Faithful Then, Faithful Now | Shortcutting Faith - Genesis 16(Jan 29) Myles Holmes

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the Spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Father, that's our prayer.

God, that you would find in us, Lord, lives that magnify the name of your Son.

God, there's no greater purpose to live than to praise the name of your Son.

And yet, God, even as I sing that song, I'm so aware of the many areas of my own life, Lord, that don't magnify you.

Lord, ways that I try to magnify my own kingdom.

And so, God, we pray for your help.

God, help us.

Transform us as we stand in front of your word, Lord, as we sit here in your presence, God, in the presence of your Holy Spirit, who's here to convict, to challenge, to encourage, to exhort, God, to do what you need to do in us, Lord.

And so, Lord, we submit ourselves to your work and ask that you transform us, that increasingly as we leave this place, God, our hearts would be to magnify the name of your Son.

God, this is our desire.

We pray this in the name of your Son.

Amen.

Amen.

As you grab your seat, you can take your copy of God's Word and open it to Genesis chapter 15.

Genesis 15 · chapter mention

And as you're making your way there, I just want to update you on something that we've been praying about as a church.

Many of you know that uh one of our elders, Dave Locke, uh, last fall was diagnosed with lymphoma.

And so last week he went and had some scans, the names of which are a little too technical for me to understand what they mean.

So I'm just gonna say scans and trust that you believe that that was thorough enough.

And then report back is that he's free of any evidence of lymphoma.

So we praise the Lord.

We praise the Lord for that.

I praise the Lord for Dave and Sonia Locke and the faith that they embraced over this time, a faith that really said, no matter what, God decides, we trust his will.

And that's a very difficult thing.

When you have your own plans for life, and you just freshly retire and you have a plan for the way that things should go, and then God kind of puts this thing in your way.

And it's a time to embrace faith.

It's really a clarifying time.

Time that you ask yourself the question, what's important in life?

And Dave and Sonia, what I praise the Lord is that they are such an example of what it means to embrace faith in the Lord, even when everything in life is going the wrong way.

I had a conversation, another similar conversation this week with a man who was in the hospital, and I'd never met this man, but in the final days of his life, he had the same crystal clarity.

There's something about that question of being so close to the end of your life that as you look back, you with crystal clarity are able to see what was actually worth pursuing.

And as this man was kind of close to the end of his life, he looked at his life and he wondered, having never really believed in religion, having never really believed in God, he wondered if he was missing the most important thing.

He wondered if there's something he should know before the end of his life.

And it really is true, isn't it, that in the final days of our life, we're given crystal clear perspective, especially as believers, that there's nothing more important to us than to have belief, than to have faith, than to have faith that secures for us eternal life.

And what God wants us to understand this morning as we open up Genesis 15, is right here, right now in this place, this morning, that the most valuable thing that you can have in your life, the most rewarding thing you can have in your life, at the end of the day, is belief and more of it.

Is a firmer grip, a firmer belief, a firmer faith in the promises of God.

And this is what we find in Genesis 15.

What we find is that God is promising to his children that if you believe, you will find the greatest reward for your belief.

And so we're gonna read this in a moment, but I just want you to, before we read this, I want you to see these words.

Look at me with genetic at Genesis 15, verse 1, and look at what God says to Abram.

Genesis 15:1

He says, Fear not, Abram, I am your shield, your reward shall be very great.

Now look at verse 6.

And he he, Abram, believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.

Abram is promised a very great reward.

And we're told in Genesis 15 that the way that Abram receives that reward is that it is counted to him as righteousness through his belief.

And as we open up the scriptures, we find that all those who are used mightily of God, and we read this morning of a few in Hebrews chapter 11, believed that faith was the most rewarding endeavor in the world.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

And this is what God wants to press into our hearts this morning, that the most rewarding pursuit you can take in your life is the pursuit of belief and more deeper belief in God's promise.

That's why the writer of Hebrews says, without faith, it is impossible to please him.

For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

Now, this is a difficult thing for us to hear, isn't it?

Because what the writer of Hebrews also says is that faith is belief in the unseen.

The reason why Abram is commended for his faith is because he believes in a thing that he has not yet seen.

And so the challenge for the Christian, the challenge for us is to say this: what's more valuable?

The unseen reward of pursuing God, the unseen reward of living a life of faith, trusting in God's promise, or the rewards of worldly profit?

What's more valuable?

The unseen reward of our Father in heaven who smiles on our obedience, or the seen reward of maybe the pleasure of people who live around you, whether it's a boss or a co-worker or your family.

What's more valuable to you?

The unseen reward of joy and delight that comes from God?

Or the joys and the delights that you get pursuing worldly pleasures in whatever form they come.

Seeing all these things, we have a choice.

And the choice is what are we going to pursue?

The reward of belief that is a reward at this very moment that is unseen for us and for Abram?

Or are we going to pursue the seen rewards of this world that are fleeting and passing?

And what God wants to do in us this morning is firm up that belief that if I believe in God's promise, it will be the most rewarding pursuit I could ever take.

And so let's read this together.

You can follow along with me.

If you don't have a copy of God's word in front of you, well, the person besides you really is really nice, and they're going to share with you as well.

Genesis 15 says this after these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.

Fear not, Abram, I am your shield.

Your reward shall be very great.

But Abram said, Oh Lord, what will you give me?

For I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Elizer of Damascus.

And Abram said, Behold, you've given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.

Behold, the word of the Lord came to him.

This man shall not be your heir, your very own son shall be your heir.

And he brought him outside and said, Look toward the heaven and number the stars if you are able to number them.

Then he said to him, So shall your offspring be.

And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.

And he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.

But he said, O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?

He said to him, Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon.

And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other.

But he did not cut the birds in half.

And when the birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.

As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram.

And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him.

Then the Lord said to Abram, Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years, but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.

As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace.

You shall be buried in a good old age, and they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.

When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, the smoking firepot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.

On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river of Euphrates, the land of the Canaanites, the Kennesites, the Cadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, and the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Gergeshites, and the Jebusites.

Well, this is the story of Abraham's faith and God's promise, and what I want it to do for us this morning is gird up this belief that the most rewarding pursuit we can take is the pursuit of belief.

I want you to see the reward of belief this morning.

And the first reward of belief I want you to see is that when we believe, we're given perspective for our situation.

The reward of belief is perspective for my situation.

Now notice that the text begins by saying, after these things.

Now, as a student of Scripture, you need to know that one of the most important uh tools you have in Scripture is context.

And so you need to ask this question: what did this chapter come after?

You look back and you see that Abram had just had this encounter with the king of Sodom and the King of Salem, Melchizedek.

And in that encounter, God chose, Abram chose to pursue God's provision.

Abraham took this step of faith to say, rather than to take the worldly treasures that the king of Sodom is offering me, I am going to take the heavenly blessing that this king Melchizedek is offering me.

Abram had chosen the way of God's blessing.

Rather than trying to attain material possessions for himself, he had chosen God's way.

And now what happens in light of that choice is that after these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.

I want you to notice two things about this vision.

The first, I want you to notice, is that this vision that Abram receives is to highlight the word of the Lord.

Do you know that you come into this place this morning in the presence of a God who wants to make his voice known?

I often talk to unbelievers who say, Well, I would believe in God if he would just speak.

You know, as though the audible voice of God would be something that would really capture their attention.

And I say to them, Well, actually, God loves to speak, and he has spoken.

He has spoken through a book.

And in this book, we find that God is constantly communicating with his people.

Our God is a God who loves to speak, he loves to utter his word.

And so he appears in front of Abram and he appears in a vision, but the focus of the vision is always God's word.

And in the Old Testament, God had many ways to communicate his word to his people.

Many times he would communicate in visions, at times he would communicate in dreams, at times he would give impressions to the prophets, so that the prophets could say on their own accord, with their own voice, Thus says the Lord.

At times God would just speak to people directly.

And the question for us is, how does God speak to us now?

And the writer of Hebrews answers this question.

The writer of Hebrews, at the beginning of his book, he says, long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets.

The writer of Hebrews is looking back to this time.

There were many ways that God loved to reveal himself to his children, but then the writer of Hebrews says, But in these last days, the way that God loves to reveal himself to his children is by his son.

God has spoken to us by his son.

That's why everything we do as a church is done on the foundation of Jesus Christ.

Because we as a church want nothing then more than for you to hear the very word of God.

And God has said, everything I want to communicate is communicated not by a vision, not by a dream, but by the sending of my own son.

God has spoken to us in such a deeply more significant way than the vision, dreams, utterances that the people of the Old Testament have heard.

He has spoken to us by his son and given us his word, every verse of this word pointing to the reality and existence and truthfulness of his son.

But I want you to notice also when this word comes to Abraham, this word of the Lord, this appearance of God, this vision of the Lord comes to Abraham after he has made this huge decision of faith in front of Melchizedek.

The vision that God gives to him is a response to the test of his faith in verse 14.

And what you see in Abram's life is this kind of snowball effect of faith that happens in our life.

Do you know what happens as a believer?

I'm sure this is true in your own life as if you followed Christ for any number of years.

What happens is you kind of start to create this hall of faith in your life, don't you?

You as a believer, you start to walk through these difficult scenarios, these difficult moments.

Maybe these times in your life where you can even think back now and you're like, yeah, there was nothing.

I was just, there's nothing I could do.

I was out of ideas, I was out of responses, there is nothing I could do.

And so all I could do was depend on the Lord.

All I could do is say, God, I trust you with this.

God, this is yours.

And then God showed up.

And what happens is, what should happen at least, is that should really strengthen the next time you find yourself facing a trial.

Because you you look back on your own life and you say, Oh, I remember when God was faithful then.

I remember when I was had my back up against a wall then, and then God showed up and provided.

And if God was faithful for me then, he's gonna be faithful for me now.

