Abraham & Sarah: Lessons from an Unblended Family

[Music] what a joy to be here on this Lord's Day to celebrate his goodness His grace and His mercy this morning I want to begin a series of messages positive lessons from failed families interestingly those of you that have been looking for answers in God's Word on how the rear family have probably been frustrated when you said let me look for a model because there's not one family in all of the scripture worth modeling after even Jesus family filled with failures and finite flaws this morning I want to begin this series of messages positive lessons from fail families in Genesis chapters 16 and chapter 21 they construct one aspect of family from the life of Abraham Genesis 16 Genesis chapter 21 this is the word of God you may be seated some cynic has said rather strangely that blended families don't blend they collide this morning I want to hang a tag over this text lessons from an unblended family perhaps the best way to get started with a family is to look at the biblical family with the father the faith Abraham the patriarch it is with him that the biblical family really gets started we first see him in Mesopotamia in the earth of the Chaldean culture his name is called he answers and in his response his immediate family packs up and they had West arriving at her ran north his entire clan will accompany him a promise has been made to him that God would bless his name that he would bless his posterity that it would be innumerable that God would give him land that God would bless his seed it would be as numerous as a sand of the sea and most of all all that believe in him God would be blessed in order for this to take place Abraham has to do only one thing and that is here get up and go and he went and he began a journey that never ended and the road that paved the foundation is one word the Lord will provide and those of you that are listening here and those who will be listening by radio and television as you study the life of Abraham if you can hang in your memory those four words the Lord will provide it will help you with the framework and understanding the very life of Abraham the Lord will provide he would receive land favored family but only at the end of his life will he purchase a parcel of ground to bury his wife and Dee and himself to be buried and that is the framework of the life of Abraham if we ended with these generalities we wouldn't know very much about it but as when we drill down into the specifics and this morning and may I say time will not profit permit me to dig deeply so let me give you the broad strokes of one aspect of his life that he seems address for contemporary culture and it's the blended family the on blended blended family this text is tailored to teach us beware of making impetuous decision God fought I don't know how many times had reiterated to Abraham that he would be blessed he would be blessed he would be blessed Walter Brueggemann is an Old Testament scholar and he says that blessing Old Testament as a world transforming act it is not just a word it is a word with meaning it is a material word that things change when one has been blessed I don't know how many times God had to tell Abraham you will be favored you would be blessed but even God telling you doesn't guarantee that you will wait on God I'm in chapter 16 now and impatience has not at the closed door of Sarah Sarah's grown impatient she has all of the material trappings that says in quotes she is blessed she has land she has material she has agriculture but she's poor the one thing that she wants to be rich in and that's to be a mother to have a child because God is taking so long ten years have passed since chapter 12 that she decided to do what many of us are guilty of and so we don't look down our noses at Sarah she decided to give God a helping hand she wanted to help God out and she had come up with not a new plan it was already operative and that is how about we use Hagar she has worked at our employ she knows our family structure she has been with us on the journey she's very attractive she will produce beautiful children so how about we user there are other words that come to my mind when I think about Sarah at this point almost like human traffic may we human traffic route to give birth to a child Abraham agrees with Sarah and now she is pregnant and then you notice the complexion the face of Sarah changes it is shaped with a word you can paint it despise as she looks at the belly swell of Hagar and the warm life that is beating beneath her breasts she despises she she exempts herself from being part of any of this by the way and she immediately cast all blame on Abraham and Abraham to his credit is smart enough not to get in that argument he keeps quiet on the matter and now this despising hey God makes a move and decides I know how to handle this I'll take away what you've been waiting on and what you've not been able to produce and now she's on a journey and on our way out God has to say to Hagar you're in the wrong direction I need you to turn around and go back home I need you to head back to where you've come from I know running away it seems like the right thing right now to do but your impetuosity can also add to the conflict so you got impetuous Sarah you have quiet I have another name for Abraham and now you have impetuous hagar he caught in the middle of it and then a life that is just evolving and developing in the middle of it be careful of making impetuous decisions be careful the wear of making important decisions when you have and thought them all the way through beware of making decisions on your family when you haven't prayed about it when you have not consulted God about it and if God has made your promise wait on the fulfillment of it now may I say that I am very empathetic about patience because the only people that can talk boastfully about patience are people that has never had to wait so I'm not one standing