Transcript:

Hi there, my name is Jeff Arthur with The Values Conversation, here today to talk about Abraham and not being exactly what he thought he was going to be.

In Genesis Chapter 15, again as we’re going through the Bible looking at high points throughout the Old Testament, we talked last week about how God showed Abraham the stars in the sky and said, “These are going to be as numerous as your descendants,” and he’s going, “Amen brother, I am there.” His faith was counting him as righteousness.

And yet Abraham, just like me, you, and everybody else, is a screw-up. Because after he does that, then there’s nothing. There’s no children, Sarah doesn’t get pregnant. What’s God doing? It’s not moving fast enough, this isn’t going good enough. Sarah was fully aware of God’s promise to Abraham, but God had not done anything.

So Sarah came to Abraham and she said, “I have my maid servant here named Hagar. Why don’t you have sex with her, get her pregnant, and that will be the same as your heir, and there’s obviously something wrong with me and God’s not going to bless us, and let’s just take matters into our own hands.” Abraham’s going, “You know what? Sex from another gal sounds great to me,” gets her pregnant.

Now there’s problems, because her child is named Ishmael and that was not part of God’s plan. It never worked. In fact, whenever you keep reading through the story, Ishmael grows up. He’s not necessarily a bad kid, but Sarah never quite works with it well because that’s Hagar, that’s her husband’s kid and it’s not her child, and there’s all kinds of problems; egos, jealousy, etc., etc. Eventually Hagar and Ishmael are driven out of the camp through no fault of their own, because the faith that Abraham and Sarah had to be begin with, it wasn’t quite as much as what they said it was going to be.

Be aware, we’re going to have great parts and great times and great seasons with the Lord, and then there’s going to be other problems where our failures and our mistakes and our flaws and our struggles are going to manifest themselves. Doesn’t mean we’re any less part of who God is. Doesn’t mean that He doesn’t love us as much as He did whenever we were doing everything right. His love isn’t based on us doing everything right. His love is based on His grace and His love is based on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Stand on that, even whenever things aren’t going as well as where you want them to be.

My name is Jeff Arthur with The Values Conversation. You can find out more about us online at tvcleadership.com.