Genesis 16 // Plan B

[Music] there's a road that's been made to walk upon just like a song that was meant to be sung [Music] well there's a guard that speaks gently to his sons [Music] come to me but there's a rage [Music] in an unforgiving sea [Music] a night sky that bites us with its freeze but the stealing voice that calls patiently [Music] there's a pore [Music] that starts with a changed [Music] come on [Music] hallelujah [Music] [Music] hi you guys this is steve wintering from calvary chapel tri-cities and i just wanted to thank you for tuning in online um we're especially blessed by the fact that we've got people from all over the united states that are tuning in and all you guys in other countries that are tuning in just really blows us away we've got some we've gotten some really neat emails from you i just want to give you an invite to be more involved with what's going on around here especially in areas that we can serve you so if you have anything that we can pray for any needs that you think we might be able to meet for you we'd love to be involved in that and you can let us know by sending an email to calvarychapel tri-cities gmail.com and so again we'd love to hear from you uh tell us how we can minister to you uh we just like to be of service for all you guys that are listening in in our area online uh again just just a great opportunity for us to be involved in your lives and to be able to minister to you i want to encourage you though if you're staying home because it's convenient and you don't really have a reason not to be in church you know that fellowship is something that we need as believers in fact the word koinonia in greek is a word that means a community it has the idea of assembly in fact the the word for church is assembly and you're not involved in church if you're not assembling and so i understand the need to stay home if you're in danger with the whole covid crisis and uh that's obviously the reason that we're doing this but if that's not the case with you you guys need to get to church we need to see you and so just want to encourage you in that area also in any case uh in all these areas we'd love to serve you glad you're listening in uh just pray that god blesses you through the studies whether it's me or one of the other guys and again we just want to be a servant to you so god bless you check this out it's going to be a good time we're going to be in the word [Music] all right good morning calvary how you guys doing how did you guys all stand good to see you guys [Music] y'all gotta sleep in a little bit this morning unless you're that 10 30 service then you had to get up early i feel sorry for you [Music] let me pray for the service lord we love you god thank you for this space god for this moment where we can worship together in unity and just seek your face god we are so blessed that we have the privilege to do this god and we're going to continue to fight for that opportunity god to get together in your name in one accord in one place to worship you god in unity where we know where your people are together you inhabit the praise of your people so god we pray you just be here this morning that you just in in the midst of your people god speak to our hearts draw us into your presence this morning and uh just really allow our worship to be a song of of a resound lord that it just goes throughout our whole lives lord through all that we do and uh just echoes through everything that we are about as believers lord that we just want to worship you with all that we have and we ask to see your name amen [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] come let us worship our king and come let us bow at his feet he has done great things to see what our savior has done see how his love overcomes he has done great things he has done great things [Music] you have done great things you have done great things [Music] [Applause] [Music] you have done great things and i know you will do it again for your promises yes and amen you will do great things jesus [Music] hallelujah you have done great things sing it out hallelujah [Music] captive and break everything oh god you have done great you had some great days [Applause] give me a shot of praise this morning and god we know you're going to continue to do great things here this morning when we look back at what you've already accomplished in our lives and how you've drawn us to yourself and we're so thankful it fills us with hope that moving forward lord you're going to continue to be faithful in our lives [Music] walking around these walls i thought by now they'd fall but you have never failed me yet [Music] knowing the battle [Music] yet [Music] your promise still stands great is your faithfulness your faithfulness i'm still in your hands this is my confidence you've never failed me yet i know the night won't last [Music] your word will come to pass [Music] my heart will sing your praise again [Music] jesus [Music] my heart will see your praise again your promise still stands great is your faithfulness [Applause] this is [Applause] your faith [Music] [Music] i see you move you move the mountains and i believe i see you do it again you made a way when there was no way and i believe i see you do it again when there was no way [Music] is i [Music] again your promise still stands great is your faithfulness your faithfulness i'm still in your hands this is my confidence you never fail your promise still stands great is your faithfulness your faithfulness i'm still in your hands this is my confidence you've never failed me yet [Music] with every line we see with every breath we breathe all the praise we give belongs to you [Music] the only name we seek to see the darkness flee all the praise we keep belongs to you so we call upon your name so we call upon your name [Music] with every word you speak you set the captives free all the praise we give belongs to you the only name we seek to see the darkness please all the praises we give belongs to you [Music] so we call upon your name so we call upon your name so we call upon your name [Music] jesus for there is no other name by which we can be saved so we call upon your name jesus [Music] wonderful counselor king of king savior the name above every name a light of life deliverer isn't one redeemer you are the door you are the way the lamb of god lying man solid rock great i am the son of a man who conquered hell bread of life prince of peace my defense who wasn't [Music] so we call upon your name [Applause] jesus [Music] wonderful counselors [Music] [Music] peace so we call upon your name so we call upon your name so we call upon your name [Music] jesus [Music] and it's all because of you jesus it's all because of you jesus because of your love that my soul will live because of you jesus because of you jesus because of your love that my soul [Music] and will all because of you jesus [Music] and it's all because of you jesus [Applause] [Music] won't [Music] jesus is the one beside you forever [Music] amen well we thank you god that uh you are doing a work in us this morning drawing us to yourself god we want to be like you god we want to as much as we can as as much as possible exhibit your love to this world that needs this lord lord it needs your love and needs just hope right now and help us to live that god out in our walks with you and so we just ask you to be here this morning god speak to our hearts to the word and we ask us your name amen you guys can greet one another this [Music] morning [Applause] now all righty hi you guys well when i uh said good morning to first service all the morning people that were here chill cheered loudly so good morning oh okay all right all right not too bad not too bad a couple announcements for you our shoe boxes that you see up here need to be turned in by next sunday uh we have tables actually uh over in the office that tell you about those i'm sure you know we've had videos the last couple weeks secondly children's ministry needs more volunteers so if you guys have been going to calvary for a year or longer and you would like to help volunteer you can go over and talk to one of the children's ministry directors over in the children's ministry and they would love to help you out they need visitor booth snack helpers and stuff like that i talked to greg between services though and they actually need more than that so go talk to them if you're interested in serving and they will help you out thirdly is our ladies christmas dessert we've been talking about this the last few weeks but on december 4th they do this every year but heidi saint john's going to come down and speak and it's a time for you guys to get together and have uh ladies time with desserts ministry fellowship worship and you guys can buy tickets or stop by our account online or stop by the calvary office and then if you want to host a table you we need hostess as well so feel free to volunteer for that and also invite your friends i'm going to introduce to you brooke and national anderson they're going to come up to you and share to you guys about national adoption awareness month so here they are all right so my wife goes don't forget to introduce yourself but i don't have to anymore because matt did it um all right so we're with beautifully inspired we do a lot of foster care support in the community uh we've adopted three kids and this month is a national adoption month and national adoption day which is what the 21st or 22nd 22nd 22nd all right so guys i know your wives are already there they've already been talking to you about it they're like i want to adopt i need uh i need more kids or i want to help the best thing you could ever do is to help kids in the community that's what we're called to do that's what jesus calls us to do so if you've been thinking about it if you're on the edge talk to me because i've been there i've been pulled in i've been talked to i've been working through it all and god will bless your family through it so anybody that needs this to talk to us we'll be in the back after service you can come talk to us about adoption um we're here for you all right thank you okay lastly uh we're not passing around offering bags just uh the way we're doing it right now so if you guys want to participate in fellowship of giving we have boxes on the back walls as you leave and then little podiums in the foyer and so if you want to participate there you go all right here's senior pastor steve winry we changed everything so i could get some applause hey speaking of changing everything 11 o'clock today governor inslee is going to tell us what to do [Applause] and i'm going to ignore him [Applause] oh i actually um my wife went out and went shopping for thanksgiving last night though as soon as we heard that he's what he's trying to do is put the kibosh on thanksgiving and so you might want to go hit up costco and fred meyer and buy all their toilet paper while you're at it [Laughter] [Applause] [Laughter] you still have some from last spring it's already gone of course of course it is we're in genesis 16 this morning i want you to turn there and let's all stand we'll go through and read it genesis chapter 16. i'm trying to figure okay where am i okay we are we started 9 15. okay got it oh i have it up here okay chapter 16 verse 1 it says now sarai abram's wife had borne him no children and she had an egyptian maidservant whose name was hagar so sarah i said to abram see now the lord has restrained me from bearing children please go into my maid perhaps i shall obtain children by her and abram heeded the voice of sarai and sarah abram's wife took hagar her maid the egyptian and gave her to her husband abram to be his wife after abram had dwelt ten years in the land of canaan so he went into hagar and she conceived and when she saw that she had conceived her mistress became despised in her eyes then sarah said to abram my wrong be upon you i gave my maid into your embrace and when she saw that she had conceived i became despised in her eyes the lord judged between you and me so abram said to sarah i indeed your maid is in your hand due to her as you please and when sarah dealt harshly with her she fled from her presence now the angel of the lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness by the spring on the way to shore and he said hagar sarai's maid where have you come from and where are you going she said i'm fleeing from the presence of my mistress sarai the angel of the lord said to her return to your mistress and submit yourself under her hand then the angel of the lord said to her i will multiply your descendants exceedingly so that they shall not be counted for multitude and the angel of the lord said to her behold you are with child and you shall bear a son you shall call his name ishmael because the lord has heard your affliction he shall be a wild man his hand shall be against every man and every man's hand against him and he shall dwell in the presence of allah's brethren then she called the name of the lord who spoke to her you are the god who sees for she said have i also here seen him who sees me therefore the well was called beer lahai roy observed it is between kadesh and barad so hagar bore abram a son and abram named his son whom hagar bore ishmael abram was 86 years old when hagar bore ishmael to abram let's stop there and pray father we're coming before you lord and many times uh lord you've made promises to us and those those promises are clear and many times you you make it clear the direction that you want to go and then we start making things up and uh father this is a this is a great passage that just deals with plan b and the fact that plan b is not all that good so lord as we're going through it we pray that you'd just be speaking to our hearts that you'd show us those areas where we've stepped out of your will and gone off into our own and uh lord that we could come back quickly and and straighten those things out better yet not step off and so lord we uh just give you the study this morning and pray that you bless it in jesus name amen you can have a seat and i'm calling this plan b you know that's that's the that's my title for genesis chapter 16. it's plan b god had made a promise to these guys specifically abram and sarah although up to this point god had just been speaking to abram we're about 10 years into it abram came into the land of canaan when he was 75 years old in the passage here it said it says it had been 10 years um since that point so abram's 85 years old at this point um when you're when you look at the connection between the last chapter it's probably somewhere around two years afterwards that's not a definite chronology but there's there's been a period of time here and um all the way through from chapter 12 all the way up to this chapter chapter 16 god has made it been making promises to abram about what's going to happen in his life and this is one of those things that is supposed to be happening in a believer's life when you know when you become a christian one of the things that you're asking god to do is guide you you're asking him to guide your life you not only want him to save you you want him to be your lord and so we always talk about jesus being our lord and savior the lord means something and it's the idea