I love that we sang this reality this morning, didn't we?

We sang these words.

You've been faithful through every storm.

You've been faithful through every storm.

Listen, church, you just sang those words.

Can I ask you, do you believe that?

You believe that?

Some of us might be willing to sing those words, but then when we really think about it, we look back on our some storms in our life and we think, God, I don't know how faithful you were in that.

I don't know what you were thinking when you led me through that storm.

And yet the word of God says that even though you might not understand that storm, even though from your perspective God might not have been faithful, the reality is the same reality as Abram had that God was your shield, that God was faithful through that storm, and so you can declare as you did this morning, you'll be faithful through every storm, you'll be faithful forevermore.

We declare this morning, you've done great things.

And then what did we say?

And I know you will do it again for your promises, yes and amen.

And our hearts in that moment should cry out, like we should not be able to sit in that moment, kind of like singing like this.

Because we look back on our life and we say, Yes, Lord, amen.

You've been so faithful to carry me through the hardest trials.

Of course you'll carry me in the future.

This is easier said than done.

So when God reveals himself to Abram and He says, I am your shield, and your reward will be very great, notice that Abram's belief in the situation doesn't ignore his current situation.

Abram's very honest.

Look what he says in verse 2.

Abram said, Oh Lord God, what will you give me?

It's kind of like this childlike response where God says, Your reward's gonna be very great.

And Abram says, Well, what is it?

Look at God, I got nothing.

You're telling me I'm gonna have a kid, but right now I'm I continue childless.

And right now, if I pass away, I'm not gonna have a child to pass on my these things that you have won for me to.

I'm gonna have to pass it on to a distant relative.

Now, this is so important for us just to stop here and recognize that Abram's faith allows him to ask questions.

Do you know that the Christian faith is a Christian is a faith that loves questioning?

One of the things that I hope I never hear in this church, and every time I say this, it becomes kind of like my identity, so that people become kind of scared to say it, but I'll say it anyways.

One of the things I hope I never hear is just stop asking questions, just believe.

Stop asking questions, just believe.

Do you know that there are kids who have grown up in the church and then started asking questions, and the response that they've been given is just have faith.

Don't ask that question, just have faith.

As though the Christian worldview, as though God's uh all the truth that he has given us in this word could not stand to the questioning of a teenager.

The reality is that the Christian worldview can stand to the greatest questioning.

This is why Paul kind of has this confident faith that says, hey, try to poke a hole anywhere you can in the Christian worldview.

And he even says, hey, if you can prove that the resurrection never happened of Jesus Christ, you know what, we're all more than fools for following this faith, for following this worldview.

You need to know that as a believer, you have the freedom to ask questions, but you also have the freedom to engage with the secular world in a way that says, hey, let's ask questions of this faith together.

And what you will find is that the most consistent, the most truthful, the worldview that makes the most sense of this world that we live in is the Christian worldview.

You find perspective in God's word to view the world.

And so Abram looks at God and he asks this question like, God, how are you gonna be this?

And Abram isn't condemned for the question.

Instead, what God does is to say that Abram needs to view things from a different perspective.

It's very interesting, isn't it?

In verse 3, Abram tells God to behold.

You know what it means to behold something?

It means to look.

We don't use that word very much.

I think we should bring that into the vocabulary.

You should maybe at lunch today say to your family, Behold this sandwich that I made, and everyone will look.

Like, what's so special about that sandwich?

Well, that's what Abram does.

God, God, look at my situation.

God, I don't have a child.

God, look at this.

Look at my situation, look at how I'm perceiving things.

There's no way you can be faithful because, from my perspective, God, not your promise is not happening.

Then look what God does in verse 5.

And he brought him outside and he said, Look.

He said, Look toward the heaven and number the stars if you are able to number them.

And then he said to them, said to him, So shall your offspring be.

See, what God does for us is say that our greatest need is not to view things from our perspective.

The reward of faith is that we get to pursue things from God's perspective, which is the true perspective.

And the reason why so many of us so often fail and struggle with belief is because we view things from the wrong perspective.

Instead of viewing things from the perspective of God's word, we view things from our own perspective.

Like Abraham, instead of believing that God would be his shield and that his reward would be very great, we view things from our own perspective when we say, God, uh you don't seem like a shield to me.

You don't seem like you're very rewarding to me.

Problem is we have the wrong perspective.

Now I wear glasses in this room.

One of the things that you get to do when you wear glasses is play the game with other people every once in a while called How Terrible Is Your Vision.

If you're a glasses wearer, you're probably very familiar with this.

People look at you and they, you know, after calling you four eyes, they say, Hey, I want to see how bad your vision is.

Give me your glasses.

So you do a glasses swap.

And if you get the wrong prescription, it's impossible to see anything with clarity.

Like you can't really even walk straight, let alone like function in life.

If you get a prescription that's either way too light for you or way too heavy for you, you're not driving anywhere.

Because your perspective is all out of whack.

And as believers, this is the reality that we need to come to terms with: that our perspective is so limited that we cannot understand the things that is that God is doing.

But what God offers us is to view things from his perspective.

God offers us glasses to see our situation with proper perspective, and those glasses are belief in his word.

God calls us to view our lives.

From the perspective of who he says he is, rather than our own understanding of our circumstances.

See, in Abram's life, God's perspective is that he will be his shield.

And God promises Abram that he will protect him and he will reward him.

And when Abram questions that, God affirms his promise, you will be rewarded.

And so Abram believes in God in verse 6.

And this is exactly what we need to do.

We take off the glasses of our own blurry perspective and we put on the glasses of God's word.

When we're suffering and in trial and nothing in our life is going the way that we would plan it, instead of doubting God's care for us, we believe God's word that says He is a shepherd who will guide us.

When we're tempted by sin to believe that the reward we could get in our sin is greater than the reward God offers in obedience, we put on the glasses of God's word to say that He promises that the joys of this world are fleeting, but the joys of the Lord are eternal.

What about when we sin?

We feel like we can never deserve God's forgiveness.

And our perspective of ourselves is that our sin is so great that God could never forgive us.

We pick up God's word and we put on God's perspective.

That if we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us.

This is what faith does.

Belief it puts off our interpretation of our life and it puts on the glasses of God's word to say that God's interpretation is what is true.

Faith gives us perspective for our situation.

Well, the second thing I want you to see that's a reward of belief is that the reward of belief is assurance for my faith.

Reward of belief is assurance for my faith.

And so a verse one to six deal with believing God's promise is true.

Verse 7 to 21 really deals with how Abram can know that God's promise will come true.

This is the next question that God asks.

Look what he says in verse, what Abram says in verse eight.

He says, Oh Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?

What Abram wants is like the stamp of assurance.

I want to know.

I want to know for sure that your promise is going to come true.

You know what we find in this chapter?

We find that God is a God who loves assurance.

God does not want his children walking around wondering if his promises will come true in their lives.

That's not what faith is.

God wants his children walking around with the assurance that his promises will come true in their lives.

This is what comes with the Christian faith is the assurance that God's promise will prevail.

That if he promises to save, at the end of your life, he will save.

This is the assurance of faith.

That there is nothing that can take the promise of God away from his true children.

This is the reason why Christianity stands superior to every other worldview.

You know what the one major problem with every other religious belief is that in order to be sure of your faith, you need to climb to the top of the mountain.

The way that you meet with God is by your own works, by the things that you do.

And in order to be assured of your faith, in order to be assured that God is going to give you eternal life, whichever God it is, what you need to do is just be a better person.

Keep climbing that mountain.

Keep going, go higher, go higher, go higher.

And I promise you, I've had this conversation countless times.

If you talk to anybody outside of the Christian faith and you ask them, how do you know at the end of the day that you will be saved?

The answer is that they don't at the end of the day.

You don't really, in all reality, know if God has not promised to save you, you don't know if you will be good enough to be saved.

And the difference in the Christian faith is that you are given assurance because instead of climbing up the mountain, what God has done has climbed down the mountain to meet with you.

God has come to meet you where you're at, so that you have every reason to have assurance.

God loves assurance.

And even though God offers his children, even though God offers us assurance of our faith this morning, many of us don't live in it.

And so I want you to see in this text how God offers us assurance.

It's the same way that he offered Abram assurance.

Notice that in verse 7, the way that Abram is to receive assurance first is from his salvation by God, that he is a child of God.

So that God says in verse 7, I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.

Every time that God talks to his people about the work that he is going to do in their future, God always points back to the work he's done in the past.

Every time.

He does it with Abram here.

Abram says, God, how do I know that you're going to give me an heir?

How do I know that you're going to give me the land?

And what God does is say, Hey, I brought you out of the land of Ur to give you this land.

God says, you can be sure that if I started this work in you, I'm going to bring it to completion.

This is the whole purpose.

I brought you, Abram, is to give you this new land.

And so you have enough assurance in your salvation.

You know what he says to the Israelites when they get out of Egypt?

Israelites say, God, how do we know that you're going to bring us to this land?

Like we had it pretty good in Egypt.

You remember the Israelites saying that?

There was meat in Egypt.

There was bread in Egypt.

Now we're in the desert.

And it seems like we have nothing.

Like, I'd rather go back to the slave, the slavery of Egypt.

And what God says to Israel is, is, I brought you out of Egypt.

I brought you out of slavery.

And in Exodus 20, verse 1, that's what he says before he gets into the Ten Commandments.

Exodus 20:1

God says to the Israelites, before you understand how you need to live for me, you need to understand that I brought you out of Egypt to live for me.

This is the very reason you're here.

And so he says the same thing to us.

He says the very same thing to us.

The reason you have been called from darkness as a Christian, the reason why you have a testimony to say that you once lived in darkness and now you live in the light is because God did a work in your life for the very purpose of you living in the light.

God called you out of darkness into the light.

And as we stand and we say, God, how can I be sure that you're going to bring me into eternal life?

