Failure Not Final Sermon I: Failure Not Final With The Father Series

FAILURE IS NOT FINAL WITH THE FATHER

An oft-referred-to phenomenon to make the point that “no one is perfect and all have failed enroute to their ultimate objective” is the major league baseball statistic relative to Babe Ruth’s long-standing homerun record. His strike outs far exceeded his home runs!

Yet, The Bambino is still considered, and rightly so, to be one of if not the greatest sports figure of all time. His failures are remembered no more – reminiscent of a biblical truth: “I will remember their sins no more!” Thus says the Lord God about those who truly repent.

When the last chapter of your earthly life and mine has been recorded, and we have made a transition from “the land of the dying” to “the land of the living”, failures of the past will no longer be held against those who made peace with God via repentance toward God and faith toward His Son Jesus Christ.

God’s plan of redemption will have proved to be far greater than our own plan might have been had the planning and execution of the plan been left to us.

In spite of faults, failures, sins, mistakes, errors of judgment, God can make something beautiful of our lives. In Genesis, we are told that, as the crowning achievement of God’s creation, we were created for the purpose of being in a personal relationship with God and becoming fully developed after His likeness . . . God was satisfied with all that He had created “for making” (Genesis 2:3) - for becoming, for growing, for developing. So,

According to God’s plan we were brought into this world - for becoming spiritual beings who could relate to God as Father and live as children in fellowship with Him. By His grace we have been redeemed from the consequence of the disruption of God’s plan by the making of poor choices.

Isaiah spoke of One Whom God would send to set free the captives of sin and heal the hurts caused by poor choices, announcing that He (Jesus) would give them “a crown of beauty instead of ashes.” (Isaiah 61:3)

Our study, Beauty from Ashes, looks at the lives of six people who made bad choices which led to wrongdoing but, by the grace of God, were each and every one redeemed from failure and restored to fellowship with and service to God. The first study could very well be about a sinner named Cunningham but instead it is about a sinner named Abraham.

Both of these “sinners saved by grace” learned, oftentimes the hard way, that failure is not final with the Father, provided we: (a) say “yes” to trusting what God tells us, and (b) say “no” to taking matters into our own hands. When we do, we then hear God say, (a) “I will” . . . and (b) “You will” . . . To which we all say, Amen!

First, say “yes” to trusting what God tells you – Genesis 15:1-6 . . .

In the ancient world, as in ours, every father hoped for a son - for through a son, the family name lived on from generation to generation.

Sarah had been unable to have children, and at the time God promised to make a great nation of Abram, she was 65 and he was 75. Nevertheless, despite how seemingly impossible it would be to fulfill this promise, “Abram believed the Lord and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

Abram’s faith put him in right standing with the Lord. But he was troubled as to the “how” of God’s promise. He did not hesitate to voice his concern to the Lord. Nor should we who at times get “hung up” on the “how” hesitate to tell God what we are concerned about.

Let me caution you, though, that rather than give you a direct answer, explicit in detail, God will most likely impress upon your mind and heart His assurance, or reassurance, that what He is telling you is indeed going to be, but not always the way you think it will or should be.

You see, Abram had concluded that God’s promise of descendants would be accomplished through his servant Eliezer whom Abram had designated as his heir. But no! God was going to make it happen in God’s own time, in God’s own way. Abram’s task was to wait on the Lord! Waiting is the essence of trust.

The Lord’s assurance of His presence forever plus His promises fulfilled is what Abram valued most - and so should it be with you and me. Trusting God requires that we wait patiently.

Failure is not final with our Father, provided we say “yes” to trusting what God tells us, and, provided we say “no” to the temptation of taking matters into our own hands as occurred ten years later in Abram and Sarah’s life – Genesis 16:1-5 . . .