Faith for Barren Times

Good morning, Thank you. I was. I was just so truly excited

when Josh extended this invitation to be here this morning, not only because I

just love hanging out with Josh. In fact, I insisted that I only

come on a weekend where I knew he would be in town, so that

they left this morning, but they were around last night, so we got

to hang out together. But also because I have just so wanted to see

this church that Josh loves, this church that Josh is always talking about,

that Josh pines for when we are off traveling somewhere together, and so it's

just it's great to be with you this morning. Josh encouraged me to share

an update of some of the things that are going on in Great Commission Collective,

and if you're new here, you know, just to give you some

context. Great Commission Collective is a ministry that partners congregations together to plant churches

and strengthen leaders. And so this church, your church, is helping right

now to fund sixteen different church planters just in the United States alone, sixteen

different church planters, and we've had nine this past year. This winter in

the church planter training, we're hoping to have another five start next month in

the church planter training and so that things are forming to continue to plant churches

and send out couples and see the gospel go forward. There Also, internationally,

we're not only trying to have an impact in taking the gospel to other

nations, but there's a specific strategy where we're forming networks in different nations.

So rather than just working with individual churches, God is connecting us with leaders

that are planting churches in that in the nations, and we're helping them to

form networks. So there's six different networks that have formed just over the past

like eighteen months and another three that will be forming in the next six months

where we just get a chance to work with indigenous leaders to be able to

serve them and love them and care for them and hopefully provide some training even

as we learn from them. So that's kind of on the planting side.

Over on the strengthening side, this includes this basically means we care for leaders.

This means that we train elderships on what it means to be a plurality

of elders. It means that we're forming partnerships with ministries like SIMI and Trust

to help help lead pastors become more effective teachers and preachers PARACLEAO in order to

serve pastors wives Lead, which is a ministry that helps children's ministry directors and

trainers to be more effective in what they're doing. And so you know,

what I want you to know is that as a result of our our partnership

together, we are We're caring for pastors, we're helping elders as they confront

increasing complexity in the days in which we live, and we're helping leaders last

in ministry. So we're not a big group and we don't regard ourselves as

exceptionally talented, but we are trying to be faithful and we are so grateful

that we get to do that in partnership with you. If you are here,

we're going to open up our bibles to Romans chapter four. If you

need a Bible, I understand there are bibles available. You can raise your

hand, and if you don't need a Bible, then keep your hand on

because I'm going to read the passage anyway. So just raise your hand if

you if you need a Bible. This morning, I've been asked to teach

a message that's titled faith for barren times. And we're going to look at

Romans chapter four, beginning in verse eighteen, and I'll read through verse twenty

one. In hope he by the way, that's talking about Abraham or Abraham

in Hope. He believed against hope that he should become the father of many

nations, as he had been told, so shall your offspring. B He

did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as

good as dead since he was about one hundred years old, or when he

considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise

of God. But he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to

God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.

Let's pray together, Lord, we pray this morning because we want to be

more fully convinced that you are able to do what you have promised. And

so we pray you would both feed us and inspire us from this passion passage.

And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen. So he had already

lived seventy five years, that's three quarters of a century. His name Abraham

literally meant exalted father, a kind of stabbing irony for a man with no

kids. But he was healthy, wealthy, happy, and surrounded by extended

family. When one day God interrupts his settled existence with an almost incomprehensible command.

God says to him, leave your country, your people, and your

father's household, and go to the land I will show you, and I

will make a great nation of you. Imagine that, a great nation springing

from a man with no kids. How does that work? And the scripture

says Abraham obeyed. He uprooted his family, which at that point included a

nephew and servants and livestock possessions. And he went forth, as Hebrews chapter

eleven says, not knowing where he was going. And as he journeyed,

he waited every week, every month, every year. He waited. He

waited for this promise to be fulfilled. Several years later, God kind of

drops by in a vision. At this point, Abram is in an anguished

state. He's still childless. There's no heir to the promise. I imagine

him thinking, great nation, great nation? What's this? A great now?

All? I have a nephew, I've got a bunch of sheep.

Where's the great Nation? I mean, can I get a good neighborhood?