that god's in control of my life and my major problem before i become a christian and actually even after i become a christian is all the times i muddle up my life with all my plans and all my ideas and all the stuff that i decide to do and what i need is for god to be the one who takes care of me who gives me guidance and so uh proverbs chapter three verse five and six trust in the lord with all your heart don't lean on your own understanding and that's where we fall down don't lean on your own understanding in all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths and so up to this point god has been speaking to abram in the last chapter when we did last week just uh actually it's really a poignant chapter because god promises to bless abraham to protect him to give him uh to to give him riches basically i'm going to be your exceedingly great reward and abram goes i don't need one i don't have a kid you promised me a kid that's all he wants he just wants a kid and um in in the last chapter god had told him not only am i going to give you a child i'm going to give you a nation your descendants are going to be greater than the stars and the heavens as far as number greater than the dust of the earth as far as number goes i'm going to give you a nation and then he says i'm going to give you land too and there's he makes the point that there's going to be a delay in the giving of the land he says it's in the fourth generation that they're going to return here and he says for the iniquity of the amorites is not yet complete and so there's a there's a couple of different um chronologies that you have uh for uh the timing of uh abraham in connection with the leaving of egypt by the israelites in uh uh exodus chapter 12 verse 40 it says that they were there for 430 years and um that is what i think is going on there i think they were there for 430 years 400 of that according to this passage in chapter 15 was under oppression and so if that's the case then what we're looking at right here is we're 635 years to the exodus from this point god's the the point i'm making here um in in this section right here it's just kind of off the beaten path but god gives the canaanites over 600 years to repent before he's thro he throws them out people are always kind of you know trying to stick up for the canaanites and go you know why god wipe out the canaanites why do you chase them out of the land he's so mean 600 years to repent and they did not actually one did only one and that was rahab all the rest of them refused god's really gracious to people and that's why abram didn't get to have the land at that point but god made a promise that he was going to have a son that would would come from his own body chapter chapter 15 verse 4 this one shall not be your heir but one who will come from your body shall be your heir and we're probably a couple of years later by the time that we get to chapter 16 i can't be dogmatic about that but it looks like some time has passed here and no kid and it says now sarah verse 1 abram's wife had borne him no children and she had an egyptian maidservant whose name was hagar so two years later no kid sarah is obviously involved in the promises of god um god's told abram about what he's going to do but there's no child as yet this is one of those things that happens with us as christians as you start hearing the voice of the lord as you start getting guidance from him he's going to make you promises and i'm not just talking about salvation and and becoming more like jesus and those kinds of things those are just the basic promises but he's going to start speaking to you about where your life's going to go what kind of job you're going to have what kind of marriage you're going to have uh even children and and that kind of thing and those things are going to be out in the future and you're going to have to trust him that he's going to bring those things to pass sometimes we make promises to ourselves i you know i imitate the voice of god yes stephen you can have that new car you know and i imitate the voice of god and i get i get my own way and that kind of thing but there are times when god tells me specifically what's going to be happening in my life and then i have to wait and part of faith is waiting it's trusting god waiting that he's going to bring these things to pass and that's where sarah was at she's already waited 10 years god made a promise 10 years before she's already waited if chapter 15 is two years before this he got reiterated the promise and she's still waiting and i have all kinds of compassion for sarah if you know anybody who's wanted to have kids and they can't have them because of something physical or some issue that goes on every month is a big deal you're trying to have a child and every month is a big deal you find out that it's not happening this month and then you try again the next month you find out it's not happening that month and you know when you're talking about two years it becomes uh pretty um depressing and she's got over 10 total at this point and pretty depressing my wife and i um didn't have kids when we first got married our first child came 13 years into the marriage god told me the year i got married that i was going to have two children that the first one was going to be a girl and her name was to be bethany that's why my daughter bethany is named bethany and so he told me she was going to be a girl i was to name her bethany and then then god told me you're also going to have a boy he didn't tell me what the name was going to be but bethany was a for sure thing and then 13 years later is when we got bethany and then four and a half years later is when we got nathan and so there was a long period of time of waiting there and i'm not one of those people that um you know by that time god had taken me through a bunch of stuff and i was like you know what god's got this whole thing he's going to take care of it and if he's going to give me kids he's going to give me kids and i can trust him on this whole thing it was a little bit different for my wife she was she was pretty much on the same page as me but it was way more emotional for her than it was for me in in those situations in that situation because again she hadn't heard it i heard it from god and so you know i'm trusting him that this stuff is going on the point i'm making here is i totally get sarai i totally get this lady i get i get that she's looking at the situation and doesn't understand it and um she probably gets to thinking i wasn't mentioned and yeah god promised abram a child that was going to come from his body but i wasn't mentioned in that and god later on does exactly that he let sarah i know no it's coming from you the boy's coming from you um and so what she does is comes comes up with plan b maybe god maybe god doesn't want to do it the way that we think that he said that he was going to do it maybe he's going to use something else maybe we need to be involved in this whole thing i've got a brain maybe i should use it there are times when that's absolutely true and then there's times when you need to stop it and let god do what he wants to do right and this is one of those times where she should have stopped it and let god do what he was what he was into what he wanted to do in this situation because when we start thinking in those kinds of terms we try to accomplish in the flesh what god wants to do in the spirit and that is never going to be a good thing it's never going to be a good thing so she comes up with plan b and then decides to implement this whole thing so sarah verse 2 said to abram see now the lord has restrained me from bearing children did he do that did god restrain her from bearing children nope she's she's in a situation where she hasn't had any kids there's there's probably something wrong going on with her body it's either with her body or with abram's body but there's probably something going on there but what god's going to do is he's going to do a miracle and she's going to have a child he's not restraining anything he's just got a timing and she's not willing to wait at this point and so she again wants to make it happen unless the lord builds the house they labor in vain who build it one of the things about you know building your own kingdom building you know trying trying to make things happen in your life is when you make these things happen in your life you have to maintain them you have to make you do one thing and then you have to do the next thing and then you have to do the next thing it just becomes this big old huge works trip and it's not what god designed your life to be it's not the way that this is supposed to go and so sarah comes up with plan b and plan b is following the culture sir i said to abram see now the lord is restrained me from bearing children please go into my maid perhaps i shall obtain children by her and abram heeded the voice of sarai then sarai abram's wife took hagar her maid the egyptian and gave her to her husband abram to be his wife after abram had dwelt ten years in the land of canaan and what i mean by following the culture is this is what they would do in the culture if you had a wife and you were rich abram's rich in this in this situation you had a wife who couldn't have children you were rich one of the things that the culture would do is they would take one of the handmaids exactly the same situation and the guy would go in and have physical relations with her she would get pregnant when the baby was born he would say to the child you are my son and at that point the baby's adopted and comes into the family the wife would also say the same thing you see the same thing later on in genesis with jacob and his wives and so jacob's wife leah stops having children and so she brings in her maid to jacob and says i want you to you know have relations with her and when she when that when that woman bears a child she calls the child her son and that's how jacob gets gets so many kids that's how he gets 12 boys in his family and basically what he's doing is he's copying abram and sarah in this in this situation right here and so you would say you were my son and then the child was adopted it's um the the surrogate surrogate mother in ancient times nowadays we do the do somewhat the same thing you can do in vitro uh fertilization and the lady will bear a child for you and give the child up and that kind of thing it's the same thing only they didn't have in vitro and so the guy would go in and have sex with her at that point and so that's what is happening her here and that child becomes the first wife's child and so ishmael in this instance would have become sarah's child by the way there is no passage where sarah sarai calls ishmael her son it looks like immediately after this whole thing took place she realized how off base she was and how messed up this was and she does not respond well to it all and again you have that there are again things that god wants to do in our lives that need to be done through the power of the spirit they're not supposed to be done through the power of my flesh almost nothing in christianity is something that you're going to be able to do actually i said almost nothing it's like nothing and christianity is something that you're going to be able to do in the in the power of your own strength otherwise you don't need jesus otherwise you don't need the holy spirit there's a reason that god gave us christ and the reason that he gave us the holy spirit it's because we can't do it on our own my first three years as a christian was me figuring out oh i can't do it on my own in fact you know christianity was pretty much the only thing i'd failed at up until that point and so with scholastics i you know i worked hard and and i was good i kind of had some talent there and with sports i just worked hard and i got good and i got talented there but with christianity i came in and i'm like well what are the rules because i can do the rules i can do it as well as anybody in this building and that was my attitude and god goes yeah no that is not what we're gonna do here and the next three years were nothing but dry and dead and a failure on my part until i bagged it and then finally came back to jesus and said i can't do it on my own i guess i'm gonna have to trust you you know all of heaven's like oh isn't that sweet he finally figured it out you don't want to start you want to fulfill in the flesh what god started in the spirit there's a passage in galatians 3 verses 1 through 3 that says this o foolish galatians who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth before whose eyes jesus christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified this only i want to learn from you did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith what's the answer to that by the hearing of faith right are you so foolish having begun in the spirit are you now being made perfect by the flesh so he says did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith and what he's talking about is the holy spirit coming to dwell inside of them the holy spirit giving them the power to live the life for jesus did you do that by putting you know attacking a scripture up on the wall that says thou shalt not steal and suddenly the holy spirit came upon you that's a point that he's making there and what had happened with these guys was these are a bunch of gentiles they don't know anything about the old testament they don't know anything about the law paul comes in preaching christ to them he says you need to get it's like it's like we do around here you need to give jesus an opportunity to come in your life and change you from the inside out you need to be you know you need to be forgiven for your sin you need to repent you need to turn you need to do all that stuff but you're never going to get to heaven on your own on your own merits it's going to have to be through christ and so you need god to come into your life this is what we preach right it's the only way to heaven and so i didn't say anything about the law and that you know when i said that and i could bring it up at different points and you know people will say well i don't know if i need that i think i can get to heaven on my own well and then at that point i'd say well sure you can absolutely you can get to heaven on your own on your own merits all you got to do is keep all the commandments perfectly for the rest of your life so have you ever dishonored your father and mother well yeah i said some stuff to him one time well okay well you're already dead so now can we move on to jesus and this is what you need and that's the point of the law right and so these guys are in a situation where they weren't preached law they were preached christ and when christ came inside of them he began changing them from the inside out then later on some judaizers come up and go oh that's really sweet that you gave your heart to jesus but if you really want to be a super spiritual christian then you're going to have to keep the sabbath and if you really want to be a super spiritual christian you're going to have to get circumcised what's that well that's where i come along and i take a little part of flesh on your private parts and cut it off really yeah if you really want to be super