“Saint And Sinner At The Same Time” Genesis 12:10-20 April 26, 2009

SI: Last week we began a study of the life of Abraham.

Abraham is the most important person in the Bible with the exception

of Jesus Christ.

He is called, “The father of all those who believe.”

His life demonstrates, in a foundational way,

the nature of the Christian life and faith.

By studying his life, we understand ourselves as Christians more clearly.

And we learn what it means to hear God, trust God, and become God’s friend.

INTRO: “You are just like your father.”

If someone said that to a man, would it be good or bad? It depends!

It could be that the person who said it had just seen this man do something

kind and generous. And he knew this man’s father from years ago,

how kind and generous he was.

So this is a compliment to the man.

And it’s a tribute to his father.

It’s saying: You have a good heritage and it’s showing, it’s coming out.

On the other hand, if the person had just witnessed a cruel or selfish act,

and then he said: “You’re just like your father.”

It would be a stinging indictment.

It’s saying: You’ve inherited your father’s meanness.

It’s in you just like it was in him and blood will out.

So if someone said to you:

You’re just like your father Abraham—would that be good or bad? It depends!

It depends on whether they said it because they saw you acting

like Abraham in the first part of Genesis 12 or the second part.

In verses 1-9, which we studied last week, we saw Abraham responding

to God’s call with prompt obedience.

He willingly left the city of Ur and his old life.

He went on a long and dangerous journey to the Promised Land.

When he got there, lived as a stranger and pilgrim as God commanded.

He had a sturdy and clear faith that God would fulfill all his promises.

He believed that he would be the father of a great nation—

even though he and Sarah were old and didn’t have one child.

He believed that his offspring would possess the land—

even though he was living in a tent and didn’t own one square inch.

Then, in verses 10-20, which we have just read, it seems we are looking

at a different man. The mere imagination that his life might be in danger

turned him into such a coward that he forgot all about God.

He did not trust God to protect his life or fulfill his promise.

Because of his fear and lies his own wife was taken for a time by another man.

And Abraham, the believer,

ended up shamed and reprimanded by a pagan for his behavior.

How could one person be a hero of faith one day and the next day be so fearful

that he doesn’t even seem to believe in God’s promises at all?

And here’s the thing—As we study Abraham’s life over the coming weeks—

you will see this pattern repeat itself.

You will very often see him making the right decisions in tough times by faith.

You will see him stake his life and reputation and wealth on the Lord’s promises.

And then, mixed in with all this faithful living,

you will see times when his faith seems to evaporate and he gives in to fear

and impatience and does things that are an embarrassment to his walk with God.

So, are you just like your father Abraham?

If you are a Christian, you’re a chip off the old block.

You are at times a person who prays and believes and speaks and obeys

as only a Christian can.

And then, at times, you are a person whose attitudes and thoughts

and words and behavior towards God and other people

seems to bear no mark of faith at all.

It’s crucial that you understand this reality of the Christian life,

and are able to put it in a biblical framework,

and apply it to yourself.

If you do, it can be a great help to you—if you don’t it will pull you down.

So let’s look at this story under three headings—really looking at our lives.

1. A painful reality

2. A sober warning

3. A surprising comfort

Credit where credit is due: Sermon on this passage by Robert Rayburn.

MP#1 A painful reality

The Bible goes out of its way to show that true believers are characterized

by a lifelong conflict between two natures or two selves.

Sometimes Christians live as the truest Christians—

and at other times they live as no Christian ever should—live like heathens.

One minister put it this way:

“Every believing man or woman is going to demonstrate this spiritual schizophrenia, this

mixture of faith and unbelief, courage and cowardice, obedience and flagrant disobedience.”

Martin Luther described it this way:

“I am at one and the same time, righteous and a sinner.”

A sinful saint or a saintly sinner. That’s the Bible’s picture.

We’ll look more at Abraham in a minute, but there are others.

David. There is the David who trusted God to give him victory over Goliath.

The David who danced before the ark of the covenant.

The David who loved Jonathan his rival to the throne with perfect devotion.

The David who refused twice to take matters into his own hands and kill Saul

even though Saul is trying to murder him.

And then there is the other David.

The David who stole a man’s wife and had him murdered.

The David who neglected his own children so badly that he brought

disaster on his house and on the nation of Israel.

Peter. There is the Peter who said: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

The Peter who fell down at Jesus’ feet and said: “Depart from me, Lord,

for I am a sinful man.”

