Continuing to Follow God after We’ve Blown It

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We’re going to be in Genesis chapter 16 this morning, starting in 16 and going into 17. As I’ve been talking to you the last couple weeks about the life of Abraham, we’ve really been focused on the idea of what it means to live a life of faith, what it means to live a life of dedication to God, where God tells you what to do, where God tells you what the truth is, and we believe it and we live our lives according to it. It’s something that I think we as believers aspire to.

It’s something certainly that we should aspire to and try to work toward. But we look at people in the Bible, people like Abraham and others, we look at these people in the Bible and think they’re somehow different from us, that they’re somehow special, somehow kind of superhuman, if you want to put it that way. Oh, well, of course he did the right thing.

He’s the Apostle Paul. He’s up here and we’re down here. That’s not true.

Of course he did the right thing. He’s King David. He’s up here.

And I’m, you know, look at the life of King David a little closer. Abraham, you know, I’ve been holding him up for two weeks as this shining example of faith. Surely he was a great man.

And Abraham did some great things. And God worked through Abraham in a great way. So surely in order to live a life of faith, you’ve got to be a perfect person, right?

You’ve got to have everything together. You’ve got to have your whole life together. and you’ve got to have made the right choices and have lived the right way, and if you haven’t, then you’re just out of luck, right?

Unfortunately, that’s not this. God can use imperfect people. God can still help us to live faithfully and be men and women of faith who live by faith, who walk by faith, and who serve Him by faith, even after we have messed up, even after we have blown it.

Now, I encourage you to go back and read chapter 16 just for the sake of time. I’m not going to read it to you this morning. We’re going to look more in depth at chapter 17.

But I just want to kind of give you some of the highlights of what happened in chapter 16. You can go back and read it for yourself. Make sure that I’m telling you the truth.

But Abraham, he was called Abram early in his life. And that’s what he’s been called in the stories we’ve been looking at. But he was married to Sarah, who was originally Sarai, before God changed their names.

God promised Abram that he would have children, that he would have many descendants, and Abram asked God, well, how is this possible? He thought maybe God was going to raise up some of his servants as his inheritors, and that they were going to carry on his name, they were going to carry on his estate, and God was going to raise up a great nation through them. We looked in the previous weeks at how God said, no, Abraham, even though you’re 75 years old, you are going to have children.

It’s hard to believe. It’s hard to imagine. And yet God said it, and that’s what he said was going to happen.

Well, a few years had passed. About nine or ten years had passed, to be exact. And still, no children.

And now Abraham’s 85, 86 years old. Sarah’s 75, 76 years old. I mean, it really is getting to the point where if something hadn’t happened by now, it’s probably not going to in human terms. And Sarah says, I have this great idea.

Ladies, as hard as it is to believe, she convinced her husband to have an affair with the maid so that he could have a child that way. I’m too old to give you a child, so here’s my maid, Hagar the Egyptian. Take her, have children with her, and then God will fulfill his promises through that.

That is just a bizarre way of thinking to me. Hey, go have an affair. That’ll fix everything.

That never, folks, that never fixes anything. But she said, oh, it’ll fix everything. Never mind the fact that she’s trying to fulfill God’s promises herself.

I don’t know about you. Well, I do know about you, but I know about me too. I am not as powerful as God, and I’m not as clever as God.

And yet we do that same thing. We try to take God’s place and take God’s will into our own hands and say, well, we’re just going to make things happen instead of waiting for him to do it. So in verses 1 through 3 of chapter 16, she convinced him to have an affair with her maid.

When Hagar got pregnant, she started treating Sarai badly. So she got pregnant by Abraham, and suddenly she looks at her, the Bible calls her her mistress, her master. She looks at Sarai, and she starts having contempt for her.

In their day and age, you were not a real woman if you could not have children, if you couldn’t bear children. And so it was, and we see this in other stories in the Old Testament, where there was a rivalry among women about this. And when she realizes, hey, I’m going to have a child and my employer is not, who’s the real woman now?

And so she started looking down on Sarai, treating her badly. Sarai got upset. And so that caused all sorts of other problems in their family.

When this happened, Sarai convinced Abram to throw her out of her house, to throw her out of their house. So not only has he had an affair with the maid and gotten her pregnant, but now he kicks a pregnant woman out into the street or allows his wife to do so. She comes to him actually and says, Abram, we need to do something about it.