Can I get some beachfront property? Where's the great Nation coming from? And

scripture records that God took him outside and bid him to look up at the

heavens and begin to number the stars, and then God spoke these eternal words,

so shall your off be? The scripture says that Abram believed God and

it was counted to him as righteousness. Now that's quite a story, and

you almost expected to wrap up there with Abram encountering God because it's just so

tight, it's so so neat. It just ties a nice bow on the

whole thing. But all of that took place before what I like to think

of as will long wait in Abram's life. The first couple of years weren't

so bad. But but you know, after seven or eight years, the

memories grow dull. You're like, did that did that really happen? To

God really speak to me? Did he really meet me? I mean,

the empirical evidence is not encouraging. Sarah's baron Abrams still aging at year ten.

Let's just say mistakes were made. His wife Sarah had to know,

is it him or is it me? I want to know? So she

pushes Hagar on Abram as a concubine. Abram capitulates. Ishmael is conceived.

Arab history begins, but Ishmael is not the promised one. Another fourteen years

pass God returns. Actually God returns and reaffirms his promise. He changes his

name from Abram, Exalted Father, to Abraham, father of Many. Abraham

is now ninety nine. Sarah's name has been changed. Sarah's name has been

changed to Sarah. She's been through menopause. She has one child, but

that one child is not hurt child. That one child is not the promised

child? How long will they wait? One year later, twenty five years

after the promise, Isaac is born. Now that's the story behind Romans Chapter

four. In the early chapter of Romans, we find Paul building a case

for a righteousness that comes through faith alone. And yet it's here in chapter

four that Paul introduces his strongest and most stunning piece of evidence for the position

that he is laying out. He takes Abraham, the father of Israel,

Abraham the beginning of the Jewish lineage, and he offers him as exhibit a

of saving faith. But here's the thing we have to realize. While Chapter

four is certainly about the faith that saves, it's certainly about the faith that

justifies. We are instructed in chapter four about the nature of faith itself,

because the faith that justifies also portrays the faith that pleases God. The faith

that justifies also portrays the faith that helps us during the long wait in our

lives. And so what I want to do together for the remainder of our

time is I want two together dissect pull apart Abraham's faith to see what made

it faith indeed, and we're going to look at three different components of his

faith, beginning with number one, believing the promise. Let's go back to

verse eighteen. In hope, he believed against hope that he should become the

father of many nations, as he had been told, so shall your offspring

be? So Abraham had been told something by God, Abraham, you will

become a father. You're gonna have a son. And what we discover here

in verse eighteen is that faith responds by investing trust in God's words and standing

on God's promise as if it is a guaranteed future reality. It's a guaranteed

future reality that we have not yet experienced into present, but it is guaranteed

out there in the future now, because this is the future. You know.

We read these stories and sometimes there's such a temptation to say, well,

yeah, I mean, if God came to me in a vision or

appeared before me and kind of chatted to me about my future, I think

I could believe as well. This must be easy for Abraham, as if

true faith rests upon having some kind of supernatural experience or supernatural visitation. But

the problem in scripture with supernatural experience is that memories fade, so Israel can

go through the Red Sea and have this dramatic experience with God and come out

the other side and just be complaining within days. It happened with Israel,

it happened with the Kings, it happened throughout the New Testament, it happens

with you, and it certainly happens with me. I mean, you know,

not long ago, Kim and I are sitting in our small group,

and the small group leader, having heard that our wedding anniversary is coming up,

just surprised us with the question of Dave, Kim, tell us a

memory of your wedding day, and I was just like caught by surprise eyes

with the question. And so I'm just like scanning my mind, searching my

mind, and I'm just kind of going back and forth and I'm finding nothing

up there and there's just nothing. There's nothing that's that's dropping. And I'm

realizing, Okay, this could get very serious. And so you know when

you're when you're married, you know how you've got You've got verbal ways of

communicating, and then you have nonverbal ways and you're non verbal or with your

eyes. So I'm looking at Kim and I'm coming. I'm saying to Kim

with my eyes, you got anything, And she's saying, I got nothing.

