Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. I'm really sad about this story. When we get to Genesis 20, guess what he does? The exact same thing. He lies again, and this time you'll have been a liar. Now I know before you say, what's wrong with this guy? Let me ask you this. Have you ever done something really morally reprehensible as a believer?
And then repeated it. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. Faith, a moment of faith, often brings long term blessing into your life. Just a moment of faith, long term blessing. Notice he said, it's personally going to happen to you.
There's going to be a great nation and everyone on the earth has the opportunity to be blessed through what you're going to do. You know, that's exactly the same as it happens to you and me. Now, God doesn't call us individually like he called him. But he does call us. He calls us with the gospel.
He calls and we have a chance to respond. And if we do respond to the gospel by faith, what's the long term blessing? You see, my sins are forgiven. That's what a blessing. He'll never leave me nor forsake me. What a blessing.
His spirit will indwell me. What a blessing. I am heaven bound assuredly. What a blessing.
But notice it's all unconditional. That should have us have the same kind of response that Abram did. We should worship. And I don't mean on Sunday morning with music. I mean we should worship. We should be a thankful people. You see, we should offer up praise and thanksgiving to God all the time. A moment of faith brings about long term blessing.
What a great thing. But there's a second lesson to learn in this chapter. And that is this. Fear brings short term failure.
Right in the middle, like everything going well, something happens. Verse 10. And now there was famine in the land. That's it.
Now there was famine in the land. You think that's an accident? No. It's a test. Now, by the way, it's not a test. So God will figure out how devoted in his faith Abram is. It's a test to expose to Abram how devoted he is. It's always that way. By the way, God never tests you so he can find something out.
He tests you so that you can find something out. There's a famine in the land. Now, I understand this. Abram is from Ur. It's in the Fertile Crescent. Two thousand years before Christ, Ur had to be one of the richest areas for food supplies in the world. He probably never really was involved much in famine in his life. But there's a famine in the land.
Now, the strange part is this. He trusted God not knowing where he was going and literally walked a thousand miles trusting God. He then faces the Canaanites and he realizes just how formidable they are and once again God retells him, the covenant is unconditional and I'm going to give you this land and he worships God again. And now there's a famine and God's not in the picture at all. Abram's decided, I'm afraid.
I need a plan. In fact, this is now there's a famine in the land and so Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there for the famine was severe in the land. He just got the Canaan. Just think how long it took him to go from Ur.
Well, look at it this way. You're walking from here to Chicago. How long is it going to take you to get there? Now you get there and say, I think we got to go somewhere else now.
Why? Well, there's a famine in the land. There's no accident that his solution is Egypt. Always in scripture, Egypt represents the world. And that's why the children of Israel were enslaved in Egypt for 400 years.
F.B. Meyer writes this. He says, in the figurative language of scripture, Egypt stands for an alliance with the world. Abram acted simply on his own judgment. He looked at his difficulties and he became paralyzed with fear. He grasped at the first means of deliverance that was suggested itself. Much like a drowning man will grab a hold of anything to stay afloat.
And thus, without taking counsel of his heavenly protector, Abram went down into Egypt. Oh, what a fatal mistake. But how many still make it? They may be true children of God. And yet in the moment of panic, they will adopt methods of delivering themselves that, to say the least, are questionable.
Sowing the seeds of sorrow and disaster to save themselves from some minor embarrassment. How much better would it have been if Abram, to have thrown the responsibility back on God to have said to God, you brought me here. You must now bear the whole weight of providing for me and my family.
I'm going to stay here clearly until I know what you want me to do. He never consults God. Just like we do. He probably was a man of some accomplishment. Just like many of us are. And said, look, I'm going to handle this the best way that I can. But one of the things that was pointed out in one of the commentaries is, you notice there's no worship going on. And there's no prayer. He's just said there's a famine in the land and I've got to take care of this and I'm going to do something about it. And by the way, you know it's a bad idea because it just snowballs.
Let me show you how it does. And it came about in verse 11, when he came near to Egypt, that he said to Sarai his wife, see now, I know that you're a beautiful woman. Now I know husbands say that kind of stuff all the time.
But in this case he's right. She's stunning. I mean stunning.
She's 65 years old. And she is stunning. And he understands pagan culture.
Notice what happens. He says, and it will come about when the Egyptians see you, that they will say this is his wife. And they will kill me.
But they will let you live. By the way, that's kind of interesting but true in that culture. They had such a high view of marriage.
This is kind of strange, but it sounds right. They had such a high view of marriage, they wouldn't take another man's wife. So they take another man's widow.
