEAKER_02: He's only human.
SPEAKER_02: Life isn't Instagram perfect.
SPEAKER_02: Have you noticed that?
SPEAKER_02: That life often feels like one step forward and two steps back.
SPEAKER_02: That even the the greatest of saints are still at the end of the day just sinners.
SPEAKER_02: The best of men are men at best, as Charles Spurgeon said.
SPEAKER_02: I'll tell you what, I'm relieved this morning.
SPEAKER_02: I'm relieved that the Bible is not just a catalogue of unending success stories.
SPEAKER_02: It's not spiritual Instagram of filtered saints and their airbrushed holy perfection.
SPEAKER_02: Abraham fails here.
SPEAKER_02: And so will you, and so will I.
SPEAKER_02: The only hero in the end, spiritually speaking, is God.
SPEAKER_02: We can look at humanity and think that humanity is filled with people if some are wearing black hats and some are wearing white hats like the old Western.
SPEAKER_02: No, we're all wearing black hats like Prier and his Stetson here this morning, wherever he is.
SPEAKER_02: The only white hat is God.
SPEAKER_02: Now, this might also be already stressing you out because you're a perfectionist.
SPEAKER_02: Sorry.
SPEAKER_02: Uh you might be somebody here this morning who is terrified of failure.
SPEAKER_02: Failure is uh is not something that really you have ever had to reckon with because you've always been successful.
SPEAKER_02: Where are you gonna go when failure comes knocking at your door?
SPEAKER_02: Where are you gonna run?
SPEAKER_02: To anxiety, to lies, to covering it over.
SPEAKER_02: The invitation this morning, when we fail, is to run to the only hero, to run to God Himself.
SPEAKER_02: This passage this morning is for people who are honest enough to say, I fail sometimes.
SPEAKER_02: I don't always succeed, I don't always do what I should do, spiritually speaking, or morally speaking, I need help.
SPEAKER_02: If that's you, you are in the right place.
SPEAKER_02: And this is a great passage to look at.
SPEAKER_02: Now, the first thing that I want to bring out to you a little bit, the first thing that I want to show you is that God will deliberately put your faith under pressure.
SPEAKER_02: That's the first thing.
SPEAKER_02: God will deliberately put your faith under pressure.
SPEAKER_02: It's like there's a it's like there's a pattern in the world that God has made, a rhythm in the world that God has made, that He will put your faith under pressure from time to time.
SPEAKER_02: How do you make a diamond?
SPEAKER_02: Well, time and pressure.
SPEAKER_02: I'm sure Lizzie could probably tell me more things about how to make diamonds, but right now it preaches well for me to say time and pressure.
SPEAKER_02: And in the New Testament, Abraham is celebrated as the man of faith.
SPEAKER_02: He's uh he's lauded as a great spiritual success story.
SPEAKER_02: Look at how great Abraham's faith was.
SPEAKER_02: He was a spiritual diamond.
SPEAKER_02: But right now, at the start of the story, Abraham's a lump of coal.
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
SPEAKER_02: If you need live translation, you can pull out your Google Translate app.
SPEAKER_02: So God is going to put Abraham's new found lump of coal faith under pressure.
SPEAKER_02: Have you noticed that?
SPEAKER_02: If you're a follower of Jesus, have you noticed that when you became a follower of Jesus, life didn't get easier, it got harder.
SPEAKER_02: That's not accidental.
SPEAKER_02: That's part of the way the system works.
SPEAKER_02: Don't listen to those preachers who promise you a life of ease.
SPEAKER_02: Don't listen to those preachers who promise you a life of unending success and health and financial well-being.
SPEAKER_02: The only direction that you can go once you hit the mountaintop is down into the valley.
SPEAKER_02: God will always and deliberately put your faith under pressure.
SPEAKER_02: There's a particular pattern that He has built into reality.
SPEAKER_02: Have you felt it yourself?
SPEAKER_02: Moments of spiritual high almost lead directly into moments of trial and temptation where the old sin and darkness is all the monsters of your past come scratching at the door of your heart.
SPEAKER_02: You think, well, but just a moment ago, I was at this conference or in this worship service, and it all felt so great.
SPEAKER_02: And I was on the mountaintop.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what's after the mountaintop?
SPEAKER_02: It's the valley, right?
SPEAKER_02: God's gonna put your faith under pressure.
SPEAKER_02: You need to settle that in your heart, in your mind.