God points us back to our testimony and says, Hey, did I save you?

Did I call you out of darkness?

Do you know why I did that?

So that you would live in the light.

And the work that I began in you, he says in Philippians chapter 1, verse 7, I will bring to completion.

Philippians 1:7

This is why what happens so often in Scripture as it talks about our baptism, Paul constantly calls us to look back to our baptism, to remember your baptism.

He says in Corinthians to the church, remember we were united through baptism.

Well, how were we united through baptism?

It's not like we were all baptized in the same water.

Well, it's because of what baptism symbolizes.

It symbolized when you stood in that water, it symbolized that you had faith that cleansed you of your sin.

It symbolized the external symbol of an inward reality.

That you stood there as the old you, and then you were put under the water.

And if you were to be held under the water, now I promise that doesn't happen at this church.

Next week we're doing some baptisms.

I always 100% bring the people up, okay?

Just want to make that promise in case any people are scared about baptism.

100% guarantee rate on baptism.

And so, I get distracted.

Baptism.

It's an old you, you're held under the water, and if you were there, you would die.

See, being underwater, it symbolizes death.

You know whose death it symbolized in your baptism if you're baptized in Christ?

It symbolized the death of Christ for you.

And what happened is there's a group of witnesses at the church, and especially the elders have affirmed that, hey, your testimony is true.

This experience of grace has happened for you.

And so we're going to symbolize this in baptism, where the old you stands there and you're under the water, and now you're dead in Christ.

If you were to be held there, there'd be a physical death, but it's a spiritual death to yourself.

You're united with Christ and brought up now in new life, and the church goes crazy.

They're losing their minds.

Again, just preparing you for next week when we do baptism, because now it's a celebration of this new life that you now stand in.

And Paul constantly calls us, like in Romans 6, to look back to our baptism.

Hey, remember your baptism?

Remember what it symbolized?

It symbolized this reality of the faith that you had placed in Jesus Christ for salvation.

And you can be sure that if you were baptized into Christ, he will continue to do that work of regeneration, of cleansing in your life.

See, our salvation, it gives us assurance.

If God called us out of darkness, he will lead us into the light.

But it also, the next mark of assurance we have is that God has covenanted with his people.

So it says this in verse 18, I'm skipping ahead a little bit here, but that the Lord made a covenant with Abram.

And this covenant is really initiated in verse 9, where God tells Abram to collect these animals and then to cut these animals in half.

What the covenant is, it's a kind of an ancient Near Eastern commitment you make to each other.

It's almost like a modern-day contract.

And one of the closest realities we have of the covenant is really in marriage, where two people stand in a ceremony that is very important and they declare to each other, I will be with you forever.

I'm committed to you.

This is a covenant we're making together.

And this was a business transaction that happened in the ancient Near East pretty often, where if there was some negotiations happening between two people, they would make a covenant and they would ratify the covenant like this.

What God does with Abram is he enters into a covenant with him.

And that covenant is a commitment that Abram makes, that God makes to Abram.

To say, Abram, I'm gonna do this.

This promise of a child, this promise of land, I'm not just saying this.

I've committed this.

I'm entering into this covenant with you.

I'm committing myself to you.

And what we have as believers through Jesus Christ is entrance into a new covenant, a greater covenant than Abram had with God, a covenant that is initiated by the blood of Jesus Christ.

See, in this covenant, God gathers together animals and cuts them in half.

But in the new covenant, God sends his own son.

And you know what happens every time we celebrate the Lord's Supper?

You know the words that Jesus tells us?

He says, This is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

You know what's supposed to happen every time you come to the Lord's table?

You have this assurance that your faith will be rewarded, that you will receive eternal life.

Because the bar to the Lord's Supper is not your righteousness.

The only thing you need to have in order to engage in the Lord's Supper, in order to be reminded of this new covenant, this new commitment God has made to you as his child, the only thing you need is faith.

There's no righteousness check as though you need to live to a certain standard.

If there were, that would mean your assurance comes through works, not through faith.

Instead, the only thing you need to do to partake in the Lord's Supper, to be reminded by God of His commitment to you, is have faith that it cleanses you.

The blood of Christ cleanses you.

And God's given us the Lord's Supper as a reminder of our covenant.

Now, understand this, okay?

I very intentionally used baptism and the Lord's Supper as two examples, because you know what the Lord wants to do in your life through the two symbols that He's given to the church, through the two ordinances he's given to the church to constantly remember, whether it's the baptism of a new believer or the continual taking of the Lord's Supper, what God wants to do in your life is continually give you assurance that you are his child.

So that you can constantly look back and remember the day that I was baptized into union with Jesus Christ and then take the Lord's Supper.

And that's the continuation, this reminder by Jesus Christ Himself that this covenant applies to you.

God assures us through the covenant he makes with us.

The last way I want you to notice that we find assurance is through the sacrifice.

And so notice that God sacrificed animals here.

This is not the first time that God has confirmed his love for his people through sacrifice.

You know what happened, remember what happened with Abra, uh sorry, Adam?

What happened with Adam as soon as Adam fell?

God sacrificed an animal and clothed Adam.

And the same is true with Abram.

The assurance that he finds that God's promise would come true is the assurance of this sacrifice.

Part of the covenant ritual would be for God to walk through these cut pieces that are cut in half and placed on either side, and God will walk through these pieces to say, if I don't keep my end of this fulfillment, this needs to happen to me.

This sacrifice needs to happen to me.

And you need to know that the ultimate assurance that you have that you will be given eternal life is the blood of Jesus Christ.

This is what Paul says in Romans 5, verse 8.

Romans 5:8

You know this verse.

He says, Paul, it says, God demonstrates his love for us.

How?

You remember how?

It's not by your good works.

And yet that's often how we think God demonstrates his love for us in our own minds, isn't it?

We think, well, well, God will love me if I'm just a really good person.

Like if I just get my life in order, then God's gonna love me.

If I just read the right books, if I just say the right words, if I just go to the right meetings, then God will love me.

But that's not what Paul says.

It says God demonstrates his love for us not by our church attendance, not even by our endurance in the faith.

Well, Paul says that God demonstrates his love for us by is that while we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.

God says this, I want you to have every assurance in the world that I love you.

And so I'm gonna give you this gift so that every time you look at it, you never have to question my love.

And this is the gift that I've given you.

I'm gonna send Jesus Christ to you in the fullness of your sinfulness, in the fullness of your ungodliness.

I'm not gonna send Jesus like once you've got your life together.

You ever hear people say that?

You've ever said that yourself?

Well, I'll start, you know, going to church.

I just gotta get my life together a little bit.

I'll get baptized, I just gotta get my life together.

You know, I just need to be at this certain point.

And Jesus says, I didn't come for the person whose life is together.

I didn't come for the person who got to a certain point of maturity.

I came for the person who is at the very bottom of the life of their life.

What God says is, I came for the sinner, I came for the ungodly.

And so do you want assurance in your life?

Here's the question you need to ask if you want assurance of your faith.

The question you need to ask is this, are you a sinner?

If the answer is yes, you've got one step completed.

The next question you need to ask is this, are you ungodly?

If the answer is yes, you've got two out of three steps completed.

And the next question you need to ask is, Did Jesus die?

And if the answer is yes, what God offers you is assurance because Jesus died for the sinners and for the ungodly.

That's your assurance.

What many of us are seeking is kind of this pharisaical assurance.

This assurance of this outward, if I just wash the bowl the right way, if I just look the part, then I will be assured that I am a Christian.

Then I'll be assured that eternal life is mine.

God says, look to the cross.

Look to the cross.

You know, in some ways, a good illustration of this should be our marriages.

Unfortunately, marriage has kind of like degraded to such a point in our culture that it's no longer like this.

But the point of marriage is supposed to be this that like, why do we do this ceremony?

That's what I want to ask.

Anyone recently married, you especially ask that question after you kind of like look at your bank account after the ceremony.

You're like, why do we do this?

Why do we do this ceremony where the woman dresses in like this crazy elegant dress that's super unfunctional with the giant train?

They gotta have like three people walking behind them.

It's kind of weird, isn't it?

Why do men, well, why are they so willing on that day to look so sharp for at least one day?

Why?

Well, it's because that's an important moment when you two stand together and you commit to each other and you make this commitment, hey, I'm in this for life, till death do us part.

And that is supposed to be a day that you remember for the rest of your life because marriage is supposed to endure forever.

And when things get challenging, you look back to that day and you said, Hey, hey, hey, we both committed to that.

We both committed to this for life.

We both covenanted to this for life.

And so you look back to your wedding day, and God in his relationship has done that same thing for you in the cross to say, if you ever question my love for you, you need to look no farther than the cross and ask this question, did Jesus die?

And my love is completely demonstrated for sinful, ungodly people.

We're given every assurance in Jesus Christ.

But there's more reward that we get for our belief.

And I want you to see that the next reward we get is contentment for my future.

Look at what Abram is told then.

This is one of those stories, by the way, that we like have kind of become familiar with.

Like, oh, Abram's covenant with God.

Here it is, you know, I've been in the church for however many years, heard this a thousand times, and we just kind of get familiar with it.

And you need to read it with fresh eyes sometimes to read kind of some sometimes how ridiculous some of the details are.

Notice in verse 12 it says, as the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram, and behold, dreadful and great darkness fell on him.

And then the Lord said to Abram, Abram's just, remember, been given this assurance of faith.

Like, hey, hey, I'm gonna do this promise.

But then look what the Lord says to him.

Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there.

Okay, wait, pause for a second.

What did God just tell Abram?

Hey, Abram, by the way, I'm gonna give you a family, but they're gonna be slaves in Egypt.

They're gonna be slaves in a land that is not theirs.

I'm gonna give you land, but there's gonna be a period where your offspring are gonna be slaves.