There's nothing, there's nothing that's coming. I'm I'm thinking, this is

this is amazing. I gotta I'm refreshing my mind. I'm I'm rebooting my

mind. Most monumental day in my life, apart from conversion. I'm getting

nothing. I'm frantically searching the database. Nothing. I'm looking down in my

hand. I've got a ring on my finger. I know I'm married,

But there's a big gap between that day and the small group in which we're

sitting in. Here's my point Abraham didn't stand on the memory of an experience.

God spoke and he believed, and he drove his stake. He drove

a stake of confidence into the ground right there. Now. For us,

the promises of God are preserved and contained within our Bible. Listen, if

we're not working our bibles, we're not going to grow in faith. I'm

taking of Romans, Chapter ten, verse seventeen. So faith comes from hearing

and hearing through the Word of Christ. And yet we all live in the

same world, and we all struggle with the same things. You know,

we see verses sometimes where God promises to hear prayer, and yet we have

these seasons where when we pray, it just feels like the heavens are brass.

It feels God has shut down all communication. He's turned off the phone.

There's nothing that's getting through. Or you read places in the Bible where

God has promises for marriage or promises for our children, and yet our experience

doesn't map onto that right now, and we feel like the like the creep

of cynicism collecting within our soul because we hear people testifying about God and encountering

God, are experiencing God and the promises of God becoming real, and we

begin to think, oh, I know that happens for them. I know

that works in other places, but that will never happen for me. And

see what we're learning here in verse eighteen is that faith tells us to let

scripture be louder than those voices that are on repeat in our mind, to

let the promises of God speak within our mind, Let the promises of God

speak, because honestly, I mean, we're all in the same place.

To be alive today is to have voices speaking. Our fears speak, our

circumstances speak, our suffering speaks, our fatigue speaks. And what we're learning

here in verse eighteen is that faith trusts what God says about our future more

than what those voices say in the present. Faith trusts what God says about

the future more than what those voices say in the present. So the question

I need to ask you this morning is what voices do you listen to the

most? What voices are turned up loudest within your soul? Because Abraham had

to wrestle through the same thing, and the answer he arrived at is in

verse twenty one, where he became fully convinced that God was able to do

what he had promised. In other words, he was resting in a settled

conviction. Why because God said it. It was God's word and God's word

alone. I brought a quote with me this morning from D Martin Lloyd Jones,

which every time I read it it's so convicting. De Martin Lloyd Jones

once wrote, quote, there is always this naked element in faith. It

does not ask for proofs, it doesn't seek them. In a sense,

it does not need them because faith is content with the bare word of God.

That's what I want from my life. I'm not there often, but

that's what I want. To be content with the bare word of God,

which is another way to say, I want to believe the promise. Second

facet of Abraham's faith. We're dissecting Abraham's faith. Second thing is embracing the

circumstances. Listen to these words in verse nineteen. He did not weaken in

faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead since

he was about one hundred years old, or when he considered the barrenness of

Sarah's Sarah's you know, I'm smiling here because what I love about this passage.

What I love about verse nineteen is how it connects faith to reality.

In other words, faith plays out in the face of reality. Faith is

linked to reality. In other words, Abraham's looking at the situation and it's

pretty bad. And yet there's no denial. There's no dumping of the evidence,

there's no recasting, there's no spin control, there's no attempt to avoid

the raw truth because the raw truth might reinforce something negative in our mind.

You know, there's there's in the world in which we live. There's a

whole body of faith teaching that affirms that voicing the reality of a situation is

actually either empowering the problem or emboldening the enemy. And and and and it

makes Christians appear at times like and I want to be very diplomatic in the

way that I say this, lunatics. It makes us appear like lunatics.

No, I you know, no, I'm not really coughing up blood here.

I just appear to be you know, I appear to have an ulcer

or whatever. We deny the reality of something in the name of faith.