SPEAKER_02: God's gonna make diamonds, he's gonna put pressure on you.
SPEAKER_02: It even happened with Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Think back to Jesus' baptism, a great moment where he goes into the waters of baptism with John, his cousin who baptizes him, and heaven is torn open.
SPEAKER_02: And the Father speaks from heaven and says, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
SPEAKER_02: And the Holy Spirit descends like a dove and alights on the perfect Son of God.
SPEAKER_02: That glorious moment when you see all three members of the Trinity on stage, as it were, on the stage of human history at one time.
SPEAKER_02: And you think, This is a this is a corcendo, a high point, right at the start of Jesus' ministry.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what do you read?
SPEAKER_02: Well, you read it, especially in Mark's gospel.
SPEAKER_02: Immediately the Holy Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan.
SPEAKER_02: For 40 days and for 40 nights he was tempted, and the angels were ministering to him.
SPEAKER_02: Immediately, after the high point of Jesus' baptism, temptation, 40 days at the hands of the devil.
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes the promises of God feel like they have question marks after them, not exclamation marks.
SPEAKER_02: In those times, you need to recognize that there is a pattern to how God has ordered his world, how he's ordered your life.
SPEAKER_02: Your faith will come under pressure.
SPEAKER_02: There will be moments when it looks like his promises have a question mark after them.
SPEAKER_02: You need to see that pattern and recognize what's going on and trust his purposes.
SPEAKER_02: That he's doing this in order to make diamonds, to make strong, mature followers of his son who face those same temptations and trials.
SPEAKER_02: And this is exactly what he's doing with Abraham.
SPEAKER_02: We see it happens immediately here, where it says, now there was a famine in the land.
SPEAKER_02: We've just had great promises given to Abraham, and then immediately, verse 10, the first verse of our reading, now there's a problem.
SPEAKER_02: There's a famine in the land.
SPEAKER_02: God will put your faith under pressure.
SPEAKER_02: Make peace with that in your heart.
SPEAKER_02: Make peace with that in your mind.
SPEAKER_02: Recognize what he's doing.
SPEAKER_02: Trust him in it.
SPEAKER_02: That's the first point.
SPEAKER_02: Second point.
SPEAKER_02: Fear drives pragmatics.
SPEAKER_02: But promises fuel faith.
SPEAKER_02: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_02: Fear drives pragmatics.
SPEAKER_02: But promises fuel faith.
SPEAKER_02: The issue, as I noted, was that there was a famine in the land.
SPEAKER_02: What land?
SPEAKER_02: Well, it's quite significant land.
SPEAKER_02: It's the land of promise.
SPEAKER_02: It's the land that God had said he was going to give to Abraham just last week in the passage that we looked at.
SPEAKER_02: He said, Go to the land that I will show you.
SPEAKER_02: And then he shows up when Abraham is in the land in verse 7 of the passage.
SPEAKER_02: If you cast your eye up, then the Lord cleared to Abram and said, To your offspring, I will give this land.
SPEAKER_02: And then three verses later, it's barren.
SPEAKER_02: There's no food in it.
SPEAKER_02: Or is God so mean-spirited that he's led Abram and his family into a desolate wasteland in order to die?
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you feel that.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you think, well, I felt like I was following God's call in my life.
SPEAKER_02: But it's led to much greater hardship.
SPEAKER_02: Don't think that therefore it wasn't God's call in your life.
SPEAKER_02: Recognize his purposes.
SPEAKER_02: But there's a question here about God's promises.
SPEAKER_02: Are they under threat?
SPEAKER_02: Is God being deliberately mean-spirited?
SPEAKER_02: Either way, Abram immediately thinks in terms of economics, pragmatics, solving the problem.
SPEAKER_02: And so read on verse 10.
SPEAKER_02: Now there's a famine in the land.
SPEAKER_02: So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, as in to live there for a little while, for the famine was severe in the land.
SPEAKER_02: Heading down to Egypt was a sensible thing to do because it had a constant source of good, fresh water from the Nile Valley coming up the Nile Delta into the Mediterranean Sea.
SPEAKER_02: And so there was lots of fertile land there.
SPEAKER_02: There was going to be food there.
SPEAKER_02: The Egyptians have worked out systems of irrigation, and so Abram thinks, right.
SPEAKER_02: Fixer mode, here's where I gotta go.
SPEAKER_02: There's no money here, there's no jobs here.