And look what else he says.

They will be afflicted for 400 years.

And in verse 14, but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.

And if that was not comforting, then his offspring would face the slavery.

Look what he's look what he has for Abram in verse 15.

As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace.

You shall be buried in a good old age.

And Abram says, Oh, great.

Like God's comforting to me is like, hey, listen, Abram, you're gonna die.

Alright?

And you're not gonna get anything I promised you.

Try that with your spouse, okay?

Just constantly confront them with their death.

Hey, you're gonna die soon, okay?

I just want you to remember that.

That's what God does with Abram.

And yet, what God is doing is providing Abram this comfort in knowing that despite the fact that for the next four generations, it's not going to look like his promise is being fulfilled, Abram has every reason to trust because God knows the future.

And he plans the future, and his timing is perfect.

And Abram is told by God, hey, it's not gonna look like my promise is coming true, but I'm giving you this assurance that I know the future, I'm planning the future, and that my timing is better than yours.

And you know, Christian, this is the assurance that you have.

I don't know the specifics of what you're walking through right now, but I'm trusting that there are some things that you are waiting on.

On God for.

There are some things you have been praying for that you have been pleading with God to do.

You've been asking God to change the circumstance of your life.

You've been asking God to save your children.

You've been asking God to provide in this way.

You've been asking God to heal this sickness.

And it just doesn't seem like he's answering.

And you wonder sometimes, is he even is he even listening?

And what God wants us to hear here is that he knows the future.

Three things I want you to see about God's knowledge of the future and why you can be content in your future.

I want you to see that first that God knows.

Isn't that what he says to Abraham?

Verse 13, know for certain.

Know for certain.

Listen, there's nobody in the universe who can say about the future, know for certain.

You can be pretty knowledgeable about certain things, but you can't know for certain.

But do you know with the God who knows all things, the God who created this world, He knows every single small little detail of your future.

God knows what you're going through.

As you're walking through your suffering, as you're walking through your trial, God isn't like surprised.

Oh man, I was not expecting that turn.

It's not like a suspenseful edge of the seat movie that your life is for God.

He knows the future.

But God doesn't only know the future.

What he's telling us here is that God knows the future and he plans the future.

Look at this, okay?

You guys got to do some work with me right now.

Can you open up to Exodus chapter 12?

Exodus 12 · chapter mention

Remember what God just told Abram.

Remember the prophecy that God told Abram.

As you're opening to Exodus 12, let me just remind you a few certain details.

He says, Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and they will be slaves there.

Well, some of you guys know when what's coming up here.

They'll be afflicted for 400 years, but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.

As for you, you shall go to your be to your fathers in peace, you shall be buried in good old age, and they shall come back here in the fourth generation.

Well, then look what it says in Exodus chapter twelve.

In Exodus chapter twelve, verse thirty-six, it says, And the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked.

Thus they plundered the Egyptians.

What did God say?

God said, Hey, I know for certain that you're four generations from now, your children are going to go into a land that is not theirs, and they're gonna come out with great possessions.

And now, here in Exodus 12, God has planned circumstances exactly as that.

They leave having plundered the Egyptians.

They take so much that it's actually kind of like inconvenient for them.

In verse 39, it says, They baked unleavened cakes of the dough that they had brought out of Egypt, for it was not leavened, because they were thrust out of Egypt and could not wait, nor had they prepared themselves any provisions for themselves.

And listen to this in verse 20.

The time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years.

And at the end of 430 years, on that very day, all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt.

And it was a night of watching by the Lord to bring them out of the land of Egypt.

What God does in Exodus 12 is fulfill the promise that he had given to Abraham exactly, detail by detail, to the very T.

And what God is affirming for us is that He not only knows our future, He plans it.

God doesn't just make a bet on Abram's life.

God knows exactly the details of his life, and he's planning the future.

And it's true in your life.

God knows the future, and he's planning the future, so that nothing you've ever faced is a surprise to him.

But one last thing that I want you to be encouraged by in God's knowledge of the future, and that is that his timing is perfect.

So that in verse 16, it says that God has a plan that they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.

What God is saying to Abram is that it's gonna take a long time for this trial to be finished.

It's gonna take a long time for my promise to come to fruition in the life of your offspring.

But listen, there is a reason.

It's because the sin of the Amorites is not yet complete.

And as soon as the time is right, God says to Abram, I'm gonna act in power in your life, and I'm gonna bring these promises to fruition.

And God says the same thing to us.

In 1 Peter chapter 1, he says that any trial that you have ever faced has only that you have only faced because it has been necessary for you.

1 Peter 1 · chapter mention

God never puts his children in the furnace without purpose.

He never puts his children in the furnace for longer than they need to be.

And even though you may not know the purpose, you have this assurance that God does know the purpose.

God is not trying and failing to accomplish something in your life.

God is waiting for the perfect moment to accomplish his will in your life.

This is because God knows and God plans and God's timing is better than my timing.

And some of us need to take this phrase and like, I don't know, tattoo it on our arm, put it on our mirror, repeat it to ourselves every day because we stop believing it.

We need to remind ourselves time after time, God knows my future, God plans my future, God's timing is better than my timing.

It needs to be said by so many of us in so many different situations.

It was said by us as a church just a few short weeks ago, wasn't it?

When I stood up here and I announced, hey, church, we are like unbelievably behind in our giving.

And we need to step up by faith and trust that God is going to provide through us.

And yet God knew.

God planned, and he waited until the very last moment, as God so often does, to provide for our church in the most significant way.

God knows.

God plans.

God's timing is better than your timing.

He knows what he's doing.

That's not a promise that your kid will be saved, but it is a promise that he's in control in this very moment and he can work apart from you.

You know, as a church, we long for the day that we have a building.

And as elders and as a church, we're just constantly reminding each other, God knows, God plans, God's timing is better than my timing.

And someday we're gonna get into a building, and the stained glass is not gonna be there anymore.

Blinding the left side of the room.

And God knows, as you suffer in the Shekinah glory, blindness of that stained glass coming through the light, God knows.

And He planned.

You know, my wife and I have found such comfort in the life of Abraham as we've been working through this, as we've just been in a period of waiting as we've come to the you know, new market and we really feel God's called us here, and we feel so many confirmations of God's promise to us to come here and to be the pastor here.

And when we initially um heard about the position here, God moved so quickly, like quicker than we were ready for.

Felt like you're strapped into one of those roller coasters.

You know those roller coasters that just start too fast?

You're like, listen, engineering's good.

We don't have to start any faster than this anymore, okay?

Just too fast.

That's what life felt like for us.

And within three weeks of hearing this position, we were hired for the position.

And God was just moving in all these ways that we just knew it was God's hand.

It had to be God's hand.

And yet here we are, seven months later, and we don't have a house yet.

And we just, you know, we go through these seasons of just pleading with God, God, you know, you've called us to this place.

It seems right that you would get us a place to live in this place that you've called with this people that you've called us to shepherd.

And this week, you know, my wife and I, it's really in God's timing.

We we kind of like, one of us is up, the other one's down, well, one of us is down, the other one's up.

It always works like that, but we've just leaned in the life of Abraham and recognized if this was our plan, the best time for God to fulfill his promise, the best time for God to work in the way that we want him to work is right now.

Isn't that true?

If we had it our way, we're saying, okay, God, right now, right now, do it.

God loves us more than that.

He's so patient, he steps back, says, I know the future.

I plan the future.

My timing is better than your timing.

And so we've just had to sit and say, say humbly, God, God, you know better than us.

And this is in your hands.

You're gonna do what you want to do when you want to do it.

And so we trust you, God.

We're content with the future because you know that you plan, and your timing is better than our timing.

One last reward I want you to see.

It's the reward of substitution for my sin.

In verse 17, the covenant happens, and a smoking firepot and a flaming torch pass between the pieces of these animals that have been cut in half.

And the question I want to ask for you here is a little bit of a Sunday school question: where's Abram?

Where's Abram in this moment?

Well, it's significant that we're told where Abram is in verse 12.

It says Abram was in a deep sleep.

And it's significant that the fire pot and the flaming torch passed through these pieces without Abram.

You can be sure that Israel, as they looked at this, as they heard this story, knew exactly what the fire pot and the fire the smoking pot and the flaming torch meant.

This was the presence of God.

You remember how God led Israel through the desert?

It was a fire by night and a cloud by day.

And here we have every witness to say that God's presence was passing through these pieces, but Abram wasn't there.

And what God was declaring by passing through these pieces, that if the covenant isn't fulfilled, then just as these animals were sacrificed, so the person that doesn't keep the covenant will be have the same fate.

And God passes through these alone because he knows that Abram can't keep the covenant.

He knows that Abram can't fulfill his end.

He knows that Abram is a human sinner.

And then as this covenant progresses, the people of Israel will continue to fail him.

So God passes through this covenant alone to say that there is only one assurance we have that this promise will be fulfilled.

It is that I have said I will do it.

And then a thousand years later, after Israel has failed, time and time again, God comes back himself.

It's Jesus Christ.

And his arms, like we sang this morning, are spread on the cross, open wide on the cross, nailed to the cross.

Christ dies to take the penalty of the covenant.

Christ dies because the people that God covenanted with could never be faithful to him.

Christ dies as the substitute.

This is the ultimate reward of belief.

What we find in belief is that the penalty for our sin, the wages of sin, which is death, is taken from us and given to Christ as a substitute.

And there is a great exchange there where instead of paying for the penalty that you deserve to pay because of your sin, you now inherit the reward that you could never inherit because of Christ's righteousness.

Your robes of filth and sin and unrighteousness are taken off, and the robes of righteousness, of Christ's righteousness, are put on you.

Christ, who knew no sin, has made sin so that you might become the righteousness of God.

And this is the ultimate reward of belief.

Is that on that cross Jesus takes your sin and gives you his righteousness.