All right. She's now no longer anybody's wife. They just kill the husband. And Abram knows that's going to happen. That's what he thinks is going to happen. He said, please say that you are my sister. So that it may go well with me because of you.
And that I may live on account of you. Notice what he's concerned about. His life and his welfare. That's his concern. By the way, who's supposed to be protecting who in this situation? Abram is supposed to be protecting Sarai. But he's not. He says, come on, just this little favor, hun.
Don't be taken by somebody else. You can see what a bad idea this is in the beginning. That's why I said his idea of going to Egypt is wrong from the beginning because look how it plays itself out. It said, and it came about when Abram came into Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. And Pharaohs, or the palace's officials, saw her and praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house of all the places. I mean, it could have been any kind of local official.
It could have been a smaller official. But apparently, Pharaoh's own palace officials got a look at her. Notice what they did. They took her and they put her in Pharaoh's house. Now, you might be worried about this because you might wonder what happened to her. Nothing.
Not yet. Whenever Pharaoh especially would bring in anybody from any country to be fair game for Pharaoh in Egypt, he would not have a relationship with her until she had been in the harem for at least nine months. They want to make sure she's not pregnant with somebody else's child. And so she would be untouchable to anybody else. And notice who ends up protecting her. Pharaoh. Not Abram. You see, Pharaoh protects her. Well, just like with us, when we make really stupid choices, God comes to the rescue.
Notice what happens first. Therefore, in verse 16, he treated Abram well for her sake and gave him sheep and oxen and donkeys and male and female servants and female donkeys and camels. Now, you want to say, first of all, female donkeys, they're sort of the BMWs of the day. And what I mean by that is they're the preferable ride. Male donkeys are not fun to ride.
They're stubborn, male, stubborn. But female donkeys are what you rode. And then it says camels. And if I was using the same analogy, in that day, camels are Ferraris. In other words, camels are where the real money is at. And so Pharaoh is making him extremely rich, all because of her.
Isn't this interesting? And his willingness to give her up to a harem. Now God intervenes. It says, but the Lord struck Pharaoh and his house with great plagues.
That word means diseases or infirmities because of Sarai. God says, I'll do what you should have done. And so he goes right after Pharaoh's household. Now understand, once this happens to the Pharaoh, in Egypt at that time, anywhere in the world at that time, all diseases are spiritually based. That's the problem. So I'm sure Pharaoh would have brought in all of the priests and said, we have to start making sacrifices to our deities.
We have to do this. Something's wrong. They never believed it was just something physical. It was always something spiritual. And apparently what they did is they went through all the motions and made the sacrifices, and everybody was still afflicted. Except one lady in the harem, Sarai.
God's not going to afflict Sarai. So now Pharaoh, you don't become Pharaoh for nothing. Pharaoh has figured this out. Wait a minute.
You see, wait a minute. What's going on here? So he calls Abram. And Pharaoh called Abram, and he said to him, what is this that you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife?
Now, in his defense, he's a lot like us. When you get in a difficult time and you go into that default mode of your old sin nature, you do half truce. She is his half sister. Genesis 20, you read that. Sarai is Abram's half sister.
So it was a half ally. You see, but she is his wife. And so Pharaoh, notice. What is this that you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say to me she's my sister, and I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife.
Take her and go. Who has the high moral ground here? Pharaoh, a pagan. He has the high moral ground. And Abram, a friend of God, a man of God's own choosing, the example of faith to all of us is the weasel in this story. Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him, and they escorted him away, and his wife, and all that belonged to him.
You know what? Pharaoh might have just said, I gave my word. I gave you that.
I'm not taking it back. I'm a man of character compared to Abram. What an interesting story. Faith brings long term blessing, but fear brings short term failure. There are several little application or principles that come out of this story.
Number one is this. We all face famines. Everybody faces famines. If you're a believer in Jesus Christ, you face famines. Now, they might not be famines, but they're going to be all kinds of things. I mean, we face death, and disease, and divorce. We face economic downturns. We face all kinds of famines. That's what life is. Secondly, whenever we decide to escape the famine without consulting God, we're likely to make a big mistake.
You see, he never consulted God. He just said, I think I can handle this. I know where to go.
I know where the food is. Be careful with that. There's a third principle sort of all the way through it before we get too judgmental about him. We all struggle with weakness. He's no different than you are.
You have weaknesses, and so do I. Again, Chuck Swindoll, he said, when it comes to these weaknesses, more religion isn't the answer. Don't tell me how many hours you spend reading your Bible. Don't tell me how many years you've been a church member.
Don't tell me how much theology you know or how many degrees you've earned. None of that can protect you from the fullest decisions or lies that you tell yourself. We're all weak, and we need supernatural help. If Abram could fall soon after building two altars to God, believe me, you and I can have a moral stumble as well. We're all weak.