SPEAKER_02: Right, we've got a obstics, let's sit over here.
SPEAKER_02: It's not a terrible idea, except for the fact that he hasn't sought God about it at all.
SPEAKER_02: But Abraham has a second problem.
SPEAKER_02: This might be an unusual problem to our ears.
SPEAKER_02: Abram's wife is 65 years old, but what we are told in the text is that Sarai is pretty hot.
SPEAKER_02: I think that's the original Hebrew.
SPEAKER_02: The original Hebrew says, pretty hot.
SPEAKER_02: Um, so verse 11 says, I know that you are a woman, beautiful in appearance.
SPEAKER_02: That's uh uh husbands, that's a good line to speak to your wife.
SPEAKER_02: I know that you're a woman, beautiful in appearance.
SPEAKER_02: So Sarai, though she is, uh, as far as we're concerned, advanced in years, uh, she's she's fit.
SPEAKER_02: And because she's fit, he's fearful.
SPEAKER_02: He's fearful that the Egyptians are gonna see her and think, gosh, that 65-year-old woman is she's pretty hot.
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna kill Abram, and I'm gonna take the 65-year-old Hottie for my wife.
SPEAKER_02: And so he says, again, thinking practically, thinking pragmatically, he says, tell you what, sir, because uh because of your hotness and my fearfulness and the fact that they're they're gonna kill me, tell them that uh you're my sister and uh not my wife.
SPEAKER_02: And then they will deal well with me because they'll think I'm the head of the house, and so they'll uh they'll give me stuff and I'll you know be able to marry you off.
SPEAKER_02: Now, we're not gonna dwell too much on this, but Abraham isn't strictly telling a lie.
SPEAKER_02: Uh they uh share the same father.
SPEAKER_02: Uh Sarai is his half-sister, but moving on from that just for a moment, again, this is a case of uh uh it's descriptive, not prescriptive.
SPEAKER_02: It's not like, oh, okay, no, then there's what I should go off and do.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, we're not talking in terms of application.
SPEAKER_02: The the crucial piece of info is that he is being duplicitous, that he's hiding the fact that he is married to Sarai and that she is his wife.
SPEAKER_02: And why is he doing this?
SPEAKER_02: Because of his fear.
SPEAKER_02: Because he fears man, he fears the Egyptians.
SPEAKER_02: How many times have you told a half-truth because you fear what somebody will think?
SPEAKER_02: Or because you fear being found out.
SPEAKER_02: And so you tell a half-truth, or an outright lie, in order to cover your backside.
SPEAKER_02: So he's faced with trial, and immediately his faith fails him.
SPEAKER_02: He snaps into fixer mode.
SPEAKER_02: How okay, how can I make this better?
SPEAKER_02: Other fixers in the room, that'd be me.
SPEAKER_02: The pastor's just a fixer with a Bible verse, right?
SPEAKER_02: He snaps into fixer mode like some of us.
SPEAKER_02: He comes up with a plan, it's all centered on what is most expedient, what is most pragmatic, what is going to work.
SPEAKER_02: It's motivated by fear, fear of starvation, fear of other people, fear of circumstance.
SPEAKER_02: And so he's forgotten.
SPEAKER_02: He's forgotten his faith.
SPEAKER_02: He's forgotten God.
SPEAKER_02: You ever find you ever compartmentalize your faith to a Sunday, but it never quite bleeds into the rest of the week?
SPEAKER_02: You come on a Sunday and you sing and you raise hands and worship, but when it comes to the problems of the week, of the circumstances that you're facing, it never really occurs to you, think, oh, I should probably seek God in this.
SPEAKER_02: Or how would God's word give me direction in this?
SPEAKER_02: What would God have me do?
SPEAKER_02: How can I work not just in terms of pragmatics, but in terms of his promises?
SPEAKER_02: How can I be somebody that not operates out of fear, but out of faith?
SPEAKER_02: And so what should uh Abram have done?
SPEAKER_02: Well, just a few verses earlier, he was building an altar, calling on the name of the God, the name of the Lord, seeking God.
SPEAKER_02: Now all of that's forgotten.
SPEAKER_02: But also remember what God says to Abram in verse 3.
SPEAKER_02: Again, if you're if you've got it in front of you, scan your eyes up.
SPEAKER_02: So God saying to Abram, God making these promises says, I will bless those who bless you.
SPEAKER_02: Those who dishonor you, I will curse.