spiritual that's what you're going to have to do and if you really want to be super spiritual then you're going to have to keep all these commandments how many are there i heard there was 10 nope 613 do you know them all well no but i keep them you know whatever and that's what these guys were doing the christians still fall into this stuff you give your life to jesus you're all excited you're following the lord god's changing you from the inside out and then some judaizer comes along and says well you're not you're just not good enough you need to go back and do this and you need do this and you need to do this and you need to do this and exactly the same thing that was happening these guys and paul goes you didn't receive the spirit by keeping the commands of the law and he goes on and he says therefore he who supplies the spirit to you and works miracles among you does he do it by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith and so a miracle is going to be worked somebody's going to be healed and so i go up to pray for somebody to get healed and the way and what i do is i walk up to them i say keep the sabbath day holy and suddenly they're healed does that happen uh don't commit adultery and suddenly they're healed does that happen and that's the point that he's making there are miracles happening in your midst and none of those things are coming from the proclamation of the old testament law those things are coming through the power of the holy spirit and the work of god in your life and so don't ditch the work of god in your life and go go back to a commandment in fact peter in acts chapter 15 said that we were under a yoke of bondage what we which we could not bear are we going to take this and put this on the gentiles and that's how he looked at the commandments of the law and so that is not what we do as christians and so it's not that we ignore those things they're not there to be ignored they're there to show you whether you're meeting a standard or not and so i still can't can't commit adultery and i still can't steal and i'm still not to want all your stuff and i'm still to honor my father and mother and i'm still to do these things it's just the way that you do it it's not by tacking a verse up on the verse and looking on the fridge and looking at it every day the way that these things get done is by looking at it and going god you know what i'm a thief and i'm never going to stop being a thief unless you do something with me will you please change my heart because i want to be what that verse says i'm supposed to be and there is a difference between going i should i will not steal i will not steal i will not steal and going to god and saying god if you don't do something i will and that's the difference power of the spirit versus the the letter of the law and the letter of the law is never going to work and so we need to be trusting in christ you know what you're going to be standing before jesus and you're going to be throwing crowns and the crowns are there for your reward you're given a reward when you get to heaven and it's for all the things that you've done in your body but you're not going to keep your crowns on your head going oh look at me got my crown yeah i'm awesome you're not going to be doing that you're going to be taking your crown off your head you're going to be thrown at the feet of jesus because you know he did it and it's not one of those things where you go oh yes you know i've worked very hard and uh i've been diligent and kept the commands but in the end i know that it was all god that's not what you're going to be doing that's not what anybody in heaven is going to be seeing they're going to be looking at you and going it had to be god because it certainly wasn't you get the crown off your head bucky toss it toss it at his feet and that's what's supposed to be happening when i toss my crowns i'm supposed to really understand that it wasn't me that did it it's jesus that did it in me and so you know that's one that's one of those things you can figure out after the fact or you can just go into it knowing these things nothing's happening unless jesus does it and that again is the point when you get to verse three again verse it says in verse three then sarah abram's wife took hagar her her maid the egyptian and gave her to her husband abram that phrase gave her to her husband that's exactly the same phrase with eve giving the fruit to adam and so in both instances what's happening is abram is sitting back and he is responding to the wife's leading gave her to her husband and abram to uh husband abram to be his wife after after abram had dwelt ten years in the land of canaan so he went into hagar and she conceived and when she saw that she had conceived her mistress became despised in her eyes and so in verse 3 what abram does is he bails on his responsibility sarah comes up with plan b abram goes well i guess okay and i don't know i don't know if abram was obviously abram's in the flesh because he goes with it but part of it is going to be abram doing what sarai says because she's so bent about this whole thing that you know she's that she's not having a child she wants a child any way she can get it and so i guess i can help her but then on top of it maybe fleshy stuff because hagar was probably cute at the same time and then on top of that it's everybody else is doing it it's what the culture does everybody does this this is how they get extra kids and so i'm just going along with the you know with what the with the rest of the i mean this is modern science don't you know you know and off he goes and what he's doing is he's bailing on his responsibility it's just like the garden of eden so when eve came up with the with the fruit and handed to adam who's in charge there and it's eve and when sarah brings hagar to abram and says here take my maid who's in charge there and it's sarah and what i'm telling you guys is do not do what your wife tells you it's going to come back and bite him sermon over see ya i'm just joking later on god god speaks to abram and says do what your wife tells you and it's actually about some of this stuff that comes up later on so in this instance abram is abandoning his responsibility he's abdicating who's the head in the marriage it's abram who represents the lord in the marriage it's abram who's supposed to know what's good for his wife you realize in the new testament in in first peter chapter 3 verse 7 it says that guys are supposed to dwell with their wives according to knowledge it's the idea that the the the husband knows the wife well enough to know what she needs to know what she wants sometimes even when she doesn't know what she wants it's the idea of i have an experiential knowledge of my wife right i wonder if sarai wouldn't have liked abram to say you know when she came up with a plan i'll i'll have a kid buy my handmaiden hagar and you can go into her i wonder if sarah wasn't hoping that abram would say sarah i would rather go without a child for the rest of my life than ever break any part of the vow that i've made to you you think he would have been golden if he'd said that yeah you [Laughter] who's who's supposed to who's supposed to be able to see the consequences of actions committed now what they're going to do to my family later on that's what you do when you're a leader if you're a leader you're looking at the things that you're doing you're looking at the things that your family is doing you're extrapolating out in the future going okay if we go this direction if my child goes this direction this is what's going to happen to her if my son goes this direction this is what's going to happen to him if my wife goes this direction if i go this direction if we as a family go this direction these things are most likely going to happen we need to go talk to the lord about this there's not one instance in this whole chapter where abram approaches god on this whole thing because he's being a doofus in the situation there's a passage in proverbs 14 15 that says only simpletons believe everything they're told the prudent carefully considered their steps and he wasn't being prudent he wasn't carefully considering his steps and so he's going to get consequences from this not only that he's reaping consequences from stuff that happened about 10 years before because 10 years before you remember in chapter 12 there'd been a famine in the land god never told him to leave canaan he told him to go dwell in canaan never told him to leave there's a famine in the land he does what's practical goes down to egypt gets on all kinds of problems because he's lying about his wife and his relationship with her and pharaoh gets involved in that whole thing pharaoh throws him out of egypt enriches him beforehand and what he does is he gives them camels and donkeys and oxen and male and female servants and that's where hagar came from hagar wouldn't have been there if abram hadn't blown it in chapter 12. you know but but here we are and he's reaping the consequences of actions that came from years before we need to be paying attention there are results that come from this whole thing and it's nothing but conflict and in verse 4 again at the end of the verse it says when she saw hagar that she had conceived her mistress despised became despised in her eyes and so hagar gets uppity so she's a she's a maid and she has been brought into the household of abram who remember uh last time we were talking about over 300 guys who were trained in warfare uh and went and fought against the kings of the north that whole thing he's got a he's got a big household he's got a big entourage and so she gets to come into basically the master's family in this situation or the the head guys family and she is more fertile than his wife and so she gets a little snooty about the whole thing have you guys ever heard of sister wives yeah that that reality show and there you know i've never i've never watched it my wife has watched a couple of episodes and she's told me about it you got all these girls who are in this household and that's one guy and and they're all married to him and they call them sister wives and they just love each other and they support each other and they're you know they're just taking care of each other watching each other's nonsense they hate each other and they want to tear each other down all that's for tv this is what happens when these kinds of things go on every time you see a situation where a guy gets out of the bounds of marriage one man one woman for life every time that you see it you have this kind of junk going on there is always a train wreck there's always a train wreck and the train wreck doesn't just affect that one family this one's been affecting the world for the last two and you know actually four thousand years almost it's been it's been affecting the world because this is where you get the arab nations from ishmael so wife is despised in verse four then verse 5 abram gets blamed and sarah said to abram my wrong be upon you i gave my maiden to your brace and when she saw that she conceived i became despised in her eyes the lord judged between you and me this is the first time the lord's mentioned in the passage besides the fact that he's not letting me have a have a baby and it's she just turns on abram and it's like that you know you can imagine abram sitting there going all i did was exactly what you told me to well you should have thought it through are you the head or not i can imagine the conversation that's there don't blame it on me i'm not supposed to be the one in charge you're supposed to be the one in charge until i want to be in charge and then i'm in charge and then after after you do the thing that i tell you to do and it all falls apart again i'm going to come to that come down on you again and the poor guy said they're going oh what was me or you could man up and do the things that you're called to do in your marriage right and again you don't get to abdicate and you know it just causes all kinds of problems when you get to verse six there's more abdication so sarah gets all mad at him and says lord judge between you and me look at look at the mess my life's in because you did what i told you to stop that in verse six it says so abram said to sarah indeed your mate is in your hand do to her as you please in other words you're the boss go off and do what you want and so it says um verse again verse six and when sarah dealt harshly with her she fled from her presence back over in uh chapter 15 verse 13 it says know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in the land that is not theirs and will serve them and they will afflict them four hundred years or deflect their means to oppress it's exactly the same word that is used of sarai treating hagar harshly she's oppressing her is what happens and so hagar gets oppressed so sarah gets despised abram gets blamed hagar gets oppressed and abram abdicates once again and so then at that point hagar leaves and god steps in now the angel of the lord uh verse seven found her by a spring of water in the wilderness by the spring on the way to shore and he said hagar sarah's maid where have you come from and where are you going and she said i am fleeing from the presence of my mistress sarai the angel of the lord said to her return to your mistress and submit yourself under her hand then the angel of the lord said to her i will multiply your descendants exceedingly so they shall not be counted for multitude begins giving your promises and this is actually god later on in the passage it says if you look down in verse 13 it says then she called the name of the lord who spoke to her you are the god who sees for she said have i also here seen him who sees me and she's letting you know that she's seen the one who's watching over and she's talking about god there every time you see angel the lord in the in the old testament you need to pay attention you need to start looking the word angel means messenger it doesn't always mean big guy with big wings right it means messenger so it's the messenger of the lord and many times he's identified as being god this is one of those times this is jesus coming after hagar when god appears in the old testament the bible says it's jesus that's doing the appearing and so this is jesus coming after hagar the maid who came from egypt who's going to be the father of the arabs god loves her and he goes after her something to keep in mind because a lot of times we you know we have a movie mentality they're the good guys and they're bad guys the bad guys are really bad and they're bad all the time and the good guys are really good and they're good all the time and we do that with arab israeli relations and that kind of stuff and i'm not saying that we shouldn't support israel you bless them god's going to bless you but god loves arabs too and he wants them too and he wants hagar too and so when she goes running off into the wilderness he goes and meets her and he steps in and he tells her that she needs to submit you need to go back up and you need to submit to your to your mistress and he doesn't tell her that uh she needs to take off and pat her on the back of the head and go yeah sarah's a jerk and he doesn't do that kind of stuff there's a passage