It's just showing us. That's one of the great things about the Bible. You know, you look at ancient literature, and the heroes of ancient literature are always heroic. Look at the heroes of Bible.
They're always real. They always have struggles. Fourthly, every compromise we make jeopardizes a Sarai. In other words, there's no sin that's victimless. We jeopardize people when we make choices that are sinful like this. Notice he had almost no interest in her.
He was interested in his own welfare for his own benefit and thought he might be able to make some money out of it. It might go well with me. Let me explain what I mean by the next one. Every Egypt has a pharaoh. In other words, we live in a world surrounded, and let's call that Egypt, by pharaohs.
And what do I mean by that? By people whose lives we touch. And when you touch somebody's life the way Abram touched Pharaoh's life, what do you do for the cause of Christ?
How do you think Pharaoh viewed Abram's God? You say, oh, I want to be part of that. Because if you're part of that, you'll be willing to give up your own life.
You see, when we make compromises like that, everybody sees it. And our culture, by the way, has a word for it. It's hypocrisy.
That's what Abram is at this stage. He's a hypocrite. Sixth, once you lie, it often becomes easier to do it again. That's what's really sad about this story. When we get to Genesis 20, guess what he does? The exact same thing. He lies again, this time to Abimelech. Now, I know before you say, what's wrong with this guy? Let me ask you this.
Have you ever done something really morally reprehensible as a believer and then repeated it? You see, that's the point. That's what he is saying. Once you lie, it often becomes easier to do it again. The late George Burns was joking about the key to his success, and he said the most important thing about being successful is learning honesty. And he says, and once you can fake that, you can achieve anything.
Abram was not so good at faking it. And lastly, it is always better to struggle in the promised land in the midst of a famine than to be in Pharaoh's court in the midst of the world. He should have never left the land.
You see, the things that you think you get from the world, be careful. Look at verse 16 again. Therefore, he treated Abram well for her sake, and he gave him sheep and oxen and donkeys and male and female servants and female donkeys and camels. Now, you probably didn't even think about it when you were reading it, but one of the things he gave to Abram were female servants. We're going to run into that female servant.
Her name is Hagar. She gives birth to Ishmael. Ishmael gives birth to the Arab world. How much consequences are to that choice to today? How much consequence to that single choice because he was given by Pharaoh female servants?
The world has very little to offer us that is of real value. And so we begin to look at the life of Abram or Abraham. Each one of his stories has so many good examples for us to follow or not follow.
In this story, it's clear. We learn two wonderful things. One, a moment of faith can bring long-term blessing into your life. You put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ and your whole eternity changes. In one act of faith, you don't earn it, you don't deserve it, but God calls you to it through his gospel. And fear brings short-term failure.
That's what ends up happening. This brutal kind of failure that we have when we take our life into our own hands. So two things that we've learned from the life of Abraham. One's a blessing.
One's a cursing. Thank God he so often rescues us from ourselves. Let's pray. Father, we can identify with Abraham even in chapter 12 of Genesis. Most of us can identify with his faith.
Even if it was a mustard seed, a believing you. You told him what you would do in his life. And his faith is evidenced by his obedience. And he left Ur and he traveled to the Promised Land. He was so overwhelmed by your grace that he worshipped you as we worship you. But Father, we never arrive until we're in your presence. And he found that once he was tested through famine, his fear led to his failure. And Father, we realize in this life we face our own famines. I pray we learn from his lesson that when we find something happening in our life that causes us anxiety or fear that we consult with you before we decide what we should do. That we rely on you, your wisdom, your power, and your spirit rather than our own ingenuity. And Father, we thank you that in spite of our failure, the covenant remains in place because it's unconditional.
Your love and your faithfulness to Abraham continued in spite of his faithlessness to you. We thank you for that. You truly are a God who has the ability and the love to save us and to keep us.
In Christ's name we pray, amen. And you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online. At that website you will find not only today's broadcast but also many of our previous audio programs as well. At Fellowship in the Word we are thankful for those who financially support our ministry and make this broadcast possible. We ask all of our listeners to prayerfully consider how you might help this radio ministry continue its broadcast on this radio station by supporting us monthly or with just a one-time gift. Support for our ministry can be sent to Fellowship in the Word 4600 Clearview Parkway, Metairie, Louisiana 7006. If you would be interested in hearing today's message in its original format, that is as a sermon that Pastor Bill delivered during a Sunday morning service at Fellowship Bible Church, then you should visit our website, fbcnola.org.
That's fbcnola.org. At our website you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for you can listen online or if you prefer you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word.
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