And this man looks at his wife and says, whatever you want to do, and lets her kick a pregnant woman out into the street. God then sent Hagar back to Abram and Sarai. He told her, as difficult as this is, go back to them.

You need to stay there. And then Hagar gave birth to Ishmael. It was about three years after this, three or four years, that God appeared to Abram.

And they had a long conversation. God renamed him Abraham, which means the father of a multitude. So here God is renaming him and by that reaffirming his promise that I am going to raise up children for you.

He’s reminding him of his call, reminding him of his promises. The expectation from Abraham is the same that it ever was. God said, you need to follow me and you need to serve me and you need to believe me.

So years after this has happened, God comes to Abraham and says, I have not forgotten about you yet. You still need to follow and serve me and believe me. And probably the first thought in Abraham’s mind, I know the first thought in my mind would be, do you not know what I did back there?

Do you not remember that dark day in my life, all the things I did wrong that I messed up my family then and up to now? And really, it caused conflict that continues to this day. And yet God called him to a life of faithful service.

And that tells me that for us as well, that God can continue to use us even after we’ve blown it. God can continue to use us and work in us and through us, and we can faithfully serve him even after we have messed up in life. That it’s not as though it’s a one-strike-and-you’re-out thing with God.

It’s really not even a three strikes and you’re out thing with God. God has this capacity to love and to forgive and to bring restoration whenever we have messed up life. So we get into chapter 17, and this is where God begins to lay out for Abram what his intentions are going forward.

And it says in verse 1 of chapter 17, And when Abram was 90 years old and 9, the Lord appeared unto Abram and said unto him, I am the Almighty God. Walk before me and be thou perfect. And I will make my covenant between me and thee and will multiply thee exceedingly.

And Abram fell on his face and God talked with him saying, well, first of all, this is where God appears to him and says, I’m not through with you. I want you to walk with me. I still have plans for you.

And I’m going to make you some promises. We’re going to make some agreements here. And Abram fell on his face.

He fell on his face before God. That’s exactly where he needed to be after what he had done. Now when I say that God has a capacity to love and to forgive, it doesn’t mean that God just excuses and ignores whatever we want to do and says, yeah, that’s fine, that’s fine.

God expects repentance. God expects our hearts to be humbled before Him. God expects us to be broken over what we’ve done in the past. And yet it doesn’t mean that He can’t no longer.

And so God talked with Him saying, verse 4, As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham. For a father of many nations have I made thee.

And God talks about this promise, folks, like it’s already in the past. Not that God had already fulfilled the promise, but because when God promises something, you can take it to the bank. And so for God, if he says he’s going to do something for you, it’s as sure as if he’s already done it. He says, I’ve already, he hasn’t had descendants other than Ishmael.

The child of promise isn’t here yet. And God says, though, I have already made you the father of many nations. It’s already so.

It’s done. He says in verse 6, I will make the exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee.

and I will give unto thee and to thy seed after thee the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God. He says, I’m making this agreement with you that I will raise up a mighty nation of your family, of your children and their children and their children’s children. I will raise up a mighty nation from you, and I will walk with you and with them.

I will be your God, and I will be their God, and I will give to you and to them this land to own that right now you’re a stranger in. And God said unto Abraham, verse 9, Thou shalt keep my covenant, therefore thou and thy seed after thee in their generations. This is my covenant, which ye shall keep between me and you and thy seed after thee.

Every man child among you shall be circumcised. And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you. And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man, child, and your generations, he that is born in the house or bought with money of any stranger which is not of thy seed.

He that is born in thy house and he that is bought with thy money must needs be circumcised, and my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. Okay, so he has, and then he says in verse 14 that anybody who doesn’t undergo this, anybody who refuses to undergo this has broken the covenant and is not part of this covenant relationship. So what God says is, I’m going to give you all of these things, And as a token of this, you undergo this surgical operation, this circumcision.

And not to belabor this or get into any details of it, he’s essentially telling them you need to undergo this surgical procedure that is going to be a reminder to you of who you belong to, whose you are. That they were essentially marking themselves as being owned by God. And that was the condition, that was the covenant.

God says, if you will remember that you are owned by me, if you’ll remember that you belong to me and that you are my people, and you will take on yourselves this sign that you are mine, then I will be your God, you will be my people, and there will be all these blessings for you as a nation. And verse 9 says, And God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant, therefore thou and thy seed after thee in their generations. Oh, I’m sorry, I’ve already read that part, haven’t I?