And so the question for us as a church, as we consider the reward for belief, as we consider the assurance that we receive in belief, as we consider the perspective, as we consider the contentment and the substitution we receive in belief, the question for us as a church is do we want to battle for these things in our life?

If the answer is yes, do we want these things?

And the only response is to live a life of increasing and deepening belief in God's promise.

And so we're going to sing as an opportunity to respond and just say, God, I believe in all that you have said, you will do in my life.

Would you stand with me as we pray and the worship team comes to lead us in worship?

Father, we thank you, God, for the promises you have given us.

That there is no pursuit in life more rewarding than the pursuit of belief.

And God, we pray, Lord, that you would, even in this moment, as we respond in this song, by the presence of your Holy Spirit and the power of your Holy Spirit working in us, God, strengthen, deepen our belief in you.

God, that we might leave this place believing, Lord, that you exist and that you reward those who seek you.

And there is no better place to be found than in the place of believing your promise to be true and of living in light of it.

And so, God, we lift these words to you to declare this truth, Lord.

We believe in all that you are, and all that you say.

God, we pray this in the name of your son.

Amen.

Let's pray.

Father, we give you all the praise for the reality of those words, that because of faith, Lord, not because of our own righteousness, not because of anything we could do.

Because of everything that your son did, Lord, we can give you all the praise.

Lord, that our story is rewritten for eternity, Lord.

Lord, having deserved eternal separation from you, God, you have given us eternal life in Jesus Christ through belief.

And so, God, we give you all the praise.

We give you all the glory.

We give you all the exaltation, God.

It is entirely your work.

We pray that in response to your work, Lord, and in response to even the work we've seen this morning, God, our heart's desire would be to follow you, to live our life for you, God, in every way.

So as you speak to us, Lord, I pray that we would listen, that we'd hear you in the fullness of your glory and see you, in the fullness of your beauty, God.

Lord, we pray this all in the name of your Son.

Amen.

Amen.

You guys can grab your seat, and as you're taking a seat, you can open up your copy of God's word to Genesis chapter 16.

Genesis 16 · chapter mention

We as a church have been marching through the book of Genesis, chapter by chapter, verse by verse.

And we've been seeing God's faithfulness to his people.

And especially as we've walked through the life of Abram, we've seen Abram's faithfulness to God, Abram's belief in God's promise.

Well, this week, as we come to Genesis chapter 16, again, we really see Abram drop the ball.

Genesis 16 · chapter mention

And you'll be encouraged that this is really the story of God's people.

The people that God kind of hangs out with most are the people that drop the ball.

They're the people that constantly fail.

They're the people that can't live up to the standard that God has set for them.

And we find this with Abram.

And this week we find that Abram, instead of following the path that God has set for him, tries to find a shortcut.

Now, can I just see by show of hands, is there anyone here who loves a good shortcut?

Put your hand up if you just love a good shortcut.

Okay, some of you guys, you know, you love the scenic route.

And so you're happy with the scenic route, but I know myself, I think probably most dads in here, you know, you want to get under the car, you want to follow the quickest way.

And there has been a debate since pretty much the second or third week that I started driving here weekly to preach for about seven months now.

There has been a debate in our van about a shortcut that I found.

When I drive, I take this shortcut, and I'm telling you, I chop off at least two and a half seconds from our drive here.

And when my wife drives, she is unwilling to take the shortcut.

No matter how long I warn her, no matter how many times I tell her about it, she will not take the shortcut.

And part of it, I'm sure, is this fear that all of us have been in where we thought something was going to be a shortcut, we thought something was gonna be a quicker way, only to find that shortcuts don't always work.

Now, my shortcuts do.

Just want to put that footnote in there.

Actually, that's not true.

I remember one time, this was early in our dating relationship with my wife, we were driving in a parking lot and it was snowy, much like it is today, and we were in the parking lot and I saw a shortcut, and I thought that it was a parking lot that just hadn't been plowed.

And I've foreshadowed what happened when I thought that this shortcut would save us some time.

I drove over this parking lot that I thought hadn't been plowed, only to find that it was a grassy ditch, that for whatever reason they hadn't plowed that winter.

And I found that shortcuts don't always work.

Well, we find this with Abram through his life.

Abram's life is really a life of hearing God's promise, hearing God say, Hey, Abram, I have a path set up for you.

You just gotta walk on it.

But then Abram immediately saying, Well, I think I know a better way.

We saw that in Egypt, didn't we?

In Genesis chapter 12, God promises Abram a land, a people, and a blessing.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

But then when Abram goes into Egypt, rather than trusting God, what does he do in Egypt?

He lies about his wife.

And what we find here again is that Abram, instead of trusting God, immediately after receiving his promise, immediately after entering into covenant with God, this commitment God made to Abram, saying, I'm going to be your God.

I'm gonna bring you to this land, I'm gonna give you a child.

God himself, in front of Abram, committed this.

Now we find Abram with Sarai and Hagar looking for a better way.

Church, I want you to know this morning that our problem is the same.

When it comes to our relationship with God, when it comes to the path that God has set out for us to walk on, often we look for shortcuts.

God says that his word is a lamp unto our feet.

God says that his word is a guide to our life.

God says that his word will direct us, but often what we do is we look at the people around us, at the way that they're living, we look at the different paths we could take in life, and we wander off.

We wonder if maybe God's withholding from us, and so we walk a different way.

God has said something clearly in his word, but instead we go a different way.

And this morning, as we think about shortcutting faith, I want you to see the problem, the result, and the solution to shortcutting faith.

I want you to see that this morning in Genesis chapter 16: the problem, the result, and the solution of shortcutting faith.

Now let's read this together.

If you have a copy of God's word, you can follow along with me.

I'm reading from the ESV.

And if you don't have it, you can maybe share with someone beside you.

Moses writes this in Genesis 16.

Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children.

She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar.

And Sarai said to Abram, Behold, now the Lord has prevented me from bearing children.

Go into my servant.

It may be that I shall obtain children by her.

And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai.

So after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram, her husband, as a wife.

And he went into Hagar, and she conceived.

And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress.

And Sarai said to Abram, May the wrong done to me be on you.

I gave my servant to your embrace.

And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt.

May the Lord judge between you and me.

But Abram said to Sarai, Behold, your servant is in your power, do to her as you please.

Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her.

The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur.

And he said to said, Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?

She said, I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai.

The angel of the Lord said to her, Return to your mistress and submit to her.

And the angel of the Lord also said to her, I will surely alt multiply your offspring, so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.

And the angel of the Lord said to her, Behold, you are pregnant, and shall bear a son, you shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has listened to your affliction.

He shall be a wild donkey of a man, and his hand against every one, and everyone's hand against him, and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.

So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, You are the same.

Are a god of seeing.

For she said, Truly, here I have seen the one who looks after me.

Therefore the well was called Berlahroi.

It lies between Kadesh and Bared.

And Hagar bore Abram a son.

And Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael.

Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.

Well, I want you to see here three things: the problem, the result, and the solution to shortcutting faith.

And the first thing I want you to see is the problem with shortcutting faith.

See, Abram had been given a very specific plan in Genesis 15.

In fact, this plan was really down to the very day.

God had established Abram's path.

And yet it's one thing to know what God wants.

And we discover in our life as well that it's another thing to do the thing that God wants.

It's one thing to know the way that God wants us to walk.

It's one thing to know the way that God wants us to live, and another thing to actually live it.

In fact, the path that God calls us on as believers, the path that God calls his children on, is not an easy path to walk.

If you could maybe picture this path in your mind's eye, then it might be like a hiking path that's rugged and it's got rocks and roots all over it.

And what we find is that often the shortcuts of faith, what Abram found is that often disobedience seems like the better way because it's an easier path.

And so what we find in the story is that there are three main characters: there are Sarai, Abram, and Hagar, and none of them go the way that they should.

None of them walk in a way that is commendable.

As much as we've been able to look at Abram's life and celebrate Abram's faith and say that Abram was a man who believed, a man of faith, as much as we can look at Abram's life and say that he's exemplary, we really find in chapter 16 that Abram's not exemplary at all.

In fact, there's no example for us of what it means to live for Christ.

Instead, all three of these people, Sarai, Abram, and Hagar, have all abandoned the path that God has set out for them and have taken the shortcut.

And you need to see that the same is true with us.

If you are a believer in Christ, well, let me scratch it.

If you're a human being, our condition as sinners is that we're constantly looking for a better way.

Whether we know what God says, or we're just following our own instinct or belief, we constantly believe that there is a better way.

And the reason so often we're prone to shortcut faith, the reason so often we're prone to sinful disobedience is because we look at the path that God has called us to.

We look at the call that Christ has given to every believer, and what we find is that the call is costly.

The road is hard.

Jesus says the path is narrow.

That's what's promoted so often today, isn't it, in churches?

This kind of easy believism.

This kind of cheap grace.

Well, you can follow God, and guess what?

You don't even have to do much in return.

All you need to do is believe, and then as long as you believe, you're good.

And it's got an ounce of the gospel, and that, yes, in order to be saved, you need to trust in Christ as the Savior of your sins.

But something we just witnessed in baptism is that you not only trust Jesus as the savior of your sins, you also trust in Jesus as the Lord of your life.

And what's promoted so often today is this gospel that says Jesus can be your savior without being your Lord.

But that's not the call that Christ gives.

In fact, don't you see in the gospel so often that when call when Christ calls people to follow him, what they respond with is this realization that this is too costly.

The cost is too great.

I want to share a quote with you that kind of highlights this cheap grace versus costly grace, this cheap, easy believism versus the costly call of Christ from Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

That's a pretty long quote, but I want to share this because it's so helpful.

Listen to what he says.

He says, cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring for repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession.

Grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace, on the other hand, is the treasure hidden in the field.

