Lessons Learned From Abraham

Lessons learned from Abraham

Genesis chapter 18:1-18:15

Introduction-

Last week we looked at the Tower of Babble.

The lessons learned as God dealt with pride and disobedience.

We saw that God used Noah and his family to humanly replenish the earth and that motives matter to God.

Just because everyone is doing it does not make it right. It is only right if it lines up with God’s word and God’s direction.

We ended last week realizing that God will use ordinary people to do extra-ordinary things if we will let him.

This mourning we will look at Abraham.

Abraham is considered the Father of the Christian faith. He was to be the Father of many nations.

God made a covenant with Abraham that affected everyone after him.

Abraham was the tenth generation after the flood.

The flood is in the rear view mirror and people continually get worse and worse.

Let me give you some background before the text this Mourning.

We are in the book of Genesis and will for a text be looking at Genesis chapter 18:1-15.

Abraham is a righteous man, meaning that he follows after God by Jewish customs.

He lives on his father’s land and has great wealth. He is married to his half-sister Sarai. Sarai cannot have children and is barren. Abraham is 75 years old.

God calls Abraham to take his wife and leave what he has in Ur. Remember that Ur was in Northern Iraq, and go to a land that He will show him. FAITH, EXTREME FAITH! (Many would stop as soon as God would have told them to give up what they had.)

Abraham moves into Canaan and great famine hits and they move toward Egypt. In Egypt, his wife was young and beautiful, Abraham lies and says that Sarai is his sister instead of his wife so that he is not killed by the king of Egypt. Chaos breaks out, disaster hits Egypt and the king figures out that Abraham is lying and sends Abraham and his wife out of the country.

In his calling, God tells Abraham that he will be the father of many nations- yet he has a wife that is barren and unable to have children.

He is running into all kinds of problems listening to God while things are going on in his life. (anyone else relate to that)

Abraham and his nephew Lot’s herdsmen cannot get along and are always fighting and Abraham and Lot decide to split and go in different directions. His nephew Lot chooses what appears to be the best land and takes land back to Canaan. Abraham goes the other way towards Egypt.

The covenant that God made with Abraham is called the Abrahamic covenant. It said that God would multiply his seed and from his seed the nation of Israel would be blessed and become a great nation.

For ten years, Abraham could not understand how God’s covenant with him would come to pass with his wife Sarai being barren. So Sarai and Abraham decide to speed up the process and that Abraham should sleep with his slave girl Hagar and have the promised seed of God. She immediately becomes pregnant and Abraham is now 85 years old.

Hagar and Sarai have issues as Hagar flaunt that she is pregnant and Sarai sends her packing with her son Ishmael.

The text this mourning is right between Abraham’s impatience with God and having a child with Hagar the slave girl and Abraham having a son with Sarai his wife as God has promised.

Maybe you are at an in between spot this mourning- between doing something hastily out of impatience. Maybe you have even made some mistakes already and waiting for God to do what He has promised.

In my life, fingers pointing at no one but myself, I have been impatient in waiting on God and done things to hurry the process. It has never gone well. There has always been consequences.

Genesis chapter 18:1-15 Read

Abraham is visited by the angel of the Lord and two angels. He recognizes these visitors as being important and throws down the hospitality to them. He has his wife prepare the finest meals and the best of everything they have. Wash your feet, feed you, house you, send you on your way.

(9) “Where is your wife Sarai?” in the tent he answers.

(10) “Then the Lord said, I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarai your wife will have a son.”

Sarai hears, she laughs out loud- thinks about her husband who is wore out and how she is wore out, and the years that she has been waiting.

(13) “Then the Lord said to Abraham, why did Sarai laugh and say, will I really have a child, now that I am old? Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarai will have a son.”