And then we drop into Romans chapter four, and we find this incredibly like

honest and refreshing passage where Abraham is considering the circumstances, he's considering the reality,

and the results ain't pretty. It's like Abraham is saying, I look

in the mirror at my body, and it's as good as dead. And

I'm a hundred years old, you know now, because he's a guy,

he's saying, it's a very hip, very cool kind of dead. You

know, I'm better than any other one hundred year old kind of dead,

but it's dead. I look at my wife and I love her, and

she's gorgeous, but she's barren. She's she's a babe to me, but

she's bear. She's a barren babe. You know that. That's That's what

Abraham. There's an honesty, there's a rawness. And don't please don't miss

what this section is meant to communicate. This is what this section is meant

to communicate. You look at Abraham, it's impossible. You look at Sarah,

it's incomprehensible. Everywhere you look is dead. There's no seat, no

hope, no way, no life. It's almost like the circumstances have convened

together and returned to the jury room and rendered a verdict saying impossible it's dead,

this situation dead, circumstances dead. Do you see what this means for

your situation? She Abraham believed when there was no life. He believed when

there was no appearance of life, when everything was dead. Do you have

any areas where you are burdened by an absence of life, where when you're

honest, your gut level, honest, you look at the circumstances and it

just reveals nothing more than utter barrenness. And I don't know what it is.

You know, you've you've been praying for this person for years and you

love them, and yet you're honestly you look at the situation and you think,

yeah, no, this is the reality. There's no change, no

interest, no life. Or you bear this this affliction, this this weakness,

this sickness, and you woke up this morning, and you woke up

this morning the same way you woke up five years ago, and there's no

change. There's no healing, no strength, no no life. Will you

look at your child or your adult child and you think they have been they

have been given so much by God, and yet they seem to be bearing

so little fruit for God. There's no zeal, no heart, no interests.

No, life all around me is barrenness? Who can relate to that?

God says Abraham can relate to that? And not just for a short

season. You know, I've been in pastoral ministry for thirty seven years,

and you sit across from people, and you sit across from enough to people,

and you get a sense that trials, tribulations, difficulties, life defining

circumstances, they tend to cluster in two three year things, and people roll

through life that way twenty five years. In fact, we have to understand

the intent of what's being communicated in the passage. God intentionally waited, not

until it just seemed like it was too late. No, it was too

late. He was dead. His body was dead, Her body was barren.

You see the problem he was not just the barrenness. It's it's not

just the absence of life. It is when it says Abraham's body is dead,

it's the utter inability to produce life. Now, you know, I

want to keep this sermon PG, So let me just explain it this way,

that that Abraham and Sarah's date night no longer ended the way their date

night used to end when they were younger. His body as good as dead,

her condition barren. It's all there intentionally. Remember verse eighteen, how

they started in hope. They believed against hope, this is hopeless. She

God brought them to a place where it was evident to them and everybody else.

Hey, if anything's going to happen here, this is way beyond man.

The best leadership, the best thinking, the best technology could not spark

change in this situation. If there's any change that's going to happen, it

has to come from the outside. It has to come from some kind of

outside supernatural intervention. It has to come from God and God alone. And

so they believed the promise, and they embraced the circumstances, and then finally

he sustained to trust. So Verse twenty talks a little bit more about how

this transformation took place. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God,

but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God.

So here's what I want you to like together, let's just wrap our brain

around this idea. Abraham believed and had his encounter and experience with faith and

became a man of faith before his circumstances changed In other words, Abraham met

God in barrenness. That was the place he met God. It was in

barrenness. And I gotta be honest, this is so provoking for me because

so often my faith sparks at some hopeful sign or some change in the circumstance.

And you know, you know what I mean, we're you know,

we're all we struggle with unbelief in a certain situation and suddenly we see some

small change. Maybe it's a loved one. We've been we've been praying Lord

God breaking break into her life, break into his life, and nothing.

It just seems like they're moving further and further away, making dumb decisions.

All of a sudden, one day you get the text, please pray for

me, and we're like, God is amazing. God is real. God

is at work in some incredible ways, because the trigger for our faith is

perceived change in them, not the promise of God. But in contrast to

that, this was Abraham's path through barrenness. It says he grew strong in

his faith. He didn't start strong in his faith. He grew strong in

his faith. How he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to

God. I mean, I mean, just imagine, so Abraham's in this

barren situation. His he is as good as dead, one hundred years old,

his wife is barren. He's got this promise and nothing is changing.

What does he do? He grows strong in his faith. How he gives

glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had

promised. His growth is specifically linked to seeing the promises of God and glorifying

God concerning the promises of God before the circumstances changed. So the reality is

circumstance didn't change, but his faith did. His faith revealed a sustained trust.