For the sake of it, a man will go and sell all that he has.

It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods.

It is the kingly rule of Christ for those for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble.

It's the call of Jesus Christ, that which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.

Listen to what he says.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow him.

And it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.

It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.

It's costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner.

Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his son.

You were bought at a price.

And what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.

Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us.

Costly grace is the incarnation of God.

See, this is the call that God has given to us.

It's a costly call, it's a costly grace.

And what we find when we start to walk on the path that God has set out for us is that it is a hard path to follow.

And so we look for shortcuts.

And in the story, we see three different ways that we might find a shortcut.

Notice the shortcut that Sarai takes.

Sarai believes that there is a better path than God's path.

So often we'll do this.

We hear God's the way that He wants us to walk, the path that we were to be on, and we believe that there might be a better path.

And so this is what Sarai does.

Feel the pain of chapter 16, verse 1.

Sarai had borne Abram no children.

Remember that at this moment it had been 10 years from the day that God had promised Sarai that she would give to Abram a child.

And yet as years pass on, and I'm sure Sarai sees all these other women around her who are fertile, Sarai wonders when this promise is going to be fulfilled.

So one day Hagar walks by her and Sarai is given an idea.

Maybe there's a quicker way to fulfill the promise.

Maybe there's a quicker way to get Abram, the son, that God has promised.

Maybe there's a better path.

Notice that this path comes from bad theology, doesn't it?

Did you see what Sarai said?

Well, look what she says in verse 2.

Sarai said to Abram, Behold, now the Lord has prevented me from bearing children.

That's really bad theology, isn't it?

It's good theology in the sense that it highlights the sovereignty of God.

Sarai, in this moment, believes that God is powerful and in control of her situation.

But the problem is that it's not full theology.

And so many of us have this problem.

Like we get one thing right about God, but it lacks another truth about God.

And what Sarai doesn't believe in this moment is that God is actually good.

So many of us have the same problem.

We believe in God's sovereignty.

We believe that God is in control of our situation.

We believe that he is in power, but we do not believe that he's in power and in control and sovereign for our good.

And I wonder right now if the Holy Spirit might be working in your heart to realize that you've been living with the same bad theology, that you're highlighting the fact that God is sovereign, but you're not highlighting the truth that God is good to those who love him.

This is the problem that Sarai has.

It's a bad theology that's leading her to think that, well, because God's sovereign over my situation and he's not working for me, then I'll just find a better way.

We think too little of God, too much of ourselves, and so we leave God thinking there's a better path.

And this has been the path that so many of us have followed.

As I think about churches in our day and age, I think that this is so true of so many churches.

Many of us drive by many churches that are dwindling and dying because years ago they thought that there might be a better way.

And so what they did was they closed God's word.

And they started relying on things like programs and community and all these things that might be good, but lack what the early church had.

You know what the program of the early church was this?

It was prayer and the word.

And so many churches are prone to believe that, well, there must be something else.

Maybe it's like a really good worship band.

Like people, the kingdom will start filling up if we have a really good worship band.

Maybe it's like lights.

Maybe if we just have the best lighting, then the church will really fill up.

Now, some of you are noticing that I'm saying talking about lights on the very first Sunday that we have lights up.

And I want you to just build a theology here, okay?

We don't put lights up.

We don't play excellent music, hopefully, at least aim for it.

That's what I believe our music is, is excellent.

We don't do these things in order to win people.

What we do these things for is to highlight the word of God.

We don't want anything to distract from the word of God.

We don't want anything to distract as we worship Christ from Christ Himself.

And so we walk a fine line between being showy for the sake of showing how great our musicians are, and being excellent so that all the glory can be given to Jesus Christ.

And what's happening in so many churches is that these secondary things are being lifted to primary positions to say, this is the thing that will grow us.

God says there's a better way.

It's the ministry of his word and the ministry of prayer.

These are the things that grows the church.

Well, this happens when churches believe that there's a better path.

But I want you to notice that it's not only Sarai who's at fault here, Hagar is also to blame in the mess that is caused in Genesis 16.

See, Hagar is a willing participant in this.

And what she shows us is that so often we'll shortcut faith because we believe there's a better place.

Not only will we believe there's a better path, we'll also believe that there is a better place for us to be.

And so notice how the text constantly talks about Hagar.

Like if Hagar is reading this, it would kind of be like, you know, when your parents kind of they keep bringing up this really embarrassing story about when you're young, and you're like, hey, just leave that alone.

Stop sharing that.

Like you're trying to delete that picture on your parents' phone of you when you're a baby and you're naked and they show it to, you know, your family when you come over and your friends.

Well, that's kind of how this text is talking about Hagar.

You know, every time it talks about Sarai, it kind of like emphasizes her position.

Do you see that in verse 1?

Now, Sarai, Abram's wife.

But then when it talks about Hagar, you see what it says.

She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar.

And I'm sure Hagar is reading this text saying, like, hey, could we take out the Egyptian servant thing there?

Or could we at least just put my name first, you know?

Like, I do have a name, after all.

And yet we find that the text is really highlighting Hagar's position.

Notice in verse 3 it says again, when it talks about Hagar, it's it says that Abram took Hagar, the Egyptian.

And that the text will talk about Hagar as Sarai's servant.

But then once Hagar eventually conceives Abram's child, look at how the text changes.

Look at how Sarai's opinion of Hagar changes.

Now she's just a mistress.

The mistake that Hagar makes, the path that Hagar walks down that is wrong, is believing that there is a better place for her.

She believes that there's a shortcut to God's chosen family.

She believes that by being with Abram, by having this Abram's child, she'll have a place in the inner family of God's chosen people.

Many of us do the same.

Many of us neglect God's word and pursue shortcuts because we believe that there's just a better place for us.

We believe even though God has set out a place for us to be, we believe that a shortcut, that maybe there's a different way to live that would be a better place.

Maybe there's more blessing in this place, maybe there's more joy in this place, maybe there's more satisfaction by doing this thing.

Many different kinds of places we could talk about, but let's talk about physical places for a moment.

Do you know, Christian, that there are some physical places for you to be that God chooses to bless in your life, and that when you forsake, you are forsaking God's blessing in your life?

Well, what are some of those physical places?

Well, how about the physical place of sitting in front of God's word and chewing on the word of God?

This is the place of devotion to God.

This is the place of your personal time with the Lord, seeking Him by reading His Word, by communicating to Him in prayer.

This is the place of your personal relationship with God, where you sit in front of God's word and you listen and you speak to God, your worries and your anxieties.

This is a physical place that God blesses.

What about the physical place of being with other believers?

In the same room as other believers who are pouring into your life, who are speaking the truth in love, who are encouraging you, who are at times exhorting you, who are at times uh lifting you up and keeping you accountable and providing that same opportunity for you to do the same thing in their life?

What about that physical place where, as the word calls every believer to do, we're living in community with other believers?

How about this physical place?

The physical place that we are right now on a Sunday morning, celebrating all that God has done in our lives, worshiping God because He is worthy.

How about being in this physical place when the service actually starts?

Now I want to address something as a pastor, and this is for our church, and you were given a little bye today, okay?

Today we started our service 10 minutes late, and the reality is that that every week would save some of us.

Let me tell you something that's very crucial.

We have 168 hours in our week.

And as Christians, typically we devote just over one hour to corporate worship.

That means the first five minutes of this service are really important.

And if you're continually showing up late, what you are saying, I mean, I get every once in a while, you know, the kids, they delay you, the snow keeps you from getting here on time.

But I'm saying that if there's a regular pattern of you showing up late to corporate worship, well, what it shows is that you don't really value what's happening in that time.

Is that a bit of a truth bomb for you?

Because it's true, isn't it?

If you were with your employer and you regularly showed up 15 minutes late, well, what wouldn't your employer have a problem with that?

If there is the expectation that you were supposed to be there by 9, but you just stroll in by 9.15?

Well, they say, well, you don't really value the time that I'm paying you for.

And so it is.

If our kind of attitude about church is this nonchalant, I'm going to show up whenever I show up, well, it just shows something about our heart, not in every case, but in a lot of cases.

And so let me just say that as a church.

Can we make every effort to be here in the worship center, ready to worship the Lord at 10 a.m.

on a Sunday morning, so that as soon as we sing that first song, we stand up and the church is here to praise and exalt God.

If not bringing more glory and honor to God, it'll at least settle my heart.

Sometimes I walk into here and it's like 9.59, and I'm thinking, I got seven people to preach to this morning.

Then there's a miracle, because I stand up at the front so I can't see it.

There's a miracle when I come up to preach, everybody's appeared.

They're all here.

And I want to let you know that there is a place of blessing here, to be here for the whole service, to work hard.

I know it's not going to happen every time.

There's going to be no judgment if you're late, but make every effort to be here because this is a place of blessing.

It is right for us as believers to worship God together in corporate community.

Well, these are some of the physical places that we might shortcut God.

But there are some spiritual places that we shortcut God as well, isn't there?

And as I was thinking about this, I was reminded of the fact that God has called us to a life of rest, hasn't he?

Hasn't he?

I mean, not in the sense of Jesus has fulfilled the Sabbath, so it's not like we need to take a literal Sabbath anymore.

But certainly God has given us the principle that rest is a good thing for us.

And yet many of us busy every minute and hour of our schedule.

Many of us are unwilling to take the rest that Jesus calls us into, that God has created us for, making the week six days of work, one day of rest.

This isn't a legalism thing anymore, but many of us are just unwilling to rest because that time spent resting could be better used elsewhere, whether it's working or working on the house or doing something.

And then we wonder why we're so burnt out.

It's because God's designed us for rest, but we're unwilling to rest.

We just work, work, work, work, work.

We're workaholics.

We're shortcutting the very thing that God has created us for in rest, in order to try to advance our position, in order to try to advance our place.