SPEAKER_02: God here in his promises, in the contract that he's making with Abram, he puts in a protection clause.
SPEAKER_02: He says, Whoever blesses you, I'll bless them.
SPEAKER_02: If they curse you, if they do anything wrong to you, I will curse them.
SPEAKER_02: I'll bless those who bless you, I'll curse those who curse you.
SPEAKER_02: God's saying to Abraham, I I got your back.
SPEAKER_02: I've got you covered here, Abram.
SPEAKER_02: You don't need a fear man.
SPEAKER_02: Trust me.
SPEAKER_02: So maybe Abram should have said to Sarai, this move to Egypt, it's it's a risk.
SPEAKER_02: And Pharaoh's got a reputation, uh, and you're a hottie, uh, and it's gonna be uncertain.
SPEAKER_02: But God has spoken to me and God's made promises to me, and in those promises, He's He's promised to protect us.
SPEAKER_02: He's gonna He's gonna see that everything's right, and so we need to trust Him.
SPEAKER_02: I know it's uncertain, I know you're scared, I know that it we don't quite know how everything is going to pan out, but we've got to trust His promises and and move forward together in faith.
SPEAKER_02: See, going down to Egypt is not inherently wrong.
SPEAKER_02: It's the fact that he went down to Egypt completely forgetting God, completely working out of his own strength, motivated by fear.
SPEAKER_02: Now let's just take a little pause, a little parentheses.
SPEAKER_02: Perhaps to cut Abram a little bit of slack.
SPEAKER_02: Sit there this morning and you think, oh, Abram is such an idiot.
SPEAKER_02: I think, yeah, he was.
SPEAKER_02: Abram is acting faithlessly, he's making foolish decisions, he's forgotten God, he's forgotten God's promises.
SPEAKER_02: But here's something to remember.
SPEAKER_02: God spoke to Abram ten verses ago.
SPEAKER_02: That is in our speaker, Abram's a brand new Christian.
SPEAKER_02: He's a baby believer, he's taking his first steps in faith, and so no wonder he's fallen on his face.
SPEAKER_02: Here's the thing.
SPEAKER_02: We often expect 20-year spiritual maturity from people who have been Christians for two years.
SPEAKER_02: We often look at baby believers and we slam them for when the persistent and habitual sins of their former life come knocking again and they fall into them again.
SPEAKER_02: It's not to say that none of that matters, and as I've said, Abram is acting faithlessly.
SPEAKER_02: But let's give Abram a little bit of grace, the grace that we ourselves would want as well, to see that actually if we're just starting out in the Christian life, the expectations are different than if you've been a believer for decades.
SPEAKER_02: The church perhaps a little too often has a case, has a way of operating and kind of, you know, one strike and you're out.
SPEAKER_02: But God's not like that.
SPEAKER_02: I'm very glad that God's not like that.
SPEAKER_02: And we see that in this passage.
SPEAKER_02: The way that we mature as believers, the way that we strengthen our faith so that we don't keep on acting like spiritual.
SPEAKER_02: Spiritual infants and falling flat on our faces is by applying the promises of God to the circumstances of life.
SPEAKER_02: We need to take God's promises and massage them into the various circumstances that we find ourselves in, massage them into our hearts so that we understand them more deeply and more profoundly.
SPEAKER_02: Because those promises fuel faith in moments of uncertainty, in moments of doubt, in moments of despair.
SPEAKER_02: In the book Pilgrim's Progress, the hero of Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan is a character called Christian.
SPEAKER_02: And there is a moment in the book where Christian is taken captive.
SPEAKER_02: He's taken captive by a giant called Giant Despair.
SPEAKER_02: And he is carried off to the giant's castle called Castle Doubt.
SPEAKER_02: And there he is thrown into the dungeons of Castle Doubt.
SPEAKER_02: And he he languishes there in doubt and in despair, not knowing how to get out, not knowing how he will free himself, until at last he realizes in the Pilgrim's Progress that he has the key to the jail door in his pocket.
SPEAKER_02: And the key is called promise.
SPEAKER_02: That it is when we remember the promises of God that they do not exist with question marks but exclamation marks.
SPEAKER_02: It's when we remember the promises of God that we have them and that we can hold on to them.
SPEAKER_02: We have the key to move out from doubt and from despair.
SPEAKER_02: And our Heavenly Father knows when one falls to the ground?
SPEAKER_02: Our Heavenly Father feeds them.
