Dr. Marilyn S. Murphree Word count 2574
Valley Grove Assembly of God
September 16, 2012
Bacon, Tomato Sandwiches
Genesis 12:1-4
Genesis 15:1-6
“Let us not be weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” Galatians 6:9
I love bacon, tomato sandwiches. I could eat them every day, but after about four days of them Walter says, “I pass on the sandwich.” I have been waiting all summer for my tomatoes to ripen, but so far, I’ve only had one small tomato, and it has a tooth mark in the top of it where the groundhog had visited. One yellow one is almost ripe, but whoever heard of making a bacon/tomato sandwich with a yellow tomato? Earlier, I was watching another small tomato by the porch steps. It was progressing very well, but a day or two later it had completely disappeared. I think the groundhog that lives under the porch got it.
You might wonder what bacon/tomato sandwiches have to do with today’s message. I think there are quite a few parallels between the two.
This summer has been an exceptionally dry one where the grass has browned out and didn’t need to be cut for weeks. My tomato plants did not do well, and only a few spindly leaves appeared at the first part of the summer. The strawberry plants wilted every day and only produced an occasional berry or two. The entire crop for the green bell pepper plant was one small pepper.
During a season like this, it is easy to get discouraged. Even though we watered the tomatoes, they still didn’t produce tomatoes for a long time. And then they didn’t turn ripe except for one that the groundhog took a bite out of. It is now the middle of September and there are a few green tomatoes, but they are very slow in ripening. I may have to give in and go buy some tomatoes at Whitten’s. We’ll see.
Today’s scripture is one of encouragement for us in spite of how things go sometimes. It tells us “….we shall reap if we faint not.” The first part of the verse says, “Do not be weary in well doing, for we shall reap if we faint not.”
This scripture applies to many areas of our life. Sometimes we pray and pray about things in our life, and it seems as if God is silent. We ask but once we say Amen, things are still the same. A week or so later, things are still the same—at least on the outward surface. It looks as if God has ignored our prayers or that he is not going to answer because the answer is delayed. Matthew Henry once said, “Don’t think that because an answer is delayed, it is denied.” There could be many reasons why the answer has not come yet. We don’t always know what is hindering our prayer.
1. When God is Silent: Sometimes God seems silent in our life. One reason I believe could be because he wants to see if we are willing to stand in faith. Abram had received promises of God in Genesis 12:1. Abram listened to these promises and was quick to do what God told him to do. Maybe he thought that the answer would be coming right away. God said, I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing.” Abram was quick to start out on his journey. Maybe he wouldn’t even have begun had he known that God was going to delay the answer for such a long time. Maybe I wouldn’t have even bothered to plant tomato plants had I known that it would be such an extremely dry summer that it not produce the crop I had hoped for. Had I known that I wouldn’t have had the first bacon/tomato sandwich until late in September, would I have even bothered to spend the money buying plants at Lowes? Maybe not. During Abram’s journey through the land, there was a famine, and he got sidetracked going down into Egypt. So even if God had made some substantial promises, it was not the best of times or the best of circumstances for him. And God seemed silent a good part of the time. That didn’t concern God. He was working behind the scenes and trying to get Abram to just hold steady in faith and keep right on going. Some other things that occurred during this time was that there was disagreement between the herdsmen of Abram’s cattle and Lot’s cattle. So Abram tried to get this straightened out and to choose where he wanted to take his cattle and where he would go. He got that straightened out even though Lot took the best land. It didn’t matter to Abram. Then the Lord came back on the scene and said to Abram, “I want you to look to the east and to the west and the north and the south and for all the land which you see, I will give it to you and your descendents forever.”
At that time Abram didn’t have the first descendent. I will make your descendents as numerous as the dust of the earth. God told him to walk the land and everyplace he stepped was to be his.
Interspersed with the silence of God were times when God came back on the scene in a visible, audible way and gave him more direction and promises. Each time Abram continued on in faith. There is a verse I like in Romans 4:17, “And Abraham calleth those things that are not as though they were.” That showed us his faith in action. He is saying, “I don’t see a sign of God working out this promise—but I am calling it already done. Well, it was already done if he looked at the promise through the eyes of faith.
What do we do when God seems silent for a long time? We are tempted to try to figure out the whys in our mind. Why this is not happening for God is not answering. Maybe it’s not God’s will, maybe God doesn’t do this today—a lot of people say this about healing—it’s not God’s will to heal. He just did that to get the church started… Another scripture I would point out is the one found in Hebrews 13:8, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.”
A lot of people will use the unworthy excuse—God is not answering my prayer because I am not worthy. I am not good enough. I’m not spiritual enough….Another scripture refutes this kind of attitude. In Acts 10:34, Peter said in his sermon to the Gentiles, “I perceive that God is no respecter of persons…” What he will do for one person he can very well do for another.
When God seemed silent and Abram was “believing in the dark,” the Bible tells us in Romans 4:21 that Abram staggered not at the promises of God through unbelief but was strong in faith giving glory to God and being fully persuaded that what he had promised He was also able to perform.”
When God seems silent and slow to answer our prayers, we caneither give up and quit and use some of the excuses we come up with as to the“ifs” and “whys” or we can hold steady and wait on God to perform it. Hebrews 10:36 tells us, “for ye have need of patience that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.”