This is the same shortcut that Hagar takes.

I want you to notice, lastly, the shortcut that Abram takes.

See, we might believe there's a better path, we might believe there's a better place, but Abram takes a shortcut, believing that there is a better promise.

And so you read this in verse 2.

Notice what Abram does.

At the end of verse 2, Abram, it says, Abram listened to the voice of Sarai.

Now, some of the husbands in the room right now are saying, Hey, is it a problem to listen to your wife?

Because I do, to not listen to your wife, because I do really well at not listening to my wife.

So if that's like obedience to God, listen, I'm I've got to be the most obedient child in this room.

Notice that the problem is that Abram listened to the voice of his wife instead of listening to the voice of God.

In fact, the same words that are used here are the words that are used of Adam.

What was the problem with Adam?

Why, when scripture looks at original sin that happened in the garden, is Adam always the one to blame when Eve was the one who initially took the fruit?

Well, it's because Adam was given this leadership role, and instead of listening to the voice of Eve and taking the fruit, instead of listening, sorry, he listened to the voice of Eve instead of listening to the voice of God.

And here Abram does the same thing as Sarai attempts to leave lead Abram into sin instead of putting his foot down and saying, God has led me a better way, he's got a better path for us.

Abram believes that maybe this is a better way.

Maybe there is a quicker way to God's promise.

I want you to notice here that the Garden of Eden comes up again in Genesis.

And one of the things that we're learning as we walk through Genesis is that the decision that was made in the Garden of Eden is cyclical.

It happens again and again and again in our lives.

And there is this daily decision you have of whose voice will you listen to?

Will you listen to the voice of God as an obedient child of God?

Or like Adam and Eve and Abram and Sarai, will you believe that there is a better way?

This is this daily decision we have of whether we're going to shortcut, try to find a quicker way to get what God has promised us, or we're going to follow God's way.

Again, this shouldn't be a surprise to us when we find ourselves in this battle.

Because we have sin nature.

And sin nature means that we're constantly, we have this desire in us, this broken, sinful desire to do the opposite of what God says, to go a different way.

And so it should not be surprising to you today, as soon as you get in the car, that you're tempted with sin.

Because this is the world we live in.

This cyclical Garden of Eden decision is happening every single day in our lives.

These decisions we need to make, of which path are we going to follow?

God's or the world's?

Which promise are we going to believe in?

God's promise or the world's promise?

Abram, he should have been a better leader, shouldn't it?

He have he should have put his foot down.

But instead of leading his family to God's promise, what he did was lead his family away from God's promise.

Listen, this is such a strong word for the men in this room.

Do you know what your role as a biblical man is?

Do you know what biblical manhood is according to God?

Not according to our world standards.

I'm talking like according to the God who created you.

Do you know what it means to be a man?

It means leading the people around you to the promise of God.

That's your role.

At the end of the day, the most important thing that you can do as a man is lead those around you closer to the Lord.

And yet, so many of us have fallen into this belief that a man is someone who's got a green lawn, a man is someone who works on the car.

A man is someone to who, to the neglect of their family, they just sit in the basement and they watch sports in the man cave.

We have this completely upside-down view of what biblical manhood is.

Instead, what the Bible says is that a real man is the man who leads his family, who leads his friends, who leads those people around him to the foot of the cross.

Let me ask you, fathers, does your parenting reflect this truth of biblical manhood?

Are you constantly pointing your children and your wife to the promises of God?

Well, how do you know if you're doing that?

You know what one of the ways that I know that I'm in a good place is that when my child disobeys, I am in a there's there's this moment where if I'm thinking rightly, as a knowing that I'm just a steward of this child, this child's been given to me by God.

If I'm thinking rightly with my Jesus Christ kingdom goggles on, in that moment of disobedience, I actually get kind of excited.

Some of you guys are like, he's a really twisted, messed up father.

He's getting excited at his son's disobedience.

But you know why I get excited?

Because when my child disobeys, you know what's happening?

God is exposing sin in their life.

And if it's not sin, then you're getting upset about something that you shouldn't be getting upset about.

But what happened, what's happening is God is giving you this moment, exposing the sin in your child's life, and it's a moment for you to get down on the ground at eye level and say, honey, I'm a sinner too.

I don't whine like you do, but I certainly get upset about not getting the things that I have I want.

I can't remember the last time I got angry and threw a toy across the room aiming for someone's head, but I've certainly gotten the same anger that you have in your heart, in my heart.

And you know, you know what I say to my children?

You know what the amazing thing is?

The dad daddy has a savior.

And for that, that sin that's in your heart that it's that's expressing itself in this really childish and frankly super annoying way right now, that sin's in my heart too.

But you know what the amazing reality is?

Is I've been saved from it.

And Jesus Christ, He actually came to save me.

And you know, you know, it changes.

Instead of leading your kids to build up your kingdom and act a certain way because you want them to be better people, or you want your parenting to look good, all of a sudden you're building up the kingdom of Christ and you're leading this kid to a better promise to say, hey, there's a savior for your sin.

You're not the righteous child you thought you were.

You need a savior.

See, many of us, we have a green lawn, best lawn on the street, but we're not caring for the spiritual growth of our family.

Many of us are quicker to fix something that's broken in the house, a broken car, a broken appliance, than we are to fix a relationship.

Many of us work hard to provide money and food for our family, but do not provide the spiritual nurture that they need.

I love what one pastor says about ministry, but it's so relevant to our own life, whether we're a father, mother, man, woman, child, whatever we are.

Robert Murray McShaney said as a pastor, the greatest need of my people is my personal holiness.

I love that.

The greatest need of those people around you, you know what it is?

It's your personal holiness.

It's your nearness to the Lord, it's your faithfulness to him.

So it is with us.

The greatest way we bless people around us is by being personally holy ourselves.

See, this is the problem with shortcutting faith.

This is what we do as humans, but I want you to see in Genesis 16 also, I want you to see the result of shortcutting faith.

See, what happens is that whenever we take the shortcut, whenever we choose not to follow God's word, but instead to follow some other path, some other word, some other promise, go to some other place, what we find is that it never ends in a good place.

In fact, if we could be shown the end result of all of our sinful decisions, all of us would step back in shock and horror that we would ever choose that.

You think about Adam and Eve.

If you could stop them in that moment, you know, we got a time machine, you bring an iPad and you say, hey, listen, this is all the sin that's about to enter into the world because you're gonna eat this fruit.

Of course, they would see the death that was promised to come in because of that decision.

They would see the destruction of sin that would enter into the world because of that decision, and they'd say, No way.

So it is with us.

We would never take a shortcut on faith if we really believed that it would lead to disaster.

And what God is doing here is showing us the end of the destination when we take a shortcut.

He's showing us the disaster that we will walk into.

He's showing us the destruction that comes into our life every time we decide to make a sinful, disobedient choice.

And what God wants to do in this moment is for you to soak in seeing this so that you can see the destruction.

Because if you see the destruction, if you see the result of your shortcutting faith, you'll never make that decision.

You know, I have an illustration of this that's, again, a little silly, but last night, my wife had gone out to Value Village.

It was one of those days where, like, just for sanity, you gotta go shopping.

And so she went out to Value Village and she came home and she had some of these baskets.

You know those, I mean, the men are gonna know exactly what I'm talking about right now.

You know those wicker baskets?

She had two more of them.

And you know, I've made it a decision in my life not to make the basket a battle or hill to die on, the whole basket thing.

Is anyone else here with me or am I speaking alone?

Like, I'm looking at my house.

We have a lot, a lot, a lot of baskets.

There have times where I'm looking around and I'm thinking, I don't know where I'm gonna sit.

There's so many baskets.

And if I die, I promise you I will have drowned a death of baskets overflowing my house.

I can't get out.

There are so many baskets.

I see baskets, I'm like, I don't think we have things to put in these baskets.

And yet, came home last night from Value Village with two baskets.

And it happened in slow motion.

I decided I'm not going to make this a thing.

You know, there are hills to die on.

This is not one of them.

I will serve my wife and live in a house made of baskets for my whole life.

But in slow motion, the words came out of my mouth, and I said, That's a lot of baskets, eh?

And I immediately felt the result of what I had done.

I should not have done that as I got the talking to.

That some people shop at Aritzia, some people shop at Home Sense.

She was just shopping at Value Village.

This was only$199, so I repented.

I repented, I'm back to my original ways.

I'll sit on a basket for dinner tonight.

But I use that to illustrate that if in that moment you could have shown me what was gonna happen once that those words came out of my mouth, I would have never said it.

And all joking aside, it's true of our sin.

If we could see the result of shortcutting faith, if we could see the result of not of not following God, we would never do it.

But look what happens.

See, look what happens as soon as Sarai follows this path of disobedience, as soon as Sarai thinks she's found a shortcut, she looked on Hagar, who was her Egyptian servant, who was in good standing.

And what does she say in verse 4?

She looked with contempt on her mistress.

Immediately, Sarai feels the dissatisfaction of sin.

And this is the feeling that we all experience when we pursue the path of sin rather than pursuing the hard path of faithfulness.

It's the dissatisfaction.

You know why this is?

It's because in sin, what Satan does is he shows you the bait and he hides the hook.

So that you see the bait.

We always sin because our heart desires it.

This is what James says.

James says that we sin because we desire evil.

He says, your problem is that your desires are at war within you.

You have this one desire to follow God, but then you have this other desire to pursue sinfulness.

And what happens so often when we take the shortcut is that that desire for sinfulness overcomes us and overtakes us.

But what we don't know is that that thing that we are now pursuing, it has a hook.

It seems like it's worth us to pursue, but there's always a hook.

Satan shows the bait, presents the bait, he hides the hook.

And so what we need to do as believers is do everything we can to convince ourselves to believe that that sinful choice will never be worth it.