The Peter who was crucified upside down at his own request because

he believed he was not worthy to die like Jesus.

And then there is the Peter who cowered before a servant girl and denied

three times with curses that he ever knew Jesus.

And the Peter who brought division into a church by refusing to eat

with Gentile believers.

And we see this same thing in Noah and Isaac and Jacob and Moses

and Hezekiah and Josiah and Esther and many other saints in the Bible.

Great men and women of God and great sinners.

And we see it in church history.

Thomas Cranmer—one of the English Reformers who fought for the Gospel

and purity in the church.

But when Bloody Mary threatened to burn him at the stake he signed

a statement denying all he had ever believed in, even as others were dying.

And then, Cranmer recanted his recantation and went to the stake anyway,

and when the fire was lit, he stuck the hand that had signed it into the fire

to burn first.

Martin Luther—Risked his life over and over for the Gospel.

He served the Lord writing and counseling and preaching.

At the same time, he had a bad temper that seemed to get worse.

Near the end of his life he had a terrible outburst over the low-cut dresses

that the girls were wearing in Whittenberg. It almost led to a rift with church.

Then right after that was asked to mediate between two Christians in another town.

He was too sick to go but insisted. Reconciled men, then died on the way home.

The Apostle Paul put it this way:

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

Even the great Apostle Paul who spent years of his life planting churches

all through the Roman Empire and who suffered beating and arrests and

humiliations of all kind for Jesus—even the Paul was sick at heart about

his own soul and life.

Abraham could have said the very same thing about himself as he was

leaving Egypt and going back to Canaan.

Every time Sarah looked at him it cut his conscience to the quick.

Every sight of her reminded him of his utter failure as a believer.

And yet he’s called the father of the faithful and the friend of God.

This is the painful reality of the Christian life in this world.

We have a new heart. We have faith. We want to serve God.

We want to be faithful and good men and woman.

And often we are. But sometimes we aren’t.

MP#2 A sober warning

The Bible never presents the sins of the saints so that we will take sin lightly.

So we can go easy on ourselves by saying: “Nobody’s perfect.”

It presents them as a warning.

If you see a sign that says: “Bridge Out” or “Dangerous Undertow.”

It should make you say—I don’t want to go there.

We ought to be saying: If Abraham fell, and David fell, and Peter fell—

then I’m susceptible to falling into sin. But I don’t want to go there.

The sin of our father Abraham is a warning.

1. It’s a warning that temptation is subtle.

If Pharaoh had said to Abraham: Curse God or die!

Abraham would have passed the test.

If Nathan had been with David on the rooftop when he saw Bathsheba bathing

and had said: “Have an affair with that woman and destroy your family or

walk away and be faithful to the God who’s been good to you your whole life.”

David would have walked away.

But temptation is never that crass. Consider Abraham’s case.

The entire situation was brought about by a famine. That wasn’t Abraham’s fault.

And everybody in Canaan went to Egypt during famines.

The Nile River made Egypt the breadbasket of the Ancient Middle East.

And Abraham’s fears weren’t irrational.

Pharaohs were not above murdering a man to take his wife.

And low and behold if there was not a way out of this—Sarah was his sister.

Well, she was his half-sister, daughter of Abraham’s father by a different mother.

So it wouldn’t be a real lie.

Temptation had Abraham boxed it—the same way it does with you.

It provides you with a ready set of reasons why you can’t pay your tithe,

or why you have to buy that thing you can’t afford,

or why you should have a critical spirit towards someone.

Because temptation is so subtle,

it takes spiritual alertness to know that you are being tempted.

That’s when you have to fight it—at the very beginning.

When the bare thought of sin is suggested to your mind.

If you wait, allow picture of it to be projected on secret screen of your imagination

then little by little your soul will be convinced and the deed will be done.

It has to be stopped early on, before it has a chance to work on you and awaken

your desire to sin. But you will never stop it early unless you know what is

happening to you.

You have to recognize the thoughts and desires in yourself for what they are

and fight them with spiritual weapons.

2. It’s also a warning that temptation can lead to evil consequences.

Abraham was a man of faith and obedience and courage. We’ve seen that.

But one temptation turned him into a coward, a betrayer of his wife,

a defiler of God’s covenant.

Temptation made an unbeliever out of the father of the faithful.

And it tangled him up in a web.