in the new testament talking about our relationship with uh people who are over us specifically employers is the best context and it says that you need to submit not only to those who are good but also to those who are harsh and a lot of times when we have a harsh employer we have the idea of i don't have to take this i'm out of here yeah christian right and that is not what the that is not what the scripture says the bible talks about the fact that we need to be witnessing witnessing to people and sometimes your witness to them is putting up there with their nonsense even though they're being jerks about things and god can reach people like that and so that's what god does with hagar in this in this situation you know one of the things that we think we're awesome at is being you know good workers good employees that kind of stuff you can't tell if you're a good employee until you have a bad employer you can't you can't tell if you're submissive until you have to actually submit you know you can sit there and say yeah i do everything my boss tells me because what he tells me is exactly what i think and he does he tells me everything that i would do in his situation you don't know if you're submitting until he says something that you think is stupid and then you go oh well i don't really like that i think that's stupid you don't say that to him he said to three other people in the break room i don't really like that i think that's stupid and at that point you're not submitting and you never have been all you've been doing is agreeing submitting is when somebody tells you to do something and you don't want to and then you go okay i'll do it anyway and that's what god tells hagar to do in this situation then he gives her a prophecy about ishmael's future not only does he care about hagar he cares about her boy she doesn't know it's a boy yet but she he cares about her boy and he says i'm going to multiply your descendants exceedingly so that they shall not be counted for multitude gives the same promise that he gave to abram behold your you are with child and you shall bear a son and you shall call his name ishmael and that means god hears and he says because the lord has heard your affliction i've seen you i see what you're going through i've heard your cry i know what's happening i'm the god who hears you isn't it nice to have a god who hears you every time that boy's name was mentioned that this would come up god heard me god heard me he shall be a wild man when he's three in all his life he shall be a wild man his hand shall be against every man and every man's hand against him and he shall dwell in the presence of allah's brethren and that's a prophecy about the the future nation that was going to come from her and that's been the case with the ishmaelites from from this point on as a matter of fact later on the ishmaelites become uh synonymous with the midianites by the time of joseph so when joseph was sold to the midianites it's it's the sons of ishmael that there's that that he's sold to and there's problems between the midi knights in israel all down through um the old testament times and obviously into modern times so again we've been paying for this consequence for 4 000 years and while god's gracious to hagar in this situation he doesn't take the consequence of a work of the flesh away she still has to go back to her back to her mistress and there's still going to be conflict in the home and at a future date there's going to be a separation and god's going to bless hagar but it's still a train wreck and it wouldn't have been there if everybody had been in plan a instead of in plan b and many times that's what we end up with plan b and the consequences that come from that and god is good and he forgives and and he blesses us in the midst of it he's ble he's going to bless sarai he's gonna bless abram and he's gonna bless um hagar and he's gonna bless ishmael all the way through this but there's still junk there and that's what plan b always gets you it gets you junk that you get to deal with for the rest of your life god doesn't take away the whole situation with the son of the flesh hagar in the bible and her son the son this situation he's called the son of the flesh and when you get to the new testament again in the book of galatians isaac and sarai are called uh the isaac is called the son of the spirit ishmael is called the son of the flesh it's a difference between somebody who's walking in the power of god and somebody who's walking in plan b once again a work of the flesh that brought about the child later on in genesis chapter 22 god is going to offer up isaac as a sacrifice or actually tells abram that's that's what needs to happen god doesn't actually do that but he says to him i want you to take your son your only son whom you love and offer him up as a sacrifice well abram had two sons it was isaac and ishmael but god's only recognizing one it's the son of the spirit and what god recognizes in your life is not all the works of your flesh although all the wonderful things that you've done working so hard for god in the power of your own strength he doesn't recognize those things you're not getting rewards for those you're getting rewards for the things that he's done in your life and so we could just skip the other part and just go with the things that god wants to do because the other part is just a waste of time and that again is the point of this god will not recognize a work of the flesh and so again you have that turn over to isaiah 40. this is what we're going to end with isaiah chapter 40. this is a cool passage kind of reiterates everything that i just said isaiah jeremiah lamentations ezekiel if you're anywhere around there that's where you're at page 717 i've been telling i've been doing that for 40 years and always gets a laugh i know all the new people now isaiah 40 verses 1 through 11 it says comfort yes comfort my people says your god speak comfort to jerusalem and cry out to her that her warfare has ended that her iniquity is pardoned for she has received from the lord's hand double for all our sins context of this passage is the the fact that god's going to deliver the people of israel they've been sent off into captivity because of their sin and they're they're going to pay the consequences of their sin that's what he says in the first passage here but he's going to bring them back and he's going to comfort them that's what he's saying here so god's like a good dad a good dad will give you the consequences for your sin and after the consequences have been handed out and and your bottom feels really warm he'll come up and comfort you after the fact but the consequences are there and then verse 3 you have the coming of the actually john the baptist it says the voice of one crying in the wilderness prepare the way of the lord make straight in the desert a highway for our god every valley shall be exalted every mountain shall be brought low the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough place is smooth the glory of the lord shall be revealed for all and all flesh shall see it together for the mouth of the lord is spoken and this is talking about the fact that after they've come back that what god's going to do is he's going to send the forerunner and it's specifically used in the new testament of john the baptist john the baptist came crying out what he came crying out about was the fact that was israel was in danger of judgment they were dead spiritually they needed to come back alive therefore go get dunked in water getting buried and getting dunked in the water is a picture of burial getting pulled up out of the water is a picture of brand new life you guys need new life is what john the baptist is saying because you're dead and your trespasses and sin then he goes on and the voice said cry out and he said what shall i cry and this is what god says all flesh is grass and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field the grass withers the flower fades because the breath of the lord blows upon it surely the people are grass the grass withers the flower fades but the word of our of our god stands forever when you get to the new testament this verse is used in first peter chapter one and this is i'll just quote it to you he says having been born again this is about us having been born again not of corruptible seed but incorruptible through the word of god which lives and abides forever because all flesh is as grass and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass the grass withers and its flower falls away but the word of the lord endures forever now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you and the point that peter is making in that passage is you're like grass you're withering you're dying away and what you need is new life and after you when when you're in that kind of position god has to come and do something for you to make you brand new that's what he had to do with the nation of israel too you're like grass he says in the passage then it goes on well actually let me just talk a little bit about what that means by the time that you get to the time of jesus the line of david is exhausted the last guy in the line of david that has any kind of name at all in the bible is a guy named zerubbabel and he's a guy who comes back at the you know after the captivity you see him in the book of zechariah for example that's the lame last name that has any import in the bible and all the rest of them there's probably 12 guys in there all the rest of them are just nobodies all the way through until you get to the father of jacob matthan and then you get jacob or excuse me joseph and joseph is just a dude from nazareth who's a carpenter he's not he's in the exalted line of the kings of israel but he's not a king of israel and he's not anybody of note because david's line has been exhausted that's the situation you have there all flesh is as grass when you look at the nation itself the religion of the pharisees was on the ascendancy and when you're looking at the pharisees jesus called these guys whitewashed tombs full of dead men's bones and so when you're looking at the religion of the pharisees it's nothing but dry and defiled and wasted and that's that's the spiritual state those were the good guys in israel at that point and then you have the the sadducees and the and the chief priests and when the chief priests there were two of them one was caiaphas the other was zanus one was a was one was a son-in-law the other was a father-in-law and they were ruling as chief as high priest together you don't do that that's not something that you have in the bible there's one high priest and so even judaism is in disarray at that point and the priests are ruling in opposition to god's word and that's the state of israel when jesus comes in fact the bible says that jesus was from the root of jesse it doesn't say he was a branch off of jesse it says he's the root of jesse in another place it says that he grows up as a root out of dry ground it's the idea that when you look at the spiritual climate at that point everything's dead everything's desert and the only thing that ha that's green at all is jesus himself because all flesh is as grass and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field the grass withers the flower fades the spirit blows on it and it withers away that's the that's the situation there then in verse nine it says oh zion you who bring good thing good tidings get up into the high mountain o jerusalem you who bring good tidings lift up your voice with strength lift it up be not afraid say to the cities of judah behold your god and that's when jesus appears on the scene behold your god after everything's withered behold your god then it goes on in verse 10 and says behold the lord god shall come with a strong hand and his arm shall rule for him behold his reward is with him and his work before him he will feed his flock like a shepherd he will gather the lambs with his arm and carry them in his bosom and gently lead those who are with young he will he will feed he will gather he will carry and he'll lead gently after the withering that's what he does with israel that's what he does with us we have to figure we have to figure out that we're flesh that we're like grass that we wither and the only thing that's going to change uh anything that's going on in our lives is the fact that our god is coming behold your god and then in verse 10 the lord god shall come with a strong hand and his arm shall rule for him behold his reward is with him and his work before him him him him his that's the way it's supposed to be and then it goes on and again he's going to feed his flock like a shepherd i like that i like the idea that the god's going to be the one who feeds me i like the guy the idea that god's going to be the one who gathers me up in his arm i like the the idea that he carries me and i like the idea that he gently leads me i like that and that's what he's got for every single one of us but it's kind of that process right there and it's cool this is this is this is how you do it and when not plan b this is plan a let's do plan a not plan b good all right let's all stand thanks again lord for for the blessing that you are to us thank you god we got a god who speaks to us we got a god who hears us we got a god who sees us we got a god who's got plans for us we've got a god with a strong arm and lord we want you to be strong in our lives we're living in times where everything's up in the air and nobody knows what they're doing but god it's cool to know that you do and lord we would like to be carried in your arms and we'd like to be carried in your bosom that's a good place to be god i pray that you bless your people that you watch over them and and that as they're going their way this week as they're reading their bibles and spending time with you lord that you would be doing exactly what we talked about just giving plans speaking to them about where their life needs to go and what they need to be doing give them specifics on jobs and all the things that they're worried about lord that's what you you've called us to do come and seek you in the secret places and you'll reward us openly and so lord i just pray that that would be true of everybody in our fellowship here just bless them lord we ask that you do this in jesus name amen so we call upon your name so we call upon your names jesus [Music] for there is no other name i wish [Music] god bless you have a good week [Music] there's a road that's been made to walk upon just like a song that was meant to be sung [Music] or there's a guard that speaks gently sons [Music] come to me [Music] but there's a rage in an unforgiving sea [Music] a night sky that bites us with its freeze but there's still a voice that calls patiently [Music] oh [Music] there's it starts with a changed heart [Music] come on [Music] hallelujah [Music] hi you guys this is steve wintering from calvary chapel tri-cities and i just wanted to thank you for tuning in online we're especially blessed by the fact that we've got people from all over the united states that are tuning in and all you guys in other countries that are tuning in just really blows us away we've got some we've gotten some really neat emails from you i