Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Stuck in the Same Sin? | Torah | Genesis 20

Episode Date: February 17, 2022

Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Do you feel like you're not progressing in your faith? Are you battling the same sin over and over? Do you wonder if you're really saved? In Genesis 20, Abraham commits the same sin over and over again. Listen as Patrick shares encouragement from this passage. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Passages: Genesis 20 Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. Right now, we're going through the first book of the Bible, Genesis. When I became a Christian, I saw my battle with sin, something like climbing up a mountain, maybe. I'm not saying that I thought I needed to prove myself to God to earn his love. I understood that his love is given to me freely in Jesus. I understood that Jesus' forgiveness was of well, which even the most sinful human could never

ever possibly drain. And so when I say I saw my faith journey as a mountain, I mean that I thought that I would battle one sin and once victorious over that sin, I'd move past it. I'd battle the sin of lust and then move on, leaving lust behind. And then I battled the sin of selfishness and then move on, leaving selfishness behind. And then I'd battle the sin of gossip and move on, leaving gossip behind. The Christian life then would be a slow progression towards the mountain top of holiness. If you ever climbed a mountain, you'll understand. You'll understand. what I mean. When you're at the base of a mountain, the plants begin to change as you go up. You start with pines towering up to the heavens, but as you move on, the trees begin to get smaller and smaller.

And then there's these rhododendron bushes that takeover. And once you finally break out onto the tundra, the rhododendron almost becomes like a little moss. And this is where you get the real views because those tall trees, they don't obstruct your vision anymore. They're gone. And you can be confident that as you continue to ascend, you'll not see any more pines. You'll probably not see any more bushes. Every step forward is progress. Every step is a movement towards perfection. Every step takes you closer to that mountaintop.

So you can imagine my dismay, about five and ten years into faith, when I discovered that these old sins, which I thought I'd left behind in past battles, while they started reappearing. I thought to myself, wait a second. You know, I thought lust was at the base of the mountain. There aren't supposed to be any pine trees up here. Wait a second. And I thought that lying was halfway up the mountains.

And there aren't supposed to be any bushes here. And as my expectations came crashing down, I found myself wondering, am I really saved? I mean, has this whole walk with Jesus thing been a shame? Was I just faking it all along? My guess is that if you've been walking with Jesus for more than a few years, you know what these feelings are like. Maybe you feel shame because you think you should be past this sin. But years in, there it is. It's still clawing at you.

And that's shame. It can lead to apathy. You give up fighting your sin altogether. Or maybe the shame leads you into hiding. I just won't tell anyone what's going on because if they knew that I was still struggling with this thing, well, then they know what a failure I am. Or maybe that shame has led you to dismay. You're wondering, maybe this whole Christianity thing is just a farce. It doesn't really work.

No one ever gets more holy. What are the sins that make you feel like you'll never escape? What are the sins that are piling up shame on you right now? What are the sins that make you doubt the reality of God's goodness and his power? I ask all this because I sometimes wonder if Abraham felt the exact same way. By the time we get to Genesis 20, where we're at today, we've seen a lot of Abraham's life. He's shown radical faith in Yahweh. He trusted Yahweh enough to move from his childhood home to a land that he'd never even heard of.

It probably felt like it was on the other side of the world. He trusted Yahweh to give him children through Sarah, his elderly wife who was never able to have kids. He trusted Yahweh when his nephew lot was taken hostage. I mean, if you're looking at faith as a mountain, it seems like Abraham is moving up and up and up and up and things are getting better and better and better and better. And yet at the same time, we also know that Abraham wasn't perfect during this time. I mean, when he arrives to this new home that God had called him to, the first thing he does is an act of terrible cowardice. He tells his wife, who's apparently very beautiful in her old age, he says, hey, will you pretend to be my sister? because if you don't, Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt, he might try to kill me so that he can take you as his wife.

Abraham did this because he wanted to protect himself. But think about what that did to Sarah. Sarah says, yeah, I'm Abraham's sister. And she's pulled into Pharaoh's harem. She's put at risk for sexual abuse and manipulation. It's an ugly story. And yet, God delivers Abraham and Sarah from Abraham's stupidity. And I have to imagine that after this happened, Abraham thought, you know what, I'm never going to do this again. I'm on the mountain. I'm going to get more holy over time. I won't be a coward. And you know what? If God could deliver me out of this stupidity, he won't have any trouble delivering me when I'm honest about Sarah and the fact that we're married in the future. And yet, after seeing so much of God's faithfulness in his life, Abraham repeats the exact same sin

in Genesis 20. And this time, it's far worse because now Abraham knows that Sarah is going to be the one through whom God is going to bring a promised son who will restore everything that was lost by Adam and Eve. By committing this sin again, he's not just being a coward. He's actually jeopardizing God's entire mission through his family. Moreover, he's not trusting God. He's not trusting God to be faithful to his mission, faithful to his promises. If he believed that God would give a son to him and Sarah, shouldn't he also believe that God would be able to protect Sarah from foreign harem building kings? Well, the answer to that question is, no, he didn't trust God to do that. Let's read the story in Genesis 20.