Have you ever noticed that God fixes a pain and a promise in our

life at the same time, and he often allows that pain to play out

over a longer period of time. I mean, that's part of the context

of this story. Remember Abram, his name meant exalted Father. That's what

he was named at birth. So as a kid, you know, this

is like probably a source of pride for him, a kind of proclamation of

a prodigious future. You know, this is a guy who expected to have

tons of kids, strapping boys and dainty girls and huge family and so Abram

takes his bride and they start life together, and the kids don't come.

One month moves into one year, moves into another year, and the kids

don't come. Facebook profile reads exalted father still no kids, kids don't come.

I mean, we're in this tender space right now, aren't we.

You know, because there's undoubtedly people in this very room who can relate to

this. You can relate to the pain, to the disappointment, to the

monthly demoralizing morass of wanting but not having children. You know, you know

what it's like, you know, attending the family events and that some of

them will ask directly. Others there's just that sense of anticipation as they're looking

at you, as they're leaning towards you, and how awkward it is.

You know what it's like to celebrate Mother's Day or Father's Day and not have

anything to report. You know what it's like to be in the small group

when yet another new mom is beaming because she has news for the small group,

and you have to bear that. You know what that's like. I

mean, for Sarah, eventually it would become so bad she pushes her husband

into the arms of another woman, perhaps even out of the bitterness of wanting

to see who was really at fault. Let's see who lacks life here.

We're going to resolve this one way or the other. You go into her,

We're going to see who doesn't produce. I'm sure there was a promise,

but it took twenty five years. At year twenty four, near the

end, all they had was Ishmael. In fact, God had changed his

name from Abraham Exalted Father to Abraham, Father of Many. He's being upgraded,

and all he has is the son of a slave and a promise and

a growing faith that engaged God and believed God and trusted God and created a

work so deep in his life that there was a confidence where he was willing

once that son did come, once Isaac did arrive, he was willing to

sacrifice that child, trusting that God would raise him from the dead and ultimately

foreshadowing another son where the stroke of death was not stayed, who received in

his body the punishment that we deserved, and he was offered for as a

living sacrifice for our sins. And the thing is, the issue is not

just about the passing of time. In other words, in this concept,

in this truth of biblical faith, the message is not just wait long enough

here on earth and God will deliver on your dreams. God will tie a

bow around all those open ended situations, all that all those areas that taunt

you and haunt you because of the lack of closure. Some of us have

been around long enough to know that sometimes waiting is not enough. Sometimes resolution

doesn't come. Sometimes prayers just remain unanswered. Because we define for God how

our stories are supposed to read. We define how his promises are supposed to

be fulfilled. We color in between the lines. We play God and not

only identify the promises, but determine how they're supposed to unfold in our life.

I hardly know how to tell you how how painfully realness is for Kim

and I. Right now, it's about a year and a half ago,

our twenty four year old daughter died a multi year struggle with addiction that honestly

put us in parts of this broken world where never in a thousand years did

I dream I would inhabit as a as a dad, or as a pastor.

You know, dark places with desperate people became this familiar train, and

we fought month in month out, year in year out to get her out,

and now she's gone. And each morning I wake up greeting her son,

Kim and I are now raising and he's three years old, and we

are both sixty three. And to just kind of invite you in to the

complexity of this for us, my challenges romans for the very passage I'm preaching

to you this morning, that this is the passage that I preached to myself

for all those years. For years I whispered this passage to myself in the

middle of the night when I couldn't sleep, wondering what was going on with

her, And honestly, just to spell it out, here's the question,

what do I tell myself when I have a passage, a promise, and

a daughter who's gone. How do we move forward? How do we move

forward without becoming angry? How do we move forward without becoming cynical? How

do we move forward without becoming imprisoned by the captivity of closure? You know,

the closure I was talking about earlier. How that taunts you and haunts

you. Yeah, So there's some people that just live craving it, assuming

it's going to come in this life, and it ultimately imprisons them because they

can find no peace apart from it, and I see that door, and

I realize I can step through that door. And in midst of this,

there's this interesting vision. As Hebrew's eleven expands on the idea of faith,