just want to give you an invite to be more involved with what's going on around here especially in areas that we can serve you so if you have anything that we can pray for any needs that you think we might be able to meet for you we'd love to be involved in that and you can let us know by sending an email to calvarychapel tri-cities gmail.com and so again we'd love to hear from you uh tell us how we can minister to you uh we'd just be like to be of service for all you guys that are listening in in our area uh online uh again just just a great opportunity for us to be involved in your lives and to be able to minister to you i want to encourage you though if you're staying home because it's convenient and you don't really have a reason not to be in church you know that fellowship is something that we need as believers in fact the word koinonia in greek is a word that means a community it has the idea of assembly in fact the the word for church is assembly and you're not involved in church if you're not assembling and so i understand the need to stay home if you're in danger with the whole covid crisis and uh that's obviously the reason that we're doing this but if that's not the case with you you guys need to get to church we need to see you and so just want to encourage you in that area also in any case uh in all these areas we love to serve you glad you're listening in just pray that god blesses you through the studies whether it's me or one of the other guys and again we just want to be a servant to you so god bless you check this out it's going to be a good time we're going to be in the word [Music] good morning calvary once you guys all stand with me let's pray lord thank you so much for the opportunity we have right now just to spend some time focused on you just spending some time god just really desiring your presence here this morning lord we want you to speak to our hearts lord lord we want the worship to be something that is a sweet aroma to your nose god these sounds would be pleasant to your ears not because of the music we make or the things that we sing because of our hearts are bent towards you lord we want to see you work this morning god draw us into your presence we ask us your name [Music] amen [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so come let us worship our king come let us bow at his feet he has done great things see what our savior has done see how his love overcomes he has done great things [Music] you break every table god you have done great things we dance in your freedom awaken alive for jesus [Applause] [Music] me [Music] you've been faithful to every storm be for your promises yes and amen you will do great things you have done great things [Music] please hallelujah you i've done great things singing our church and hallelujah [Music] you've done great conquered things grave you free every captive you broke [Music] the everything of jesus [Music] [Applause] [Music] we worship a god who continues to great things among us and uh you know just being mindful of what he's already done in our lives and drawing us to himself and saving us and the faithfulness he's seen us through the things he's seen us through it's just a good reminder this morning as we're worshiping is to be so grateful for the work that god has already done and that we can anticipate he's going to do moving forward walking around these walls and i thought by now they'd fall but you have never failed me yet waiting for change to come knowing the battles won [Music] before you have never [Music] your promise still stands great is your faithfulness your faithfulness i'm still in your hands this is [Music] [Music] but i know the night won't last your word will come to pass my heart will sing your praise again [Music] keep us within your love my heart will sing your praises [Music] i'm stealing your hands this is [Music] this is [Music] i see you move you move the mountains and i believe [Music] and i believe i see it do [Music] you when there was no [Music] do it again your promise still stands great is your faithfulness your faithful i'm still in your hands this is my confidence you've never failed your promise still stands great is your faithfulness your faithfulness still in your hands this is my convertants you never failed me [Music] so with every land we see with every breath we [Music] breathe all the praise we give belongs to you the only name we seek to see the darkness all the praise we give belongs to you [Music] upon your name so we call your name in jesus with every word you speak belongs to you [Music] the only belongs to you so we call so we call upon your name [Music] for there is no other name jesus a wonderful counselor king of king's savior the name above every name the light of life deliverer isn't one redeemer you are the door you are the way the lamb of god lion man solid rock great i am the son of man who conquered [Music] upon [Music] upon your name jesus oh there is those wonderful things [Music] great i am [Music] so we call upon your name so we call upon [Music] for there is no by which we can be saved so we call upon your name in jesus [Music] and it's all because of you jesus because of you jesus [Music] it's all because of you jesus it's all because of you jesus because of your love that my soul will [Music] [Music] because of you jesus [Music] because of you jesus is jesus is no one beside you forever [Music] god thank you for the hope we have in you and we just rest our hope fully upon you this morning lord upon what you're going to do and again just knowing what you've already accomplished and how faithful you've been regardless if we even see it god you've been faithful you brought us to this place where we can meet you this morning we want you to do that we ask us your name amen why don't you guys greet one another well good morning calvary chapel how are you guys doing this morning so great to have you welcome you guys that are watching online as well um kind of fired up i'm not i'm only i'm just here to do announcements pastor steve's going to be preaching i just left my office listening to inslee we [Music] were online people were booing i i just want to say this we we as a church need to be on point and so these times are special the time of worship the time of the word we need to have ears to hear and so good morning okay shoe shoeboxes that we have right here uh the deadline is next sunday to turn those in um we have a table over in the fellowship or excuse me in our office over there if you guys want more information um children's ministry we need more volunteers so if you guys have been going here for a year and you would like to serve in ministry go over and talk to our children's director over in ministry and they will help you out we actually need volunteers everywhere they put they have on your visitor booth and snack helpers and stuff like that but if you have any interest to serve go over there and talk to those guys we would super appreciate it thirdly is our ladies christmas dessert we've been talking about this the last couple weeks we have heidi st john coming down to speak to you ladies yeah it's going to be an awesome time if you would like to host a table you uh we we need hostesses so um if that if god put that on god puts that on your heart go over and talk to our office and you guys can be in charge of your table please invite your friends it's a great time for the gals to get together eat desserts fellowship worship and then of course a speech or a study by heidi and then lastly i'm going to introduce to you nash and brooke lamberson and they're going to come up and speak to you about national adoption awareness month so please welcome nation brooke [Music] right all right good morning everybody i'm nash and this is brooke and we're with beautifully inspired november is national adoption month and november 23rd is national adoption day look i looked it up in between services so i know what day it was so right um so we've adopted three kids uh we've done it through foster care there's lots of people in our church that have done it through international adoptions but we know that um right now i'm going to speak to the guys because we're the ones that'll sit there and let our wives talk to us over and over and over again and tell us how much their heart is uh towards adopting and they want to adopt and we just sit there with our callousness and we just ignore them i've been there and it took a lot of god's spanking and a lot of following directions but i can guarantee you that once you follow what the lord says through adoption and through taking care of children in your own community that you're going to be blessed and everybody's going to be blessed around you i've seen it bless our family i've seen it bless our families that are close to us i've seen it bless my my brothers and my sisters and so um if you're on the threshold if you're thinking about it or not thinking about it come find us in the back we're going to be back there we'd love to talk to you about adopting um whether it's through foster care or anything else we're here um and that's it thank you all right lastly we're not passing around uh offering bags at least right now so if you guys want to participate in the fellowship of giving we have boxes on the back walls we have little podiums in the in the foyer as you leave too and then if you are watching online just go on our website and click the link and you can do your thing so with no further ado pastor steve winry [Applause] yeah we changed things up so you would clap for me [Applause] [Laughter] we are in uh genesis chapter 16. and you guys uh just to let you know uh with the uh with what uh governor inslee inslee's doing um you know it's like he has lots to say and i ignore him so we're gonna we're gonna do what we do so nothing's changing around here okay [Applause] that's uh that's not a hard reach we're just going to church right yeah so genesis chapter 16 let you guys all open up there and let's uh go through and read it together and i want you to stand and we'll do you know where i get that from book of nehemiah chapter eight yeah they all stood when the when the word was read so uh chapter chapter 16 verse 1 it says by the way this is third service so if i start babbling i haven't done this for 13 years so here we go now sarah abram's wife had borne him no children and she had an egyptian maidservant whose name was hagar so sarah said to abram see now the lord has restrained me from bearing children please go into my maid perhaps i shall obtain children by her when abram heeded the voice of sarai then sarah abram's wife took hagar her maid the egyptian and gave her to her husband abram to be his wife after abram had dwelt ten years in the land of canaan so he went into hagar and she conceived and when she saw that she had conceived her mistress became despised in her eyes then sarah said to abram my wrong be upon you i gave my maid into your embrace and when she saw that she had conceived i became despised in her eyes the lord judged between you and me so abram said to sarah indeed your maid is in your hand due to her as you please and when sarah dealt harshly with her she fled from her presence now the angel of the lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness by the spring on the way to shore and he said hagar sarai's maid where have you come from and where are you going she said i'm fleeing from the presence of my mistress sarai the angel of the lord said to her return to your mistress and submit yourself unto her hand then the angel of the lord said to her i will multiply your descendants exceedingly so that they shall not be counted for multitude and the angel of the lord said to her behold you are with child and you shall bear a son you shall call his name ishmael because the lord has heard your affliction he shall be a wild man his hand shall be against every man and every man's hand against him and he shall dwell in the presence of allah's brethren then she called the name of the lord who spoke to her you are the god who sees for she said have i also here seen him who sees me therefore the well was called beer lahai roy and it means the god the well of the one who lives and sees me um uh where i i just lost it there therefore the well was called beer lahai roy observance between kadesh and barrett so hagar bore abram a son and abram named his son whom hagar bore ishmael abram was 86 years old when hagar bore ishmael to abram let's pray and god again we we thank you for passages like this passages that speak about our failures our um desire uh to try to help you out to come alongside and uh make up where we think that you're falling short and uh lord just far too often we fall to these kinds of things this kind of attitude this kind of thinking uh when all we need to do is wait and uh lord as we're going through this passage we pray that uh you'd be speaking to us that you just do a work in our hearts lord and we come out of here trusting you more and we ask that you do this all in jesus name amen you can have a seat i'm calling this plan b that's i title chapters in my bible this is plan b you know you always have those things where you feel like god's told you stuff and some of those things are just flat out in the bible god tells you certain things about how your life is going to go you you were called you were elected to be uh conformed into the image of jesus christ right and so we all know that what god's doing is making me more and more like jesus as time goes on but then there's um specific that god's god begins giving you and as you uh grow in the lord you're gonna be praying and as you're praying you're gonna be you're talking to god and god's going to begin talking to you and he's going to show you things you pick up your bible you go through and read it god's going to be speaking to you about your job he's going to be speaking to you about your marriage about who you're going to marry about all these things that are going to be going on in your life the bible doesn't tell me whether or not to bury you know to buy a a honda or a tesla right and so they're going to be those times when i'm praying i'm going god what do you want me to do what do you want me to do in this situation and god will speak to you about those things he'll guide you he made a promise and one of the promises is in proverbs chapter 3 verse 5 and 6 you know the verses trust in the lord with all your heart and don't lean on your own understanding in all your ways acknowledge him and he'll direct your paths our problem comes when we start leaning on our own understanding that's why he says that lean not on your own understanding because there are times when god's going to tell you things that don't look like they go we talked about this last week with joshua and jericho right yeah go walk around the city you know once a day for seven days don't say anything on the on the seventh day do it seven times two horns and yell and you'll win that doesn't make any kind of sense at all right and so there are going to be those times when god tells you something that it looks like you're you're like i don't know how that's going to happen and that's the situation that sarah and abram are in they want to have a child in fact the last chapter was actually