Abraham discovered it was much easier to get in than to get out.

He thought that if an Egyptian wanted his wife he could put them off with

marriage negotiations. When famine was over he could leave.

He thought he could lie and control the consequences.

But his lying took on a life of its own.

Before he knew it his wife was gone, his marriage over.

And by taking Pharaoh’s gifts, he had sold himself to the king.

He would never be able to get out without revealing his lie.

And that would put him at greater risk than he was before.

When the famine ended he couldn’t get Sarah back without exposing himself.

And when he did get out by God’s grace, the shame of the consequences.

A believer being lectured on morality by a heathen.

Never being able to look at his wife without remorse.

And the offense against God himself and all his blessings.

The Bible shows the sins of the saints and the aftermath

so that you can think more clearly about your own temptations.

Temptation never suggests the aftermath—only the pleasure and fulfillment.

It hides the stinger.

Use Abraham’s story rightly. Think through to the end of your temptation.

Know that sin never works. It is always found out by God,

And after a brief pleasure there is bondage you cannot escape from without shame.

So resist temptation and fight to live a righteous life.

How true this is, but if we stopped here, we would leave crushed—

because we have all fallen in many ways. Brings us to third point . . .

MP#3 A surprising comfort

What could have happened? Worst case scenario?

If Abraham had kept quiet much longer,

Sarah would have become Pharaoh’s concubine.

And Abraham would have died a rich and lonely man in Egypt.

There would have been no child of promise—No Isaac.

No inheritance of the Promised Land.

No blessing to the nations. No Jesus.

He would have let the promise of the ages slip through his fingers.

But what happened? God intervened. And that’s the surprising comfort.

Whenever you fail, in big and small ways—the Lord is faithful and intervenes.

In this case he inflicted Pharaoh’s house with diseases.

Somehow, we aren’t told how, that alerted Pharaoh and Abraham’s lie exposed.

Before the promise could be completely ruined by Abraham, God saved things.

It hurt. There was pain and shame but Abraham was picked up, brushed off—

and set on the path of obedience once again by the Lord.

Go back through all of those biblical and historical examples I mentioned earlier—

believers through the ages who have failed.

And you will see in every case that the Lord did not leave them where they were,

he stepped in—sometimes in gentle ways, sometimes painful ways, saved them.

When you are exposed and have to face your sin, that’s the Lord saving you.

Take comfort in that.

I have a friend who once found out, in a very unusual way, that his son

had fallen into some sins. The way he discovered it was the kind

of thing most people would have called a fluke or accident.

But when he sat down for a heart to heart with his son,

his first words were: “Son, let me tell you how much God loves you.”

Let me tell you how much he loves you that he would go to such lengths

to expose this sin.

That’s how you need to think about the Lord.

Take comfort in his faithfulness.

But let me go even a step deeper. Even closer to your heart.

There may be times when you look at yourself and wonder:

Can I really be a Christian?

Can I really be a Christian when I think the things I think,

and do the things I do and fail to do so much I should be doing?

And then father Abraham appears and then Paul—

and they tell you that they wondered the very same thing for the same reasons.

They were disgusted with their lives and amazed at what failures they could be,

when at other times they were so faithful and loved Jesus so much.

What does God think of lives like our?

People who are true to Jesus one day and then falling into sin the next?

Listen carefully to these words by an old Puritan preacher and take them to heart.

"Look not so much on your sins, but look upon your graces also, though weak. Weak Christians look more on their sins than on their graces; yet God looks on their graces and overlooks their sins and infirmities. The Holy Spirit said, “You have heard of the patience of Job.” He could have said, “You have heard of the impatience of Job;” but God reckons his people not by what is bad in them, but by what is good in them.

Mention is made of what was well done and what was amiss, is buried in silence, or, at least, is not recorded against him and charged upon him. O it is good to serve such a Master, who is ready to reward the good we do, and is ready to forgive and pass by what is amiss. Therefore, you who have but little grace, remember that God will have his eye on that little grace. He will not quench the smoking flax nor break the bruised reed.”

If you had a hard time following that, let me put it this way.

What is Abraham called throughout the rest of the Bible?

He’s called the father of the faithful and the friend of God.

Nowhere is he called the coward of Egypt.

And that can be the record of your life as well—a friend of God, follower of Jesus.

Live by faith, fight temptation,

believe the Lord loves you when your sins are exposed,

and focus on cultivating the graces he has given.