Genesis: Favoring and Being Favored

So this morning I want to talk to you about something that you've all seen.

Maybe you've experienced it.

It destroys families.

It sets one child against another.

It devours marriages.

It destroys groups of friends.

It destroys churches.

It can destroy workplaces.

It can make someone feel, and maybe you have felt it, absolutely worthless and banished.

I even saw it last week as we were with my sister and her family and her two little girls.

So we have four little five little girls playing, but four little girls in the pool playing, eight-year-old, six-year-old, five-year-old, four-year-old, and some game would form, I don't know, Marco Polo or Sharks and Minnows and their own little version of it, whatever rules they set up.

And then the weakest one would get left out.

This kept happening over and over and over again.

And then, you know, like my or Christy's 30 seconds of piece of reading a magazine between these interactions would stop, and you know, little four-year-old would show up and broken heart, and that this had happened to her again.

We know this feeling being excluded, being left out.

What this is, is this is favoritism, is what the Bible would call it.

It's what it is.

Either you're included via favoritism or you're excluded via favoritism.

And maybe the favoritism you experienced was in your family.

Maybe you were the golden child.

Or maybe you weren't the golden child.

Or maybe you experienced in the workplace, or maybe you experienced in a group of friends.

Or maybe you uh maybe you have favored people and banished others based on what they wore, or their social status, or their economic status.

Uh it's not the heart of God, it's not the Christian faith lived out, and so this morning we're gonna talk about favoritism, and we're still in the book of Genesis, as we're hopping through uh different stories through Genesis, and we find this nasty story of favoritism, and it begins in Genesis 12, the backstory where we've been several weeks ago.

And this is Abraham was promised to be the father of a great nation.

Abraham and Sarah are promised this, and then 11 years go by without a child.

11 years of waiting and waiting.

And didn't he promise?

Like, what was that?

Like, what do you remember that?

Did we hear that right?

And so eventually Sarah's had enough.

Uh she's just had enough.

They're aging, they're wandering around, life is hard.

It's been 11 years.

There's no child, her heart is broken, she's had enough, and her doubt and her mistrust, she decides no longer will I trust, but I'm gonna seize control, and so I'm gonna seize control, and she says, I got an idea.

Hey, Abraham, honey, um, go and sleep with my maidservant, Hagar.

Have a baby with her.

That that'll let's solve this problem ourselves rather than waiting and trusting in Abraham and his doubt and mistrust.

He says, okay.

And so Hagar becomes pregnant and she gives birth to Ishmael.

So we pick the story back up in Genesis 21.

So now 11 years went by, Ishmael, 14 years go by.

So Sarah's waiting another 14 years.

And then finally, the promised child, Isaac, is born.

So now Ishmael's a teenager and they've coexisted in this dysfunctional family.

You think your family's dysfunctional?

Welcome to God's family, uh, dysfunctional family.

They're coexisting.

And so Isaac might be around two or three, and they're having this kind of festival, as he's gonna be stopped, a weaning from Sarah.

And it looks like in the text, what it looks like is that Ishmael's he's playing around, he's doing something.

He's a teenager, but he's trying to draw attention to himself and away from Isaac, who's where the spotlight should be on Isaac.

And Sarah sees this, and she has been, she's fed up.

She's had enough.

Right?

And what she sees here playing out is these people threaten my position.

That lady threatens my position.

That boy threatens my boy's position.

She sees a certain future in front of her where that boy is just always going to be competing, just like Hagar has been.

And she wants none of it.

And so we pick up in Genesis 21, verse 10.

Genesis 21:10

So she goes to Abraham and she says, Get rid of that slave woman and her son.

For that woman's son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.

The matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son.

But God said to him, Do not be so distressed about the boy and your slave woman.

Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.

I, God, he says, I will make the son of the slave into a nation also, because he is your offspring.

So the next morning, Abraham he wakes up early, he gets some food, he gets some water together, and he banishes them out into the desert.

So the two of them, Hagar and the boy, they're out in the desert, they're wandering around, and eventually the water runs out.

They're hopeless.

They have nothing.

They are at the end.