there's this interesting vision of faith that drops in after the catalog of heroes have

been mentioned. Tucked away in verse thirteen, it says, these all died

in faith not having received the things promised. These died in faith with unfulfilled

promises. These died in faith with unsatisfied hope. These died in faith with

life open ended in the way they didn't expect it. And yet somehow they

moved forward in life without God delivering on all their dreams, without God delivering

on the promises in the way that they expected it to come, And the

fact that He didn't do that didn't demoralize them. It didn't trigger some kind

of grand deconstruction of their faith, because they believed his promises were real,

just unfulfilled, that the story was not written in the way they expected,

but the story was still unfinished. See see I think I think for me,

I'm realizing there's a part of my heart that's just always seeking to remake

Earth into Heaven. You know what I mean by that, to remake earth

into the place where all of the promises of God are satisfied, where all

of my dreams are fulfilled, where everything is whole if we just wait.

And that's not the biblical vision for a broken world. And so it makes

me want to ask you, how are you doing in this season between the

promise and the fulfillment? Are you patiently waiting or have you been out conceiving

an ishmael? You know? In Galatians chapter four, Paul says ishmael symbolizes

a child of the flesh. In other words, ishmael symbolizes those self sufficient

choices where we basically say, okay, God, I think I got the

end understanding of what's going on here. Your sovereign, and you get to

know everything, and you get to do everything, and I'm supposed to just

wait. You don't give me any information, you don't give me anything on

the inside. Well, I'm not going to play by those rules. I'm

going to go out and make your will happen. I'm going to go out

and bring this about through my own leadership. So ishmaels are conceived when impatience

marries unbelief Ishmael is the byproduct. So we can't afford it, and we

don't really need it, but we want it, and so we slap a

credit card down and we buy it, and we've been paying for it ever

since. It's Ishmael with interest. Or if I just keep ignoring this truth

that's kind of playing out in the home, and you know, if I

just look away, if I just live to protect the peace, if I

just accommodate the anger and the toxicity that's going on here, then are what

our marriage will improve. Then my prodigal will be stable. Then they'll finally

show me the love that I feel that I need. But we don't see

how it deadens our soul. We don't see how it obscures the promises of

God. It's Ishmael at any cost, you board, No, No,

he wasn't a Christian, but he seemed like he was so close. And

she said she had professed faith when she was young. But yeah, I

didn't see the fruit, but I'd waited so long, and so we got

married. And now I've been living with that decision for a decade, and

it feels like it's Ishmael with irreconcilable differences. And if we were honest this

morning, for some of us are Ishmaels. Stare us in the face each

and every day, a kind of daily reminder of the fruitlessness of attempting to

do God's will through our own effort. But if that discourages you or in

some way applies to you, I want you to think about this. Abraham

is offered in scripture as the embodiment of faith. Abraham is offered in scripture

as the one who got faith right, and Ishmael is embedded in his story,

not somebody else's. Is Abraham's story. He's the dude that had the

Ishmael. See, Abraham is not offered to us as someone who's perfect any

more than we're perfect. He just points forward to one who would come and

embody all perfection. And it's because Jesus lived that perfect life in Jesus Us

died that substitutionary death and rose on the third day, that Jesus now has

the power and the authority to entirely and totally redeem us, even from the

stupid mistakes we've made in the past. And that means our fleshly choices all

those places that we never trusted God. We didn't trust God. All those

places where we just didn't do it right. I have them, you have

them, we all have them. All those places they need no longer define

us, They need no longer to be our identity. That means we don't

need to spend years trying to atone for the mistakes of the past, years

trying to atone for the sins of it. We have met, we have

committed, we can look to the atonement of another. So yeah, like

Abraham, our ishmaels may live on, but they are written in to a

bigger story that passes through the Cross and redeems us despite our past, despite

our sins, despite our mistakes and our failures and our ishmaels. And here's

the thing. Abraham trusted this, and that's why he was able to quote

grow strong in his faith as he gave glory to God. And so my

prayer for you is the same as my prayer for myself. May God help

us all be more convinced that He can do what he has promised. May

He help us to give glory to Him right here, right now today,

not because our circumstances have changed, but because our faith has