Now, Abraham moved on from there to the region of the Negev and lived between Kadesh and Shur. For a while, he stayed in Jarrar. And there, Abraham said of his wife, Sarah, she's my sister. So here we are. Abraham is repeating the exact same old pattern that he'd done decades before. But it goes on. Then Abimelech, the king of Jarrar, sent for Sarah and took her.

But God came to Abimelech in a dream one night and said to him, You are as good as dead because of the woman you have taken. She is a married woman. Now Abimelech had not gone near her. So he said, Lord, will you destroy an innocent nation? Did he not say to me she is my sister? And didn't she also say he's my brother? I have done this with a clear conscience and clear hands.

Then God said to him in the dream, yes, I know you did this with a clear conscience. And so I've kept you from sinning against me. that's why I did not let you touch her. Now, return the man's wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you will live, but if you don't return her, you may be sure that you and all who belong to you will die. This story is striking, isn't it? Because Abraham is definitely not the hero here.

Now, let's not to say that Abimelech is the hero. Let's remember he did exactly the thing that Abraham expected. He took Sarah into his harem by force, regardless of whether or not he thought that Sarah was Abraham's sister. It's just wrong to use women this way. It was unjust. Abimelik isn't the hero. But I wonder what was going on in Abraham and Sarah's minds. Do you think she was angry?

Because she thought her husband was beyond this kind of insanity where she makes her make believe in her life and her sexuality all get put at risk? Do you think Abraham was ashamed? Because once again, he chose his own safety over his wife's safety. I'd guess that the answer to both questions is yes. and yet this story highlights a truth that I know I desperately need to hear. The Christian life is not a mountain. It's not a mountain where you get holier and holier and holier and you never struggle

with the same things that you struggled with in the past. If that were the case, Abraham couldn't even be called a Christian. He couldn't even be called the follower of Gowah, because after years of walking with him, he gives into the same temptation again. The Christian life is actually a little more like a looping trail. Our weaknesses and struggles, they may change slowly over time, but in a real sense, we never entirely move on from them. The battles that you fought five years ago or two years ago

might be the same battles that you have to fight two years from now or five years from now. In fact, I'd say you should probably expect that it will be the same battle that you have to fight. But I want you to notice how God responds. Does God say to Abraham, Abraham, look, here's the deal. We've already gone through this once before. I'm not helping you out of it this time.

This time you're on your own. You've blown it. I'm done with you. No, that's not what God says. Or does God say, hey, Abraham, I've made amazing promises to you, but now they're all off the table because you blew it, you messed up, and you did it multiple times. Nope, that's not what God says to Abraham. Instead, God graciously condescends to rescue Abraham once again. God graciously condescends to fulfill his promise to Abraham.

He gives Abraham a son through Sarah in the very next chapter. You see, our journey is less about perfection. than it is about just staying on the journey. You are going to fail, but God never fails. You are going to sin, but God will always forgive. But remember this, every time he lifts you up from those failures, from those shortcomings, he does put a choice before you. Will you continue on this journey with me?

Will you get back up and give up? Will you get back up and give into shame? Will you get back up and fall into dismay? Or will you continue on this journey with me? His promises for you are not contingent on your perfection. They don't follow a three strikes you're out policy. They're always contingent on the everlasting love and grace and forgiveness of your king. And I've got great news for you.

Those are never ending. Of course, we should want to grow more holy. That's not the point of this podcast. You should want to be more holy. But more than that, you should want to remain faithful. You see, these repeated battles with sin, they not only humble you, but they actually slowly train you to trust in God more and more. They train you to need His grace more and more because you see your own folly,

your own weakness. They train you to need His forgiveness more and more because you see I keep going back to the same old wells of sin that lead me into the same places. They train you to trust God. And that training to become totally dependent on him is really the journey of the Christian life. Before you forget, sign up for the 10, minute Bible Talks newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes and you'll get an email every Wednesday that's going to help you beat that midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for

listening.