here saying arrogantly are passed orally just wait on God because when you have been commanded to wait and you've had to wait that's the hardest thing in the world and the only people that's saying in that seat this morning well I've learned how to wait it because you never had to really wait but when you really have to wait you discover how difficult it is to wait when you have to wait not knowing the answer on the other side of the door when you have to wait when your fate is in the hand of 12 people when you have to wait on the diagnosis from a doctor when you have to wait you see if Sarah could answer for herself this morning she would say I had waited I waited 10 years and I felt like after 10 years if God hadn't come through he wasn't coming through some of you been waiting 10 years some of you've been waiting on the salvation of a son or daughter for 10 12 15 16 years some of you been waiting on the turn of a husband or wife and I'm here to tell you if God has made a promise you have to let God work through that promise typically a didn't take a year for it to happen it might take longer than a year for it to be resolved you have to wait and waiting is hard business as a result of impetuosity we got Sarah we got a pregnancy we got a runaway and God has the intervene again I see you I know where you are I see right where you are get up and go back home I only have one other lesson we're in chapter 21 now some 15 years have passed now you know total 20 plus years Isaac has finally made it his name is laughter and his life is a laughing matter Abraham is a hundred years old Sarah is ninety years old and they're gonna have a baby if you don't see the humor in that this is a biological impossibility to in the sense of reproduction and if somebody told you at a hundred years so you probably would laugh too if they told you at 65 70 really and she laughed and God says why are you laughing and Sara says I didn't laugh which becomes even funnier that the God who sees everything that called them from Mesopotamia follow it now she's trying to tell God that he misheard I said we'll see how funny it is when you have Isaac and there she is laughing I mean paradise is pristine now Isaac has come and that woman over there hey God and Abraham son one day Ishmael was teasing Isaac I mean that's what Big Brother's do I mean anybody here that has a big brother that's just what they do they just torment they don't care how young you are and handsome and pretty you are big brothers just give you a hard time that's what Ishmael was doing I mean remember it smell didn't ask to be born in this situation you had nothing to do with it so he just shows up Isaac is small and wimpish and crying but little brothers do all that but all the time they love their big brothers attention Sarah season at a distance and said look I'm not gonna have that boy that mistreated my son no his brother her inability to call it what it is this is what keeps blending colliding the inability to just drop the titles and just say we're in this big bowl together that I remember one of my sisters I won't name which one got a grand beating one day from my mother when she called me her stepbrother and my mother from that day to this one disallowed the mentioning of step in our family you could not use it under any circumstances she said all y'all come from me preach pastor wit I could tell I just touched a nerve in here with some people she said no no no and so even now when I hear people talk about their brother-sister and they say well that's my step I said what's that I laughed I said it is he or she from your mama yeah from your daddy where that's your brother and sister however you look at it but you probably like Sarah just couldn't see it like that she wanted it all for herself her son fighting my boy now you go fix it and I don't have at this point the highest regard for Abraham I really don't have a lot of good to say about Abraham but they don't never had Abraham might be the smartest person in this story he's a pawn between two queens and maybe the best thing to do is just shut your mouth and he was quiet about the matter but I don't like the resolution that he met reached get rid of her and the next thing you know with a canteen of water limited resources that will run out and a tent all of that she sent out into an endless desert and now Hagar and Ishmael Isaac's son is on their way she has some ammunition she remembered something that God had said to her in chapter 16 about her son what God would do with this boy but like Sarah it looked like the years kept counting down and God was never going to show up the God had saw her and God spoke to her and God said I'll provide for her and that's my second and final lesson that I want you to go home with and that is so you may be second choice God still provides all of us know something about living on second choices that's what the scripture teaches that we are second choice we are second many of us we are not first choice we are second choice and God still knows how to provide for us when we are not number one hey God is in the desert and now the water has run out it is a literary symbol of saying that comes a moment where human resources run out ciao payment stops that is social security ends and food stamps are no more and with all of your social subsistence comes to an end God says I've been the one that's been taking care of you all the time he's never been a check that you got in the mail I'm your provider preach pastor with God speaks about life's provisions and God provides and there she is a second time in the wilderness but this time it is not love beating beneath her heart she has a son and she distances herself from him because a momma just came down to watch a child suffer but if smell got a whole lot in him remember he's a wild Bronco love a man he knows how to fight and people will fight him and the biggest fight that he had that day was flesh survival he was