So we memorize scripture.

Memorize the truth when you're battling with lust and pornography, that those who are pure in heart, Jesus says in the Beatitudes, will see God.

And think in that moment, that Adam and Eve moment, am I going to pursue this lustful thought or am I going to pursue righteousness in Christ?

Think, I would rather see God.

That's the place that this path leads.

I want to see God.

So I'm walking the path of faithfulness.

We memorize scripture, we get accountability, people to come alongside us and remind us, hey, listen, listen, the path of faithfulness, it's the path you need to be on.

Get off that path of disobedience.

Don't take the shortcut.

The way is hard.

Let me encourage you, brother.

Let me encourage you, sister.

Let's walk the faithful path together.

Let's do this together.

Otherwise, we end up in dissatisfaction of sin.

Another thing that sin leads us to is darkness.

Notice that in verse 5, Sarai doesn't see that this is her own sin.

Instead, in verse 5, she blames Abram.

This is what sin does.

Sin blinds us to our spiritual reality and it hardens our conscience, making it more difficult in the future to follow God.

This is what James says in chapter 1, verse 13 to 15 of his letter.

He says, Let no one say when he's being tempted, I'm tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.

But listen to this each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.

Then, desire, when it is conceived, gives birth to sin.

And sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

And what God what James is illustrating is kind of this picture of sin being a plant that's rooted in your heart.

And every time you make the choice of disobedience, what's happening is you're giving that plant a little bit more water, and its roots are digging deeper into your heart, making it harder to pull that root of sin out until eventually one day that sin is fully grown and leads to death.

See, sin, it turns our heart towards enity with God rather than towards friendship with God.

But notice also the result of Sarai's sin is that it leads Sarai and Abram ultimately to defeat.

So that in verse 6, what do you see again?

You see, Abram is powerless to do anything.

So that when Sarah blames him, Abram puts his hands in the air, says, Behold, your servant is in your power, do with her as you please.

And Abram has failed to live in the role that God had created him to live in as the leader in his marriage.

And instead of leading his wife to righteousness like we had talked about, he's now defeated in his role.

This is the worst results, one of the worst results of sin is that do you know that sin limits your usefulness?

It limits the way that God can use you as an instrument in his hands.

This is what Paul is talking about.

This is the word of warning he has to Timothy.

In 2 Timothy chapter 2, verse 21, Paul says this therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he'll be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.

2 Timothy 2:21

What God is reminding us right now is that as we pursue holiness, as we walk on the path of faithfulness, what we're doing is walking on the path of usefulness.

And that the sin that so many of us pursue regularly in our life is a sin that in all reality is making us more and more useless in the hands of God.

Not that God will never use a sinner, God only uses sinners.

But to say that the instruments that are sharpest in his hands are the instruments that are cleansing themselves from dishonorable use.

The instruments that God is using are the instruments that have walked the path of faithfulness.

Then you're made useful in the lives of those around you.

Again, our greatest need to bless those around us is our personal holiness, our personal devotion to God and his ways.

Sorry, sorry, we live in desertion.

And so notice what happens.

At the end of verse 6, Sarai dealt harshly with Hagar and potentially fled from her.

And now we find Hagar away from the chosen people, away from the Lord.

And so it is with our sin.

God says to us, if you draw near to me, I will draw near to you.

But God says that sin quenches his Holy Spirit in your life.

And what you're doing when you sin is clogging the pipe of your relationship with God, so that no longer can you experience the personal and felt presence of God in your life, because God is a holy God and he will not be with an unholy people.

And so we find this all throughout the New Testament and Old Testament that whenever the people of God stray away from God's path, they also stray away from God and they find themselves away from God, away from his power, away from his presence, away from his blessing.

And listen, this is the path that all of us have walked.

And this is the result that all of us have experienced.

We've experienced the defeat, the darkness, the dissatisfaction, and the desertion of sin.

And so having experienced this, and the question is, what do we do?

What do we do?

I want you to see the solution in verse 7, so beautifully put.

Look what it says in verse 7.

The angel of the Lord found her.

You know what the solution is to our shortcutting faith?

It's to be found by a gracious God who hunts out sinners.

This is what God came to this world to do.

This is why Jesus came.

Do you know why he came?

Not for the righteous.

Jesus didn't come for the righteous, he came for the sick.

Jesus came for the people like Hagar, who had tried to shortcut faith and chosen repeatedly to live on the path of disobedience.

And Jesus said, I'm gonna come and find them.

You know, we just celebrated these baptisms, and I can't help but think of the fact that Jesus came for them.

Jesus came to say, I'm gonna find them.

That's why Spurgeon called Jesus the heavenly hound.

He came for his people who had walked down the wrong path.

He came to be present with his people like this angel was present to Hagar.

And the solution to our shortcoming, shortcutting faith is to have walked down that path and immediately turned around.

And you know what you find?

Is that Jesus is there.

And some of you are here this morning because Jesus needed you to hear this truth.

That you've been running from him for all your life, that you've known the path that you need to walk on, but instead you're running from Jesus.

And Jesus has brought you to this moment for whatever reason, whether it's to be here to support your family, but he's brought you to this moment to remind you this fact that you have been running for too long.

Now is the time to return and repent.

And when you return and repent, you do not find that Jesus is grumpy with you.

What you find is he is like the Father who accepts the return of his prodigal son, who is so eager to pour out his grace on you, so eager to give you eternal life when all that you deserve was eternal separation.

See, this is what God's grace does in us.

This is the solution to shortcutting faith.

It's God's grace, and his grace seeks us out, his grace finds us.

This is why salvation in the New Testament, you know what's described as?

It's like it's described as a shepherd having a hundred sheep and then counting the sheep one day and only finding 99.

You know what he does?

He leaves the pen to find the wrong way that that one lost sheep had gone.

He says, I'm gonna find this sheep.

This sheep took the wrong path, this sheep didn't follow me, but I'm gonna find this sheep and bring it back home.

And there's great rejoicing in heaven when the shepherd brings back the lost sheep.

To God in his grace, he allows for repentance.

This is why you know what uh the angel says to Hagar in verse 9 is this return to your mistress and submit to her.

God had sovereignly placed Hagar as a servant in the family that would receive blessing upon blessing.

And the angel looks at Hagar in the wilderness and says, You're gonna die out here.

Return to the position that I have called you to.

Return to the place.

And you need to know that this returning is a returning that God allows for everybody who is breathing air to do.

This is why the message of Jesus when he came, the single message that he preached every single time, was repent and believe.

And some of us think, oh, that's a real hellfire and brimstone message, isn't it?

You know what repent means?

It means return.

It's one of the most grace-filled words you could possibly say because Jesus is saying, I know what you've done, I know the wickedness you've lived in, but listen, just return.

All you gotta do is turn around.

You don't have to turn around and show me any ounce of righteousness.

You don't have to turn around and show me all the money that you have that you could offer, all the talents you have, you could offer to the kingdom.

All you need to do is turn.

And what Jesus finds, what you find is Jesus accepting you in whatever condition you are in, as long as you turn.

And Hagar is called to return to the place of blessing.

See, God in his grace calls us to repentance in order that he might bless us.

And the angel of the Lord says to Abram in verses 11 and 12, ultimately, that Israel will be blessed, or Ishmael will be blessed.

Ishmael is not going to receive a life of blessing like Abram's descendant eventually will, but he will live in the land.

And this is what God says to us that when we return, we return to the life of blessing.

This is why Paul says in Ephesians that in Jesus his grace is lavished over us.

And that in Jesus we have every blessing in the heavenly places.

We return to God's blessing.

Why?

Why does God do this?

Why is he so willing to do this for people who have taken those same way?

You know, it would be right for God just to wave us at us as we walk down the wrong path to our eternal destruction.

And the sad reality is that because of some of perhaps even in this room are unwilling to repent, that will be your reality, that you will walk down the wrong path to your own eternal destruction.

And on that day where you stand before the Lord and you have no savior for your sins, and you are sent into eternally separation from God, you will have nothing to say but that you chose to walk on that path.

That you lived the hellbound race, that all you did your whole entire life was walk not on the path that God had called you to walk on, but on the path of disobedience and sin that you knew only led to one place, to death.

But to those of us who will listen, why why does why is God so gracious with us?

Well, it's because what Hagar notices.

Look what she says in verse 13.

So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her and said, You are a God of seeing.

For she said, Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.

And then Hagar bears a son.

And you know what God gets ultimately at the end of the story through the waywardness of these three people?

Is he gets all the exaltation and all the praise and all the glory.

And you know what's gonna happen at the end of time?

We're gonna stand before the Lord.

Guess how many worthy people are gonna be standing before the Lord?

There's gonna be none.

All of us will say, There is no way I could ever stand before God in the seat of judgment and have to give an account for my own righteousness.

I've walked down too many wrong paths.

I've made too many disobedient decisions, I've sinned too much.

I've lived in enmity with God too much.

The only merit I have is the blood of Jesus Christ that was shed for me.

The only righteousness I have to offer in this moment is the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

And in that moment, God will be exalted and praised.

God pours his grace out on us unrelentingly, lavishly, so that we might give him the praise.

So, church, if this has been the grace that you have experienced, if you, like me, have been a person who has shortcut faith time and time again, disobeyed God's word, then now's the time for us to stand and as we respond in song, give God the praise that He has glorious received.

And would you stand with me and let me pray as the worship team comes to the front, as we respond and give God the grace.

The exaltation he deserves because of the grace that he has given.

Father, we praise you, Lord.

Thank you for your grace.

Thank you for saving us.

God, we give you all the glory and exaltation.

Because you have sent Jesus, Lord, to die on the cross.

Not only that, to live the perfect life of righteousness we needed, and to be raised to life with our new life.

And so, God, we praise your name now.

Give you all the glory, and we pray this in the name of your Son.

Amen.