They're just unable to go any further, and the boy is dying, and she can hardly look at him, and so she puts him under a bush.

At least he can die in the shade.

But she thinks, I don't want to watch it.

I don't want to watch my child die.

So I'll put him in in the shade under a bush and he'll just die.

And she walks away.

And she says to the Lord, she says, I cannot watch the boy die.

And she sits down and she just begins to cry.

And so in Genesis 21, verse 17, God heard the boy crying.

Genesis 21:17

And the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, What's what is the matter, Hagar?

Do not be afraid.

God has heard the boy crying as he lies there.

Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.

Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water.

And so she went and she filled the skin with water and she gave the boy a drink.

So I began to think about this story about two weeks ago as I didn't have to preach last week.

That was fantastic.

Preach every other week's amazing.

And so I began to think about it probably two weeks ago.

But it really wasn't until Tuesday morning I sat down and I just began to think about this text and what Sarah did.

And you can't really blame her.

Of course, she's going to favor her child, but she favored her child unto the point of risking killing two other people that were in her family.

And I just sat down, I started to think about this and favoritism, how deadly this is and what it causes and the destruction.

And my mind went back to seventh grade.

Because see, in the seventh grade, I discovered something.

I discovered sixth grade, I was a I was social, socially I was obsolete.

I did not exist.

And then in seventh grade, I discovered something.

I discovered that if you sought out the strong and you attached yourself to them and you detached yourself from the weak, you could go from socially obsolete to socially elite.

And I can distinctly remember doing it.

You know, because it was just very important to be in the socially elite of J.

E.

Richards Middle School.

I mean, that's just so important.

It's the same practice that Sarah's doing when we favor certain people and we win them over and we disregard others.

You know how it works.

It's how we do it to be networked.

It still works.

This still works, by the way.

And it works in workplaces and it works in your neighborhood and it works in churches.

But while it may give us social or economic positions, it can't give you peace.

It can't give me peace.

It's just another way of living by law and self-justifying yourself, which leads to judgment and pride and exhaustion, is trying to live up to a standard that will always be above your head.

And so you can keep attaching to somebody who you're perceiving to be strong, and you're never going to feel strong enough.

So also on Tuesday morning, uh I was thinking about seventh grade, J.E.

Richards Middle School, and how important it was to be in the socially elite, uh, the Lord began to show me how I still do this.

And and how easy it is, even as a leader of a church, to do this.

Oh, you want to get things done.

You want to raise money.

You know, you want to move things forward, seek the strong, attach to the strong.

And you don't have to spend too much time with the week.

And it's my sin and my insecurity that does this.

I read it this week, a friend of mine, he wrote a book about Genesis, and here's what he writes.

He writes, uh, human favoritism involves preferring that which gives our fragile egos assurance over that which leads to self-doubt.

See, it's a belief.

I can control the self-doubt inside of me, and so I will use people to help control the self-doubt.

So you walk into a room and you have self-doubt, and in order to get out of the self-doubt or out of the socially obsolete, go and find the strong and attached to them.

And if I'm just friends with them, if I just talk to them, if I just sit next to them, then I will look better, and then all of a sudden I will feel better, and we can become socially and economically, move up some ladder, but it can't give us peace.

So that two-point sermon.

Number one is we favor out of our sin and insecurity, just as Sarah banished Hagar out of her sin and insecurity, and we do this toward races.

We'll favor one race over another because of this, because of sin and insecurity.

We do this toward a crowd or toward a class or toward a group of friends or toward a person or a neighbor.

In our brokenness and sin, we use each other to bolster our egos rather than just loving each other.

And this is how we have to repent.

So there's this great passage, and I can't preach it any better than James wrote it in James 2, 1 through 11.

So I know it's a bit of reading, but it's in your bulletin, and I'm just going to read it all because it just breaks it down so wonderfully.

It says this My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, must not show favoritism.

Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in?

If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, Here's a good seat for you, but you say to the poor man, you stand there or sit on the floor by my feet, have you not discriminated amongst yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

Listen, my dear brothers and sisters, has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom?

He promised those who love him.

But you have dishonored the poor.

Is it not the rich who are exploiting you?

Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court?

Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong?

If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing right.