saying mama you might give in but I ain't giving up and he called out on the God that saw him before he was born in chapter 16 and the God who saw in chapter 16 here's the God that sees in chapter 21 the God - saw you at joke beginning it's the same God that sees you right now and he cried out to God and God heard and God answered it and God provided for I know for some of you you say oh this means nothing to me keep living I'm gonna make your promise that you will come up against something that your paycheck can't have to keep living you're gonna come up against something you're a cute intellectuality cannot resolve keep living and something will come up where your youthfulness cannot dare it and the only thing you can do is what Ishmael did and that is he cried out to the God of Abraham father God answered I'm done now I'm done I'm done this is a positive lesson from a failed family and don't you ever forget beware of impetuous decisions and when you become impetuous it makes you impatient and it causes you to get ahead of God which is always trouble and yet God is so good this is what I love about the stories of Scripture it reminds us even when you fail God God never fails you I just help somebody one of the things that you grapple with in church is always people who are who are moral experts that is a judge life based on what they haven't done so if somebody has never had a battle with an addiction they say these words I don't see how they just can't walk away from that or if they've never been through divorce I just don't see how that happened they've never been with scandal I never could maybe you are not really morally superior maybe God you know he can't trust you [Applause] you'll say you you don't have the wherewithal to contend with a burden like this let me tell you something it takes men and women of faith and courage to contend with big problems in life so the next time somebody tell you or if it was me just telling me they ain't you you couldn't have no walking in the shoes that I walked in that's all you gotta tell her that you couldn't have them living in this shyness a person that is very close to me didn't know that I was gonna try not to give you some psychology but to look at a Bible story to say look I can't tell you how to make blended families work I don't know how to do that it's sociological you'd have to work through that on your own you have to find that but I can give you biblical principles that was true then now in all ways and one truth is don't make impetuous decisions wait on God don't get ahead of him and God provides I mean those are principles that will last then now and always she had no idea something that happened in her life rather tragic and so she was just telling me some outcomes and she said when I get to heaven she would always say I want to see Jesus but then she say I want to see my husband because he was so nice to me and to my children she said let me tell you something when I married that man he had children and she said let me tell you something boy it's hard hard entering into a family when you got children now you got to be not the mother but when they are there the mother to those children she said that was that was hard she said only anybody yes I'm telling you what you you need to know she said but but I worked hard and I got to tell you what means it was hard the child never did anything to me was just the fact of a child and I had to really work at that but I loved them because I loved his daddy the daddy was so nice to me and my children I never tried to be what I wasn't I never tried to assume a role that was not mine but I tried to be that when that child was around me she had no idea I was walking preaching on the family and she said and then when I went through this crisis in my life I had no idea there's the hardest thing ever happened to me in my life nothing has been more difficult than this I had no idea that when I wanted to do something it would be my husband's son who would call me and say what do you need and I told him what I needed he said consider it done say never said anything about thank you for being this and being that he said at all when he said consider it done that's all he said I said and all I could do that day I say I sure am glad that I didn't mistreat that boy some of you are in that situation the children didn't acts to be born in it or to enter into it they'll probably tell you my daddy they probably will you're my mama probably will that's out of anger and frustration you can try to respond to that I don't know I'm psychologizing Nidal I don't know I don't like to do this now you know I don't like talking about family because everybody have that different ways but I think that even when that said you have to be the bigger loving person inside of that family no I'm not your daddy no I'm not your mother but that really doesn't matter I love you in a way and I wish the best for you they probably resent it today next year too Jelena but if life is fair and right but that man that woman loved me in spite of myself I'm not talking about abuse and all that kind of stuff now I'm just talking about under normal circumstances and hey guy raised Ishmael single mama single mama and did a good job single mamas have always worked hard to do the jobs Barack Obama turned out all right he was pretty good Halle Berry did pretty good I said but I don't have to look to Chicago and I don't have to look at Hollywood I don't have to go any further than the foot in front of me when I look in the rearview mirror and I think about my own working mother the struggle to raise our brood moving us around like Abraham did his clan every year living in a house 14 times moving I moved with my mother in 13 years she did pretty good I think so that's why you here this morning [Applause] [Music]

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Length: 31min 22sec (1882 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 14 2019