pretty poignant where god goes i'm your shield i'm your exceedingly great reward and abram goes i don't need a reward i don't have anybody to give it to and god goes yes you will and abram goes i don't know how and god goes step outside look up your your descendants are going to be like the stars in the heavens in number and again he makes this promise and here we are probably about two years later this is 10 years after they've gone into the land and so abram went into the land of canaan when he was 75 years old so now he's 85 years old it looks like it's probably been about two two years since chapter 15. i don't know that for sure but it looks like that's the timing and abram still doesn't have a kid and neither does sarah god made a promise to him in the previous chapter that there was going to be a child not only a child there was going to be a nation that's where the stars come in is you're going to have descendants like the stars in the heavens there's going to be a nation that comes from you there's going to be a land that's going to be given to you but you can't have it yet you're going to have to wait for the land and he tells them in in chapter 15 verse 16 in the fourth generation they shall return here for the iniquity of the amorites is not yet complete so he tells them that they're going to be under bondage for 400 years and then they're going to come back and they're going to get this land but he specifically says you're not coming back you're not going to get the land yet because i have to deal with the amorites this is just an aside for you when god judges a group of people he doesn't just pop off on these guys he doesn't just you know sit there and let it build up and build up and build up and then blow up like a volcano or something he's got a purpose and a plan in the whole thing and what's going to happen actually uh when you're when you're talking about the timing between abram and uh the exodus there's a couple of different ideas about that and one one puts that timing from this point right here 430 years another one puts it 430 years from the time that they exited canaan and i leaned towards the last one that makes this 635 years before israel is coming out of egypt and what i'm telling you is that god's giving the amorites 635 years he says the fourth in the fourth generation they shall return here for the iniquity of the amorites is not yet complete they get another 635 years and then we're going to deal with it and what had happened by that 635 years is everybody in that country had hardened their hearts to the point where they even though they were fearful they knew that god was with israel even though they knew that that god had brought these people out of egypt and did miracles with them they refused to repent none of them repented except for one and that was rahab the only one and she and her household were saved because of repentance people can get hard-hearted but god gives them room to repent and so there's going to be a delay in giving the land but they're going to get the land and he was given a promise that the child was going to come from his body verse 4 of chapter 15 this one shall not be your heir but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir and here we are a couple years later and no baby and i you know i totally understand sarai's problem in this whole situation if you've ever been around somebody who's who would like to have children a couple that would like to have children and they have some some reason some physical reason for not being able to do that you know the heartache that can be involved in that whole thing and literally you guys it's month to month there's all this hope and you know it's like okay you know it's you know the you do the whole fertility thing and all that kind of stuff you're checking out your all your timing and and those things right and then the month goes by and no baby and then you start again and no baby and then you start again and no baby 24 times after the promise was just made again 24 times and no baby right so i get this whole thing my um when i was uh young married actually it was my my first year of marriage one of the things that god did with me was he told me that i was going to have children and so he told me that my first child was going to be a girl and that i was to name her name her bethany and that's why my girl was named bethany and again it was in my first year of marriage god also told me that i was going to have a boy and he didn't tell me what his name was going to be but that was the promise of god you know i'm expecting next year i'm going to start having kids and that didn't happen and the year after that didn't happen year after that didn't happen you're after that 13 years later is when we got bethany and then it was another four and a half years before we got nathan and all that time i'm waiting for god to fulfill his promise and we you know we did some of the normal things went got checked out and all that kind of stuff but when it kind of started coming down to surgeries and those kind of things i just went you know what no we're not doing that this is god god told me this is going to happen god can handle it you know god can do it and and and so i just backed off and just waited and it was a little bit harder on my wife than it was on me because actually you know after all god gave me the promise and so it was a little bit tougher on her but i understand sarah i totally i understand why she's getting depressed i understand why she's reaching you know reaching for things looking for loopholes that kind of stuff i get it but one of the things that god will do with you is he'll bring you into this walk with him he'll tell you things that are going to go on in your future and then he expects you to wait for them he expects you to trust him and their faith trials and they're good it's a good thing by the time that that isaac is born these people are laughing they call him laughter because they're laughing they're so overjoyed and excited about the fact that they're that they're getting the promised son and so the promise is coming she just can't wait and so what she does is she comes up with plan b and basically you know i think that probably what her thinking was was that i wasn't mentioned so give surrogates to thinking and abram's mentioned comes from his own body but she's not mentioned later on god's going to do exactly that but she's not mentioned in this situation so maybe god doesn't want to do it the way we think maybe he'll use this and then you come up with plan b and that's that's always you know that that always ends up in a train wreck and especially in in this kind of situation and so she she's not willing to you know i don't want to even say it that way she's just frustrated she's just depressed she doesn't see it happening and so she rethinks everything and says well maybe i maybe i have to be involved here maybe i got to use my brain people do that a lot maybe you need to use your brains there are times when that's absolutely true but not in a time when you have no ability to make it happen and that's the situation with this second mistake that she makes is she starts following the culture um in the culture during that time well let's read it verse verse two uh well we didn't reverse one now sarah abram's wife had borne him no children and she had an egyptian maidservant whose name was hagar so sarah said to abram see now the lord has restrained me from bearing children did god do that nope waiting is not restraining timing is not no wait on me is not it's never going to happen and so god didn't restrain her from anything so anyway god is the lord has restrained me from bearing children please go into my maid perhaps i shall obtain children by her and abram heeded the voice of sarai then sarai abram's wife took hagar her maid the egyptian and gave her to her husband abram to be his wife after abram had dwelt 10 years in the land of canaan and what i mean by following the culture is this is how people did this if they couldn't have children if you were rich and you had maidservants and men servants and that kind of thing will specifically maid servants in this case if your wife couldn't have children then you could have a woman in your household become a surrogate mother for your wife and so what would happen is you would go in and you would obviously have relations with her if you're a guy if you're the guy you'd have relations with her she gets pregnant when the baby's born they had this little ceremony that they literally did where the wives uh the wife and the woman who's having the baby would touch knees while the birth was taking place and when the baby was born the baby was given to the first wife of the man and the man would come to the child and say you are my son and that child would be adopted and likewise the woman would say you were my son and the child would be adopted that's the culture that's the that's that whole thing and so what sarah does is she goes well you know what we're not having a child this way maybe you know maybe we've heard wrong maybe we don't get this maybe god wants to use this other thing and so abram this is how the rest of the people around here do it so why don't we do it that way maybe god will bless that anytime you're saying maybe god will bless that you're probably in the wrong place right and so she she comes up with this whole thing by the way it's never recorded that she ever called ishmael her son when you get later on in the in the book of genesis um abram's grandson jacob starts having children and one of the wives that he's married to stops being able to conceive and so she gives him her maid in copy of this whole thing gives him her maid and she calls the son of her maid her son right and so you have that but but sarah never says that about ishmael and it's probably because she really quickly figured out that she was on the wrong side of this whole thing and she backed off real quick in fact she started blaming her on abraham right and so you have that this whole the the whole point of plan b is basically what we do is we try to fulfill in the flesh what god started in the spirit and what god did with abram was said move from from the place where you're at i'm going to show you the land you're going to go to did god do that yeah and when you're there i'm going to make i'm going to give you a child i'm going to make you a nation he starts giving him promises starts showing him the land and starts doing all these things with them and god's been faithful with him up to this point and it's just been him and god and god speaking to him god guiding him and all of a sudden they come up with this foreign thing that comes straight out of the culture and says maybe god's going to use this and that's fulfilling in the flesh what god started in the spirit let me give you a couple of verses galatians 3 1-3 says this oh foolish galatians who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth before whose eyes jesus christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified this only i want to learn from you did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith are you so foolish having begun in the spirit are you now being made perfect by the flesh and the context of what's going on here is you have a bunch of gentiles who are up in the area of galatia they've been preached the gospel to they don't know anything about the law they don't have bibles they don't have the old testament so they don't know anything about the law and so when they come into a relationship with christ they come into a relationship with christ because somebody came up to him and said you know what you're a sinner and this is this is what god says about the about death and sin and and judgment and all these things you need christ you need to know jesus he'll come into your life he'll change you from the inside out you know just basically sharing the gospel with them right jesus has paid the price for all your sin and these people go yes that's exactly what i need i need to change life and so christ comes inside he begins changing them on the inside and everything's awesome cool things are going on he says did you receive the spirit by the works of the lord by the hearing of faith they receive the power of the holy spirit they're empowered from the inside out and then all of a sudden these guys come up who are judaizers and they say oh yeah that's really nice you're a christian you gave your heart to jesus yeah that isn't that special but if you really want to be an awesome christian then what you're going to have to do is you're going to have to keep start keeping the old testament law and so we have these food regulations and so you need to start keeping the food regulations and then you'll just become an awesome follower of god by the way we have these commandments that are here you need to start keeping all these commandments and you pay attention to all these things and that way you'll become an awesome follower of god by the way all you guys there's this little piece of skin on some of your male parts i want to come along and clip that off for you because if we clip that off you'll be an awesome follower of god that's what these guys were teaching these guys and paul goes what are you doing that is not how the spirit of god came in your life that is not how the changes have been made why would you go back to that in fact peter in one passage in acts chapter 15 said you know the the law was a yoke of bondage that we jews could not bear why would we take that and put it on the gentiles and it's not that you dismiss the law it's just that you know saying uh i will not commit adultery over and over it's not going to fill me with the holy spirit and and and saying about you know tacking up on the fridge thou shalt not steal is not going to do a miracle in my life and that's the next point that paul makes he says therefore therefore he who supplies the spirit to you and works miracles among you does he do it by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith i have never come up to somebody laid hands on them and said thou shalt not covet and seen them get healed it's never happened what i do is i come up i lay hands on him and i go jesus will you please heal this person i know you're good i know you're god i know you can do anything and boom god starts doing stuff it's never by the works of the law that those things take place and that's the point that paul is making and it's not that we dismiss the law the law is a good thing i'm still not supposed to commit adultery and i'm still not supposed to steal and i'm still not supposed to want your stuff the problem is how i get there and so i know the commandment says don't do those things and so the only way that that's going to get done is if i go to jesus and go you know what jesus i'm a thief and i want stuff and i can't stop and will you please make me what that verse says and there's a total difference between going i shall not steal i shall not steal i shall not steal and going to jesus going and saying i'm a thief will you please change me there's a total difference between those two and one is done in the power of the spirit where you're depending on god to change you and the other one is done in the power