Verse 15, And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be. And I will bless her, and give thee a son also of her. Yea, I will bless her, and she shall be the mother of nations.

Kings and people shall be of her. Then Abraham fell upon his face and laughed. So he’s falling on his face again before God, but for a little bit different reason.

He’s laughing now. And said in his heart, shall a child be born unto him that is a hundred years old, And shall Sarah that is ninety years old bear? And Abraham said unto God, O that Ishmael might live before thee.

That’s his son with Hagar. So he’s laughing here. I don’t know that it’s a sign of unbelief.

Otherwise, I think God would have addressed that. One of the things that God appreciated and rewarded most about Abraham was faith, which we’ve talked about the last couple of weeks. It might just be surprise.

Do you ever get that way or is that just me, where sometimes you laugh and it’s not because something’s funny, it’s because you’re in an awkward situation. How’s that work? Yeah, that’s my best guess of what’s going on.

He laughs because it’s just so crazy to believe that he at 100 and she at 90 would have a child. But God doesn’t address unbelief here. And Abraham turns to God and says that Ishmael might live before thee.

God, by the way, don’t forget Ishmael. I know I’ve messed up. I know that having a son with my wife’s maid and all of that, it’s caused so many problems, but God don’t punish him.

Remember him and bless him as well. And God said, verse 19, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed, and thou shalt call his name Isaac, and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him. So God says, yes, I know it is hard to imagine, but Sarah will have a child, his name will be Isaac, and it’s through him that I’ll establish this everlasting covenant.

But he says in verse 20, And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee, behold, I have blessed him. Again, not I’m going to bless him in the future. It’s already been done, God.

Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly. Twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation. But my covenant will I establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time.

in the next year. So God says, within a year, you’re going to have a child, and his name is going to be Isaac, and it’s through him I’m establishing this covenant, but I have not forgotten Ishmael, and for your sake I will bless him, I’ll take care of him. And he left off talking with him, and God went up from Abraham.

So that was basically the end of their conversation. God finally lays out for Abraham, and I’m so glad by this point in the story that he’s changed their names to Abraham and Sarah because that’s a little easier to wrap my mouth around than Abram and Sarai. I get tongue-tung.

He’s finally laid out how this is going to work for Abraham. And he said, you’re going to have a child named Isaac. That’s where the promises are going to be fulfilled.

But for your sake, I will still bless Ishmael. I will still take care of him. Verse 23, and Abraham took Ishmael his son and all that were born in his house, and all that were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham’s house, and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin in the self same day as God had said unto him.

And Abraham was 90 years old and nine when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. So they all undergo this procedure. He fulfills the promise, the agreement that he’s made with.

Now, again, what does this have to do with anything? It has to do with the fact that God had made all these promises to Abraham years before. He’d called him out.

He’d said, I want you to follow me. I want you to serve me. He’d made promises to him.

They had made agreements together, Abraham and God. And yet, Abraham got so far outside of God’s will by trying to take these matters into his own hands. And his wife as well.

And he had totally messed up. I’ve written down, well, we’ll come back to that later. He messed up.

He blew it. And yet God’s response was to call out to him and say, I still have plans for you. Those promises I made you are still valid.

The expectations I called you out with years ago are still the expectations I have for you. Come, follow me and serve me. He wasn’t worthy.

But again, none of us are worthy. The thing that God valued about Abraham was his faith. I’ve shared with you that not only in the Old Testament, but several times in the New Testament, It says that Abraham’s faith was counted to him for righteousness.

God could have taken any criteria he wanted and said, okay, this is how you’re forgiven. This is how you’re made righteous. And yet God decided it would be faith.

Not faith, I believe in God, but faith, I believe God. When God speaks, when God tells me something is true, when God tells me to do something, I believe it. Abraham believed it.

Now, did he at times have moments of doubt? Did he at times have moments where he thought, I don’t know how this is going to work, so maybe I’m supposed to step in here ahead of God and do something? Did he have times where I would say he was thinking something, but he may not have been thinking?

Some of these things you look at and say, what were you thinking? He probably wasn’t. But he had these moments, and yet God still was willing to use him.

He’d gotten so far outside God’s will, and yet God was willing to fix that. So how can we continue to follow God after we’ve blown it? Because I don’t bring you these stories about the life of Abraham just so you know lots about Abraham and you can go home and amaze your friends with all the things about Abraham.