SPEAKER_02: How much more valuable are you than the birds of the air?
SPEAKER_02: Or consider the lilies of the field.
SPEAKER_02: They do not toil, nor do they spin, but they are clothed in beauty, and you are more valuable than the lilies of the field.
SPEAKER_02: Do you not fear those who can kill the body?
SPEAKER_02: Fear him who, after killing the body, can throw soul and body into hell.
SPEAKER_02: There are great promises in the New Testament that God is for all those who would trust in Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Think of Jesus' words to his disciples.
SPEAKER_02: His final words at the end of Matthew's gospel, he says, Behold, I am with you always.
SPEAKER_02: Even until the end of the age.
SPEAKER_02: Or his assurance in John chapter 6.
SPEAKER_02: All that the Father has given me will come to me.
SPEAKER_02: And all those who come to me I will never drive away.
SPEAKER_02: We need to massage those promises into the circumstances of life, into our own hearts.
SPEAKER_02: Because it is those promises that will fuel faith and guard us from fear, the fear that leads us to forgetting God and operating rather just in terms of what is most expedient, what is most pragmatic.
SPEAKER_02: Fear drives pragmatics, but promises fuel faith.
SPEAKER_02: Thirdly, and finally, only God's power can fulfill God's promise.
SPEAKER_02: Only God's power can fulfill God's promise.
SPEAKER_02: Abram probably thought he was doing the right thing, though he had forgotten to seek God, especially when initially after he arrives in Egypt, Pharaoh lavishes all of this wealth on him.
SPEAKER_02: He thinks, well, surely God must be pleased with this then, if I'm getting all of this material wealth.
SPEAKER_02: Again, why do you need to be careful about thinking of material success as a marker of being blessed by God?
SPEAKER_02: But he goes down and Pharaoh takes Sarah and lavishes all of these goods on Abram.
SPEAKER_02: But God intervenes down in verse 17.
SPEAKER_02: He intervenes by sending a plague.
SPEAKER_02: Now the details of this are all sparse, but the point is that nothing will thwart God's commitment to his promises.
SPEAKER_02: Not even our sin and foolishness.
SPEAKER_02: Abraham has acted foolishly and sinfully.
SPEAKER_02: He has forgotten God, he has acted without reference to him, but God is enduringly faithful.
SPEAKER_02: Remember what Paul writes?
SPEAKER_02: That though we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.
SPEAKER_02: God remains committed to his own promises.
SPEAKER_02: He promised that Abram would have a child.
SPEAKER_02: And yet he went to Egypt and gave away his wife.
SPEAKER_02: It's a bad idea.
SPEAKER_02: If you're taking notes, right?
SPEAKER_02: Don't do this.
SPEAKER_02: And God moves to rescue foolish Abram as a commitment to his own promises.
SPEAKER_02: And so in one of the more awkward points of the Bible, Pharaoh calls him in and is, shall we say, upset.
SPEAKER_02: And it seems on the face of it that Pharaoh is actually more moral than Abram, which is worth bearing in mind, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02: Just because you're a believer in Jesus doesn't mean that you're inherently morally superior to the person who isn't.
SPEAKER_02: If you're here this morning and you aren't a Christian and you think that all Christians are hypocrites because they say one thing and then they do stupid stuff like this, then you're right.
SPEAKER_02: We are hypocrites and we do do stupid things.
SPEAKER_02: But my invitation to you is not to judge Christianity by its followers, but by Christ.
SPEAKER_02: You judge Christianity by Christ, not by the sinners who follow him.
SPEAKER_02: We're a mess.
SPEAKER_02: That's why we need him in the first place.
SPEAKER_02: But in the end, God still shows himself to be the God of grace that we looked at last week.
SPEAKER_02: Grace started Abram on his journey.
SPEAKER_02: This moon-worshipping pagan out there in Ur of the Chaldeans.
SPEAKER_02: Grace started Abram on his journey, and grace will keep him to the end.
SPEAKER_02: Your journey as a follower of Jesus is not begun in God's grace, but ended in your own goodness and moral superiority.
SPEAKER_02: It's begun in his grace, that is his kindness to you, and ended in his grace.
SPEAKER_02: And God's grace, the God of grace, is not done with Abram.
SPEAKER_02: God is not one strike in your eight.
SPEAKER_02: Presumably, the reason why Abram is fearful of Pharaoh in the first place is because Pharaoh has a reputation of not always being a totally chill guy.