of your own strength and that may last a little while you may be awesome on some level or another as far as your self-discipline goes but it's not going to last very long i spent my first three years as a christian was doing exactly that i walked into the building looked around said give me the rules i can probably do it as well as these guys can maybe better and then i took off and then god said yeah that's not how we do it here that's not how that's going to happen you don't you don't do a work of god in the power of your flesh a work of god needs to be done in the power of the holy spirit you know you guys are going to be throwing crowns at the feet of jesus and the crowns that you're throwing at the feet of jesus are rewards that are going to be given to you for the things that have been that you've done in your life that you have done in your life in honoring the lord that's what the crowns are for you know why we're throwing them at the feet of jesus because every one of us is going to know that the reason that we were able to do those things is because jesus was the one doing it through us and those are the only things you're getting rewards for you're not getting rewards for all the awesome things you do you're getting rewards for all the awesome things that jesus does through you because you said okay and that's it romans 6 is yield to god and that's the that's the work that we're supposed to be doing as christians and i'm not saying you're not involved you are involved but if you think that you're going to get this stuff done because because of of your great power and and and your great discipline you're gonna fail miserably and that's again that's again the point um and it's not the kind of thing where i'm gonna go through my life and i'm gonna go well yes all of these great things that i have done as a christian have been awesome and powerful but in the end i know that it was god who did them for me it's not going to be any of that you're going to be standing in heaven and everybody's going to go it had to be god because it certainly wasn't you and you're you're going to be like yep that's right take your crown off wow jesus goes no take your crown back okay next worship session take your crown off wham you know that's what we're going to be doing for the first 10 000 years because i yeah because i said so [Laughter] next thing you see is abram bailing on his responsibility look at verse three then sarah abram's wife took hagar her maid the egyptian and gave her to her husband abram to be his wife after abram had dwelt in 10 years in the land of canaan see that phrase gave her to her husband it's exactly the same phrase that was used of eve when eve brought the brought the fruit to adam she brought the fruit and gave it to her husband she brings this woman gives him to her husband exactly the same phrasing and when eve is bringing the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to adam who's in charge evis and when sarai comes up with the whole plan she came up with the whole plan all on her own comes to abram and says let's do it this way after all that's how everybody else is doing it let's do it this way and then she brings hagar to abram and gives her to him who's in charge and it's sarai who's in charge and so what i'm telling you guys is don't listen to what your wife tells you yeah sermon over [Laughter] actually there's another there's another passage we're going to run into a little bit later on involved with the whole same scenario the whole same thing where god says to abram listen to your wife okay and so it depends what abram's doing here is bailing on his responsibility who's the head in the marriage it's abram and who represents the lord in the marriage it's abram who's supposed to know what's good for his wife it's abram the new testament first peter chapter 3 verse 7 it talks about the fact that we as husbands are to dwell with our wives according to knowledge it's the idea of experiential knowledge i'm supposed to know my wife well enough to know what she needs to know what she wants to care about her you know all that kind of stuff i'm supposed to know things and all you ladies want your husbands to do exactly that right that's why when you tell him you know christmas is coming up i went and asked my wife what do you want for christmas and she says oh nothing is that true no it's not true she just lied to me right oh nothing and you know and she may not want huge things and and stuff like that but still it's not nothing if i if i show up on christmas morning and there's nothing it would be better for me never to have been born and to do that and the reason she's saying oh nothing is because she'd like me to think about it when we were first married um and we were doing the christmas thing one of the things she would do with me is uh when we were going gonna go out shopping she would give me a couple of ideas about what she would like because i didn't i didn't know her well enough to know what she wanted and so we go into a mall and she she would say well you know i kind of like this you know she kind of point things out i kind of like this and i kind of like this and i kind of like she will usually give me like three things because that's all i can remember and so she'd give me three things and then i go out shopping did i get her exactly what she pointed at no some of you guys are going yeah no you dummy no no don't do that and so no i didn't get her exactly what she pointed at i went around i looked and i thought oh and i just i just took off from that i go okay she kind of likes this she kind of likes this kind of and then i went and found her something different and i get got it for her and here i am all thoughtful she still had to steer me you know i'm but i'm all thoughtful and and and that kind of thing and christmas is is wonderful right and that's that's what's happening what she wants is for me to know her and as time goes on she doesn't do that with me anymore we don't go out and you know have her point things out for me anymore i figure things out sometimes she tells me what she wants and i just go yeah i'm not gonna get that and i get something else and i make sure that it's way cool and that kind of stuff so so that i'm once again golden that's what that's what i want i must be golden at christmas time she has to yell she she yells when she opens presents and she gets really excited it's fun i like giving things to her in any case um what's happening is he is he does not know his wife and you could tell by the rest of the story because she comes up and she goes you know i gave her to you and now look what's happened and it's all your fault and god judged between you and me take that abram and abram's like dude would you do me you know doofus you're supposed to know what's good for your wife you know i wonder if uh because of the we've already read the story through but i wonder if abraham had said you know what sarah i don't care that much about the kid i'd rather go through the rest of my life childless with you than ever step outside of my marriage bonds with you what do you think would have happened then would he be golden or not yeah absolutely but he doesn't do it he does exactly what she tells him right who's supposed to be able to see the consequences of actions committed now and what they're going to do to your family later that's what leadership is you're going you're going you're going through any any leadership position you have to be thinking ahead understanding that if i do these things then this stuff might happen if my kid does these things if they live this kind of lifestyle this is where they're going to go my wife if she does these things this is what's going to happen with her this is what's going to happen with my family i'm supposed to be thinking ahead there's a passage in proverbs 14 15. it says only simpletons believe everything they're told the prudent carefully consider their steps and abram is not being prudent in this passage he's not carefully considering his steps another thing that you see in the passage is that these two are reaping the consequences of failures from years before because hagar came from egypt and the reason that they have hagar in their household is because abram in chapter 12 disobeyed god went down to egypt you know the whole story told his wife to lie for him because somebody might kill her because she's such a fox that everybody's going to want to marry her fox is an old word for good-looking woman okay for all you younger people yeah so they're going to they're going to kill me and what ends up happening is the pharaoh throws him out of egypt because he lied to him about the whole thing but before he did that he gave him donkeys and camels and oxen and male and female servants and she's one of the female servants if he hadn't disobeyed god in chapter 12 plan b once again if he hadn't disobeyed god in chapter 12 we wouldn't be in chapter 16 dealing with hagar and so again your your actions reap consequences there are results that you get from this and it's nothing but conflict in verse four it says so he went into hagar she conceives and when she saw that she conceived her mistress became despised in her eyes and so now hagar is getting uppity at this point she's you know she's just a lowly maid before this point this guy's got a huge household he's got over 300 guys that have been trained in warfare that's just the guys trained in warfare and so he's got this big entourage and she's you know some servant that came out of egypt and now she is in the main household with the with the master and the mistress and the mistress can't have kids and she can and so she starts having an attitude towards her have you ever heard of sister wives my wife tells me about sister wives i've never watched it actually because i can't i can't hack reality tv but anyway my wife told me told me about it it's like all these all these girls that are married to one guy and they're all like nice to each other and they're supporting each other and you know they're doing they're helping each other no they're not none of that is going that's all for tv there's nothing there's nothing going on like that they hate each other you know they they would get rid of every other woman in the household if they could so they could be the only one there and so again anytime you see somebody stepping outside of the bounds of marriage that god designed where it's one man one woman you get this kind of train wreck there's all this junk that goes on with it and so they're reaping the consequences of that his wife is despised so sari doesn't um doesn't have a child yet she's got a pregnant woman who's looking down on her in that fun and then the verse five you have sarah coming to abram sarai says to abram my wrong be upon you i gave my maid into your embrace and when she saw that she had conceived i became despised in her eyes the lord judged between you and me and this is the second time she she mentions the lord the first time it's god won't give me kids the second time is i hope god judges you for what you did when you did exactly what i told you to do right and abram's sitting there going i just did what you told me to do once again and he's a when you get to verse six there's more abdication so abram said to sarah indeed your mate is in your hand do to her as you please he just doesn't want to deal with the situation so say yeah i don't want to do that you got her you just go do what you want with her why do i have to be involved in this whole thing because you're the husband and you're the one who represents the lord and you're the head and you're the one who's supposed to know what's good for his wife and you're the one who's supposed to be responsible in the role that's why and he doesn't want to do it and so he just bails on his responsibility once again and then hagar gets the consequences of that um it says verse six do to her as you please and when sarah dealt harshly with her she fled from her presence that word harshly is the same word that you see in the previous chapter in chapter 13 where it says that your go your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not their theirs and will serve them and they will afflict them means oppress them 400 years and sarah was oppressing hagar and hagar is the one who's just getting everything done to her all the way through the story she's getting everything done to her except for the attitude she did that and i have all kinds of compassion for hagar in this situation because she's just in a bad situation on all kinds of levels and now she's got a situation where she's not wanted in the household anymore even though she's pregnant with the husband's baby so nice what a wonderful wonderful family that you have there so she leaves verse 7 it says now the angel of the lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness by the spring on the way to shure and he said hagar sarai's maid where have you come from and where are you going and she said i'm fleeing from the presence of my mistress sarai and the angel of the lord said to her let's stop right there anytime you see the angel lord one of the things you want to do is look at it look at the guy and see who we're dealing with you know the word angel in hebrew means messenger when it's translated it means messenger this is taken straight from hebrew into english same thing in the new testament from greek into english and when you go further on actually if you look back down at verse 13 of this chapter it says then she called the name of the lord who spoke to her you are the god who sees she calls this guy you are the god who sees for she said have i also here seen him who sees me and what you have is an appearance of god in the passage every time you see the angel lord look for that because a lot of times what you have is what's called a theophany it's an appearance of god when you get to the new testament you find out that every appearance of god that you have on earth is an appearance of jesus himself so jesus sees hagar and she sees the the the hassle she's going through she sees what he sees what's happening to her life and he shows up god steps in and he begins counseling her and one of the first things that he says to her is you need to submit to your mistress look at this down in verse 8 and he said hagar sarah has made where have you come from where are you going i'm fleeing from the presence of my mistress sarai and the angel of the lord said to her return to your mistress and submit yourself under her hand submit to oppression you get to the new testament and one of the things that it says in first peter this is again in first peter in chapter two is it talks about the example of christ in our example as far as working for other people and what peter says in that passage is that you need to be submitting to to your masters um not just the good but the harsh and a lot of times we have this attitude of you're going to be harsh to me i have that dude stink for you you could take it you could stick that where the sun doesn't shine and off you go and that kind of thing christian you know and the the problem with that is that the bible teaches that we can reach people who have messed up lives sometimes the reason people are harsh is because