It’s really to apply to our lives today and say, what can we learn from the life of this man who’s held up not only through the Old Testament, but throughout the New Testament as well as an example of faith, and yet even with all his imperfections and flaws, he’s still held up as a man of faith. It gives me hope that we can be people of faith, that we can be strong men and women of God, even in spite of our flaws and our imperfections. The first thing that we’ve got to know is that we need to be reconciled to God and move forward.

How do you walk by faith? How do you continue on the journey of faith after you’ve blown it? First of all, be reconciled to God and move forward.

I’ve given the example many times of the difference between what our nature is to do and what we’re supposed to do as believers. Our nature as humans is kind of like the, well, it’s kind of like we’re walking through a big mud puddle. A puddle doesn’t quite cover it, but a big mud area.

And we fall in. We fall into the mud as we’re walking through. And we just stay down and wallow in it.

That’s our nature as human beings. I’m already down. I’m going to stay down.

I might as well enjoy it down here in the mud pit. But our calling as Christians is not that we’ll never fall in the mud pit, but our calling as Christians, God understands we’re human and we’ll fall in the mud pit. That’s why he made a way for us to be forgiven.

But his calling for us is when we fall into the mud pit, stand up, let him clean us off, and keep going, not to lay down and wallow in it. Well, the same thing is true with sin. I mean, what I just gave you is an analogy to sin.

We’re going to slip and fall. I hate that. I hate it about my own self.

Every time I do it, it’s like the Holy Spirit nails me in the conscience, and I feel sick about it. I sin on a daily basis, and I hate it. And the natural inclination is, well, might as well wallow in it for a while.

Might as well embrace it. That’s the direction things are going. When God calls us, no, don’t stay there in that.

You’re going to fall into it, yes. But he says that if we will confess our sins, he is faithful and just to cleanse us from our sin, to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. God’s expectation for us is to get up and let him clean us.

We can’t clean up our own lives, but to get up and let him clean us off, and then go forward. Just because you’ve been in the mud in the past doesn’t mean that you have to stay in the mud in the future. God called Abraham to walk by faith and be a man of integrity after he’d already sinned so, so, I want to say the word bigly, and I know that’s not a word.

I don’t know where that comes from. Even though he had sinned so spectacularly, God called him to walk with him and follow him after that spectacular failure, after he’d completely messed up his family, after he’d completely messed up at least four people’s lives, after he had caused strife and war that continues to this day. And yet God gave him the opportunity to start over from that point.

It was a new day. God gave him the opportunity of a clean slate. God gave him the opportunity to get up from that point and to follow him from then.

We like to look backwards and say, well, what I’ve done back here. People like to point it out to us, this is what you’ve done back here. The devil likes to point out to us, this is what you’ve done back here.

And once the past is forgiven, God’s really concerned with what he calls us to and forward from this point. And so Abraham’s response, when God said, come and follow me, not in those exact words, but when God said, come and follow me, he said, walk before me and be thou perfect. From that moment on, Abraham’s response was to fall on his face.

Folks, that was an act of humility and repentance. I’ve told you before, I don’t believe repentance means that you change your life, you change your behavior. That’s a symptom of repentance.

What the word repentance means in the Bible is to change your mind. And we start out in the mud pit and enjoying the mud pit and thinking, Hey, this is fun. I enjoy this.

I don’t care what God says. And repentance means I sort of wake up and snap out of it and realize God’s right and I’m wrong. And even though my tendency is still to fall in the mud pit, I want to be out of the mud pit.

I want God to help me out of that. It’s an attitude of going to God and saying, I’m wrong here, you’re right, and I hate this sin, even though I still do it, and would you forgive me and would you help me out of it? Even acknowledging that we need God’s forgiveness in the first place is repentance.

And so he fell on his face before God. He got as low as he was. If we want to live lives of faith after we’ve messed up, don’t ignore the past. Don’t try to pretend with God like it never happened.

There’s not a thing you can hide from God. There’s not a thing I can hide from God. Don’t pretend like it never happened.

Admit it to God. Get it out there and ask his forgiveness for it. And then move forward from there.

We don’t serve him based on what we’ve done in the past. We serve him based on what he has done for us and where he can take us in the future. So he fell on his face, and then God said, let’s talk about the future. Let’s talk about where I’m calling you to go.