But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law, as lawbreakers for whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.

For he who said, You shall not commit adultery, also said you shall not murder.

If you do not commit adultery, but do not commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.

Here's what James is saying: cozying up to the rich and the powerful just because they're rich and powerful.

Nothing wrong with being friends with the rich and powerful.

The point is if you're cozying up to them because they're rich and powerful, and out of your sin and your neediness, it's wrong.

It's shallow.

It is our wounded, bruised, sinful hearts trying to justify themselves with the love of other people, and it won't work.

You won't be liked enough, you won't be included enough.

We're trying to secure a position, just like Sarah.

Sarah was doing.

She's trying to secure a position by banishing people.

You may, you may even get a position, but you won't be free.

You won't be at peace.

And Jesus calls us to go to the back of the line to give up the position.

To welcome whoever, no matter what they look like or whether they're dressed like, whatever their socioeconomic uh position is, you can sit next to me.

This seat's not taken.

You sit next to me.

Maybe you'd say like I do on most days, uh, you know, I'm a I'm a good person.

I mean, I haven't I haven't done this, like, you know, verse 11.

I haven't like I haven't committed adultery, I haven't, you know, murdered.

But James is just so saying, if you've shown favoritism, you're a lawbreaker.

I'm a lawbreaker.

We have broken the royal law of love.

This law of love, it's actually our calling.

It's what we should do.

So, I mean, like if you've ever if you're ever feeling morally superior to other people, or like religiously superior to other people, just read that one.

Just read love your neighbor as yourself, and you're going, I don't do that.

I love myself really well.

Really good at doing that, really good at protecting myself, really good at serving myself.

And you realize that you need a life governed not by law and rules, but you need a life governed, inspired, and ruled by grace.

See, this is in me.

I know it's in you because you're like me.

Being able to favor people doing it, having done it, and we'll do it again.

And this tendency to befriend the cool and the rich and the connected.

That's why we have to repent.

So I had to repent this week because I'm broken like Sarah.

But by seeing that we're broken like Sarah, we can become honest like Hagar when she's in the desert and she's like, I can't see this.

I'm at the end of my rope.

I need help.

And God shows up, and that's the second point, that God corrects our tendency to seek the strong by him seeking the weak.

And so God speaks to Hagar and her hopelessness.

He rescues the boy under the bush.

And I hate to break the news to you, but it's the best thing for you this morning.

You're aren't you you aren't as strong as you think.

You're not.

It is such relief to us to know that he seeks us in our weakness, in our inability to live up to the royal law of love.

Jesus lived, fulfilled the royal law of love for us, on our behalf.

Jesus on the cross takes our sin, he takes our favoritism, whether it be toward race or wealth or people or coolness, and he takes it on the cross, and he gives to us, he puts over us his righteousness that he has fulfilled the royal law of love for us, and his spirit comes into us and begins to transform us.

No longer do we need to use people.

We're already accepted, we're already beloved, we're already justified.

So now we can just see people.

We don't have to look at whether they have a shiny ring on or not.

Or what brand clothing they have on, or what car they drive, or what house they live in.

We don't have to use those things to distinguish who we're gonna be friends with and who we're not.

We don't have to anymore.

We're free from that.

We are freed from our shame of favoring as we've done it in the past, and we're free from having to favor in the future.

We are liberated from our sinful favoritism and from using favoritism.

We're liberated by Christ's love and power for us.

And it can heal us from bitterness, it can heal us from our desire to uh seek revenge or to seek a higher social status or really give it to everybody else, and that we can have a life governed by grace and our little lives, our little lives of always trying to be somebody can come alive when we realize we already have everything we need.

In Jesus.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you that you have favored us.

And we have no wealth, no rings, no status to deserve it.

We're in the desert like Hagar.

We have nothing.

And this morning we, in our nothingness, just confess to you.

We have favored.

We have banished.

And thank you that you have not.

Thank you that we are fully righteous before you.

We are your beloved.

We are always righteous and always beloved because you have fulfilled the royal law of love.

Would you transform our hearts and free us from using such shallow methods like favoritism?

Would you overwhelm our sin with your grace?

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.