they have messed up lives and we can reach them by acting like jesus in front of them and in the passage it talks about the fact that jesus submitted to the cross and he did it without saying a word and so peter says you submit to the harsh as well as to the as well as to the good and sometimes that's what god wants to do with you because he doesn't want people in hell including bad bosses here's another thing about submission you know it's like i'll submit to anything but when a boss gets you know rowdy with me or when it gets harsh or you know when it's a stupid thing for me to do and that kind of thing i'm not going to submit to that i would just submit to you that you haven't submitted at all what you've been doing is agreeing so your boss tells you to do something that you agree with and you're good with that next thing he tells you i agree with that too i'll i'll i'll submit to that i agree with this too and i'll submit to that and i agree with that you haven't been submitting at all you've just been agreeing you can find out if you're submitting when he tells you something that you don't agree with and you go okay you're the boss that's submission and it's not submission until that point i'm not saying that you do every dumb thing that a boss tells you you don't do illegal things and that kind of stuff but you know what i mean there's things that bosses tell you and it's not illegal and it's not bad and it's you just don't agree with it and so that's submission and so he tells you go back and submit submission instead of rebellion the second thing that he does is he tells her her son's future tells her he has a she has a son and tells her what it what his future is going to be he says in verse 10 it says the angel lord said to her i will multiply your descendants exceedingly so that they shall not be counted for multitude exactly the same promise he gave to abram is the same one he gives to hagar about her son and then it says the angel lord said to her behold you are with child you shall bear a son you shall call his name ishmael which means god hears because the lord has heard your affliction point being i hear you hagar i hear what you're going through i hear your tears i hear you crying out i hear it and god is compassionate towards this woman who is bearing the sun who is going to bring about the arab nations because he loves them you know a lot of times we're conditioned to kind of movie morality and so we have the bad guys and they're all bad usually if a bad guy's gonna get killed off some at some point he you know they they portray him as a child molester and done all kinds of evil things and that kind of stuff and then uh you know what what was his name 24. jack bauer jack bauer comes in and cuts his head off right that's what happens at the end of the at the end of the of the show right and so he deserves every bit of that so it's bad guys versus good guys jack bauer is absolutely good and this guy's absolutely bad and he deserved everything that he got and we do the same thing with with groups of people and so you know uh when you're talking about israeli arab conflicts i'm not saying that we should be against the israelis the bible says that you bless them god's going to bless you you curse them god's going to curse you but on the other hand i need to recognize that god loves arabs too and he wants them to get saved right and this is an example of that god knows what's going to happen with these people and he knows that they're going to be wild men look at verse 12 he shall be a wild man his hand shall be against every man and every man's hand against him and he shall dwell in the presence of allah's brethren this is a prophecy like something that happens in genesis chapter 49 where jacob is prophesying over his sons and it's not just the kid himself that he's prophesying over it's all his relatives that come from him that he the the tribes were going to be like what jacob prophesies and it's the same thing with this god knows where they're going to go and he still reaches out and he still blesses them and he still makes them a a mighty nation and he's still because he's good and he loves people doesn't he wants everybody to be saved so you have that and obviously i've just pointed out this is a consequence that we're still paying for it's been 4 000 years now and the conflict between the son of abraham isaac and his sons and the son of hagar again a child of abraham and ishmael and her and his sons has been going on for 4 000 years because of plan b right here so you know a lot of times when when we're making these kinds of choices god makes it clear you're going in a certain direction and then you come up with reasons that you should do something else to fulfill the things that god wants to do but the the consequences that come from that don't just deal with you it deals with your children your children's children and on down the line you don't do this stuff in a vacuum everybody's around you and so again it would be a good idea to stick to plan hey let's just do that wait a little bit it's all going to happen that's what they had to do anyway the other thing that you have in in this whole thing is god doesn't take out take away all the consequences of this stuff one of the consequences is that ishmael is not recognized so even though god blesses ishmael and says that he's going to be a great nation and that kind of stuff later on when you get to genesis chapter 22 god says to abram i want you to take your son your only son whom you love abraham had two sons it was it was isaac and ishmael but god's not right recognizing ishmael because ishmael is a child of the flesh he's recognizing the child of the spirit you get to the new testament and god takes that and he plant plants that in our minds in the in the context of people who are walking with jesus in the power of the spirit and church folks one is a child of the flesh trying to do nice things in the power of their own flesh the other one is a child of the spirit who has a spirit of god working through them and making them what they're going to be two different groups of people and what god recognizes as a child of the spirit let's finish it up with this turn over to isaiah chapter 40 isaiah chapter 40. this is you know kind of a great passage uh it just kind of condenses this whole thing and and kind of brings it home for for us in some kind of cool ways i just like the passage so isaiah chapter 40. isaiah jeremiah lamentations ezekiel you get around there that's that's where you need to go page 717. verse one comfort yes comfort my people says your god speak comfort to jerusalem cry out to her that her warfare has ended that her iniquity is pardoned for she's received from the lord's hand double for all her sins and what he's talking about is the nation of israel being punished because they would not follow the lord and they began following other gods and killing babies and all the stuff that we've talked about numerous times and what god's saying is you're going to reap the consequences of that but there's going to come a time when the consequences are over and i'm going to comfort you i'm not going to abandon you i'm going to comfort you this is like this is like a good dad and so there comes a time when a kid needs to be disciplined and he gets disciplined and while he's sitting there with a warm butt dad comes up and puts his arm around him and says now buddy let's have a talk and god comforts the people of israel so there's comfort that that that comes after the consequences then verses three through five you have the promise of the forerunner and again this is talking about the nation of israel verse three it says the voice of one crying in the wilderness prepare the way of the lord make straight in the desert a highway for our god every valley shall be exalted every mountain and hill brought low the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places smooth the glory of the lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together for the mouth of the lord is spoken and these are passages that are used plainly in the new testament of john the baptist john the baptist comes crying in the wilderness and telling them that the lord's coming he's the he's the forerunner of the coming of christ right again to a group of people who have been disobedient to the lord they've come back to the land but they're not they're not doing things very well and that's the next point that's made the voice said cry out and he said what shall i cry talking about the forerunner and this is what god says to cry all flesh is grass all its loveliness is like the flower of the field the grass withers the flower fades because the breath of the lord blows upon it surely the people are grass the grass withers the flower fades but the word of our god stands forever that passage right there is used in the new testament it's used of your salvation this is it's out of first peter chapter 1 verse 23 through 25 it says this having been born again not of corruptible seed but incorruptible through the word of god which lives and abides forever because all flesh all fleshes as grass and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass the grass withers its flower falls away but the word of the lord endures forever now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you and basically what god is saying is there comes a point where you come to the end of yourself you recognize that you're nothing but something that's going to fade away and as a matter of fact the breath of the lord blows upon you and you do exactly that you wither and then god comes and he starts changing things in your life that's what he's going to do for the nation of israel at the time when jesus came there was an exhaustion of the line of david david was a king of israel but god said there's not going to be you're going to have a child from your line sitting on the on the throne of israel forever that's what he said to david but you go down through david's genealogy in matthew and the last guy that you see in that genealogy that has anything to do with the bible or any kind of fame at all there's a guy named zerubbabel and then there's probably 12 guys after that leading up to joseph who are no names they're nobodies and by the time that jesus comes around the line of david has been exhausted there's nobody who is in power who's from the line of david so what happened there that's when jesus was born from the line of david the religion of the pharisees was in the ascendancy at that point but jesus called these dudes whitewashed tombs and so when you're looking at the pharisees these are these are actually the good guys as far as the religious jews went they were whitewashed tombs full of dead men's bones is what jesus said so the pharisees were dry and defiled and wasted and that's the pharisees those are the good guys then you have the sadducees who were the liberal believers of the time and judaism at that point was in disarray because the sadducees were in charge of the temple and they had two high priests you know how many high priests you have in the bible it's one only one they have two anas and caiaphas son-in-law father-in-law and so by the time that jesus comes comes along you have even the priesthood is walking in opposition to god the bible says that when jesus came along he came like a root out of dry ground a root of jesse jesse was the father of david root of jesse that comes out of dry ground and the picture there is spiritually speaking when you look at the nation of israel it was nothing but a desert everything's dead everything's desiccated and the only thing that was living was jesus himself that's why he was so different and he comes along and he brings life to the people grass withers the flower fades because the breath of the lord blows upon it surely the people are grass the grass withers the flower fades but the word of our god stands forever the next thing you see is verse nine o zion you who bring good tidings get uh get up into the high mountain of jerusalem you who bring good tidings lift up your voice with strength lift it up be not afraid say to the cities of judah behold your god and again it's pointing to the fact that christ was coming behold the lord shall come with a strong hand and his arm shall rule for him behold his reward is with him and his work before him and then it says this he will feed his flock like a shepherd he will gather the lambs with his arms and carry them in his bosom and gently lead those who are with young so god says i'm going to give you comfort from your sin after you reap the consequences there's going to be a forerunner runner that's going to come you need to know that all your flesh is like grass and then god's going to come to you and at that point he's going to feed you he's going to gather you he's going to carry you and he's going to lead you gently after the withering and that's what we need to understand about ourselves i'm not able to do the things that god wants me to do on my own strength and so my plan b is silly i need to go i need to go and get the plan from god there's not one instance in chapter 16 where anybody prayed except for hagar she's the one who was talking to the lord abram didn't pray sir i didn't pray and if if abram had gone to the lord and said god you know what this is my plan what do you think god would have gone yeah maybe not if abram had talked to one of sarai's friends and said hey you know what you know sarah said that i should go into her maid what do you think just get some wise counsel they probably would have gone yeah maybe not but sarah said so well maybe not you dummy and so on but again we need to understand that it's god who needs to bring about the the purposes god who needs to do the thing and when you trust him and you wait on him cool things happen and like i said at the end of the story they're all laughing they're all laughing and isaac is named laughter and what they should have done was waited so good stuff huh let's pray thanks lord again for your word thank you for these people who love your word god thank you for the fact that you work in our lives that you draw us to yourself and that you bring us to this place so that um you can speak and so that you can move and so that you can work in our lives and a lot of what we're supposed to be doing is just sitting back well not sitting back but just saying okay and and allah god you're just always good so i'm not going to even ask you to be good you're just always good we love you and we ask it in jesus name amen let's all stem [Music] [Music] jesus [Music] foreign [Music] amen god bless you guys have a good week you

Channel: Calvary Chapel Tri-Cities

Views: 1,169

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: The Creation Story, Genesis, Did God create the heavens and the earth, Truth, The Bible, Calvary Chapel Tri-Cities, Steve Whinery, Gosphel, God, Biblical Prophecy, Jesus, Science and the bible, God creating everything, Evidence of A God, Bible teaching, Sermons, verse by verse bible teaching, Good bible teachers, Beginning of the universe, 6 days, creation, did god rest on the 7th day, Evolution vs the Bible

Id: FxOvuqbF9q8

Length: 165min 52sec (9952 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 15 2020