So we get reconciled to God and we move forward. Second of all, we believe that God can rebuild what our sin has destroyed. I think sometimes that’s a big barrier to us saying, well, I’ll serve God in the future even though I’ve messed up, because we look at how huge our mistakes have been.

How much we’ve messed up. How much we’ve wronged somebody else. how much we’ve hurt other people, how much we’ve disobeyed God.

I sat down and listed just for my own self, just for my own curiosity, what were some of the sins that Abraham actually committed in this whole thing, as far as what’s recorded. I mean, there are things that God doesn’t tell us every detail. Well, he’d sinned against God.

He disobeyed God about the affair. He had dishonored two women, his wife and the mother of his child. He’d broken his vows to Sarai.

He had treated Hagar like the other woman. He’d made her into an adulteress. He’d been weak and passive as a man.

That can be a sin when you allow it to damage your family. He came to a point where instead of being a man and taking responsibility and saying we’re going to deal with this sin, his wife came to him and said, I want you to do this horrible thing. throw her out, and he said, whatever you want to do, instead of standing up and saying, no, we’re going to do the right thing, even though it’s hard.

He let his wife throw this pregnant woman out into the world defenseless and homeless and destitute. That’s cold right there. She’s pregnant, and we’re just going to throw her out.

There was still all this tension bound to be there in his family, even after she came back and his son was born. Folks, his moment, this moment of unbelief, this moment of questioning had messed up four people’s lives. And yet God still promised to take care of all of them.

If you read back in chapter 16, which we just kind of went over the highlights of, God makes promises to Hagar to take care of her and to take care of Ishmael. And then in the part we read in chapter 17, God makes promises to Abraham about his future, about Sarah’s future, about Ishmael’s future, and even about Isaac, who’s not even born yet. And God looks at all of these people who have been impacted, who’ve been affected by his sinful decisions, all these lives that have been torn apart by one man’s disobedience.

And you look at that family and say, what on earth could fix that? You could look at families all around us today, maybe some of our own, and say, what on earth can fix what has been broken apart by somebody’s wrong decisions. And it was God stepping in.

And the ability of God to put back together what we’ve destroyed through our sinful choices. And sometimes, you know, things are, sometimes, I’m not saying that everything that goes wrong in your life is the result of a sinful choice of yours. Sometimes it’s just that we live in a fallen sinful world and sin is all around us and we can’t help but get affected by other people’s choice.

But speaking of how we go back and serve God faithfully after we’ve messed up, you’ve got to believe and wrap your mind around and get it through your head that it doesn’t matter how much of a mess you’ve made of your own life. God can still put it back together. Now, is it going to look exactly like it did before?

Is God going to put things exactly back like they were before? Maybe, maybe not. The picture may not look the same, but God can take the mess in some way that brings Him glory, in some way that’s for your good.

That’s what He promised to do for all of them. And then third of all, how can we move forward and serve God after we’ve messed up? After you’ve been reconciled to God and decided I’m going to move forward, once you’ve understood and believed God and you allow Him to work where He can put back together what you’ve destroyed, remember from then on.

Remember from then on that you belong completely to God. Now we’re going to talk a little bit more about the life of Abraham next Sunday morning and how this applies. But Abraham from then on was committed that him and his entire household and everything he had belonged to God.

Still didn’t make Abraham a perfect man. But part of the reason we get outside God’s will is because we forget that we belong to him. We start thinking, what do I want to do?

What feels good to me? What sounds good to me? What sounds convenient?

What sounds like it’ll work? And we completely forget to ask God, what does he want to do? I do it too.

I’m not just saying y’all. I do it too. In big decisions and small decisions, I’ll sit there with a pro-con list or a spreadsheet and try to figure out what’s the best course of action.

Completely forget to ask God, what do you want me to do? This is your life you’ve lent to me. This is your stuff you’ve lent to me.

What do you want me to do with it? We need to remember. We need to remember every day that we belong to God.

we need to remember that because it will remind us that we depend on him forever it will remind us of how faithful he is in keeping his promise it will make it easier for us to trust him when he calls us to do something that doesn’t and God called Abraham to do that already in some of the stories we looked at he’ll call him too in some of the stories we’re going to look at and at some point he’s going to call you to follow him and everything he tells you to do isn’t going to make sense but if you’ve already made the decision ahead of time that you belong completely to him and you’ve taken the decision out of your hands, it really doesn’t matter anymore. You already know what you’ve got to do and what you’re going to do. We’ve got to remember that we belong to God.

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