SPEAKER_02: That actually there might be some points where Pharaoh might just lop the head off Abram and take his wife.
SPEAKER_02: That presumably there is some reason for him to fear.
SPEAKER_02: And yet, when God sends a plague and Pharaoh realizes, well, actually, this is all Abram's fault because he's lied to me.
SPEAKER_02: Why doesn't Abram, or why doesn't Pharaoh just summon Abram to the court and go to his guards, right?
SPEAKER_02: Ket him, cleave him in two.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't.
SPEAKER_02: God protects him because God's the God of grace.
SPEAKER_02: You ever experienced that in your life?
SPEAKER_02: You think of a circumstance where you're like, man, that really should not have gone as well for me as the way that it did.
SPEAKER_02: That God was really kind, that he got my backside out of that mess.
SPEAKER_02: He's the God of grace.
SPEAKER_02: He protects Abram.
SPEAKER_02: And not only that, but Abram leaves Egypt wealthier than he went.
SPEAKER_02: All the stuff that Pharaoh gave him.
SPEAKER_02: He says, Go get out and take your stuff with you.
SPEAKER_02: We have a tendency in our life to create pots of manure, to put it politely.
SPEAKER_02: We create pots of manure in our life.
SPEAKER_02: And the God of grace makes roses grow.
SPEAKER_02: That's grace.
SPEAKER_02: There is a final grace to Abram.
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to read it to you.
SPEAKER_02: It comes actually at the start of the next chapter.
SPEAKER_02: Listen to these words.
SPEAKER_02: So Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had, and lot his nephew with him into the Negev.
SPEAKER_02: Now Abram was very rich in livestock and in silver and in gold, and he journeyed on from the Negev as far as Bethel, to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and I, to the place where he had made an altar at the first.
SPEAKER_02: And there Abram called on the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: See what the God of Grace has done?
SPEAKER_02: The God of Grace has brought Abram back full circle.
SPEAKER_02: He's brought him back into relationship.
SPEAKER_02: He's brought him back into the place of worship.
SPEAKER_02: That is the invitation of the God of grace.
SPEAKER_02: That however far away you feel you are, you're on a circle coming back to him.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you're right down here and you think, I am so far from God right now.
SPEAKER_02: The God of grace invites you back.
SPEAKER_02: The God of grace will take you back and invite you into that worship relationship.
SPEAKER_02: He goes back to where he built an altar and worship begins again.
SPEAKER_02: He failed, he forgot God.
SPEAKER_02: God intervened and rescued him because he is the God of grace and brought him back to worship him again.
SPEAKER_02: Brothers and sisters, the God of grace is not done with you.
SPEAKER_02: He works through our folly and through our sin to bring us back into worship.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you're not a Christian here this morning and you're looking back over the circumstances of your life as we reflect on these things, and you realize actually that God has been pursuing you.
SPEAKER_02: Even though you haven't realized it, even though you haven't been looking for it, and that you can begin to see and discern the fingerprints.
SPEAKER_02: His fingerprints as he's worked to preserve you and to rescue you in the past through all the foolish decisions that you have made.
SPEAKER_02: His invitation is to worship.
SPEAKER_02: His invitation and his purpose is to bring you back, to bring you into a place of faith, to trust his promise.
SPEAKER_02: To trust the promise that all who come to Jesus will be forgiven, all that is past.
SPEAKER_02: That all of us who walk with him in faith will never be abandoned, but accepted and restored every time we fail.
SPEAKER_02: This is the promise that Jesus Himself secured when he died upon that cross.
SPEAKER_02: Forgiveness and life for all who would turn to him.
SPEAKER_02: Over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_02: For you perfectionists who work so hard because you think that your identity or your approval is conditioned on your ability to succeed, know that God's acceptance of you is not based on that, but on his own commitment, to his own promises, to his own goodness.
SPEAKER_02: He holds you because he is committed to himself.
SPEAKER_02: He wants you.
SPEAKER_02: Warts and all.
SPEAKER_02: You do not need to hide your failures from him.
SPEAKER_02: Spiritual and moral perfectionism would lead us to anxiety and to pride.
SPEAKER_02: But faith will strengthen, will strengthen, will strengthen us, and give us humility as we grow, as we turn again to the God of grace.
SPEAKER_00: If you found this helpful or want to know more about City Church Dublin, please visit our website found at the link below.