Another scripture that is an encouragement to us is one in Hebrews 10:35, “Do not cast away, therefore your confidence which hath great recompense of reward.” This is saying to you, “Do not THROW AWAY your confidence in God… This goes along with the scripture Romans 8:25 that says, “with patience, WAIT for it.”
ILLUSTRATION: In dog obedience school one of the commands that we had Barkley learn was to tell him, “Barkley, go to your bed…when he does that, then we say, WAIT. He is to lie down and wait for 60 seconds. Then we are to say, “Barkley, come, and he gets a treat. If he gets up before he is called, he doesn’t get his treat. If we don’t wait on God, we don’t get our answer.
If we are a Christian for very long, we learn that God doesn’t answer our prayers immediately when we say Amen. What do we do between the Amen and the THERE IT IS?
We do like Abram did. We continue to move in the direction that God is telling us to move. We stand firm in our faith and put the promises that are in the Word into practice. We take the word of God and speak it out. Take it and Say it until it becomes a part of us. It is not head faith anymore. It is heart faith.
Believe that God is working behind the scenes to make what we have planted grow.
As you reflect on what you have sown this year, what harvest are you expecting? Do you believe that all you are going to get is weeds? Just spindly plants? Or a bumper crop?
What are your prayers going to produce for you? Are you going to receive healing and restored health? Are you going to have the money to pay your bills? Are you going to have the blessing of God on your life like Abram did so that you can BE A BLESSING to other people?
If you are believing, it doesn’t really matter if God seems silent or not. He has already said, “I’ll never leave you nor forsake you….God is saying, “I’m not going anywhere.”
2. Handling Obstacles: If you can’t handle obstacles, you are not going to get to the promise. You’ll give up long before the answer comes.
ILLUSTRATION: I had two tomato plants by the steps on the porch. I was watching one tomato and it was a small one but doing just fine. The next day, I went out to water it and check it, and it had disappeared. It was just gone. The groundhog that lives under the porch had probably stolen it. That was a disappointment to me, but I had been watching it for days. There were outside forces like no rain, bugs, and groundhogs, deer and rabbits, but when it comes to our prayers, there is other things that are obstacles to us. Not only do we have things that come against us in the form of fortuitous circumstances—like getting laid off from a job, getting sick, or something sometimes we have no control over but we also are our own worse enemy. Matthew Henry said, “We barr our own doors” That means we have control over a lot of adverse things that happen but we only make it worse for ourselves. For example there are both extrinsic things and intrinsic things. We have a lack of confidence in ourselves at times, we say, “it will never happen.” That is an example of barring our own door.
We ask,”Can God?” when we need to turn it around and say, “God can..”
Sometimes we are hit hard by both extrinsic and intrinsic circumstances. We get so discouraged that we are at the point of quitting, Will I ever have that bacon/tomato sandwich? What if the entire summer goes by and the frost comes and kills the plants and I have to do without? Well, giving up is never an option. II John 1:8 tells us, “Watch out that you do not lose what you have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully.”
The devil wants to not only steal from us, but the scripture says he wants to make total work of us…he wants to steal, kill, and destroy us. If he can discourage us to the point of quitting, we will never be healed, we will never prosper, we will never be blessed in order to bless others around us.
Setbacks come to all of us. They sometimes get us off track. We get our eyes off the promises of God and on to the problem at hand. We often beat ourselves down over our doubt and unbelief. We tell ourselves that not only are we disappointed in ourselves but that God is disappointed in us. A scripture I like in Psalms says, “For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.” Psalm 103:14.
He is saying, I understand and I want you to pick yourself up and dust yourself off and move on. Get over your pity party and I will help you. The answer is on the way. It won’t be long now. Read my promises and take them to heart. Speak them out loud. Take the promises and say them until you know that they are yours.
3. The Role of Patience. Today’s scripture was “be not weary in well doing for ye shall reap if ye faint not.”
Sometimes people will say, “I prayed for patience and every since I have had all kinds of trouble.” I have always heard, “Don’t pray for patience you will get more trouble than you want.”
A scripture in Romans 5:3 says, “Tribulation worketh patience.” The trouble that you are trying to avoid, helps to make a more patient person out of you. And in these days, we probably all have enough of adverse circumstances to cultivate that patience we need to endure. James 1:3,4 gives us another scripture that sheds some light on that. It says, “the testing of your faith worketh patience.” When we pray and STAND FIRM in belief, that is a test. Do we pass the test or don’t we?
There is a scripture in Ephesians 6:13 that talks about putting on the whole armor of God and the ending of the sentence says, “…and having done all, TO STAND.
One woman said, “well, I have been standing for a week, and God hasn’t answered yet.” Abraham stood for a lot longer than a week. “…and having done all, to stand…” for as long as it takes to get your answer.
CONCLUSION: Well, now, what about my bacon and tomato sandwich. Do I forget about it? “No way,” There is still time for bacon and tomato sandwiches for me. A few days ago I found four ripe tomato plants on the vine, two red ones and two yellow ones. This time there was no groundhog tooth mark found in any of them. I may just have one made with a yellow tomato. That would be a first. And if this tomato patch can produce some tomatoes for my bacon tomato sandwiches, I am sure that in due season, God can and will answer my prayers. Even when He seemed silent all summer and there wasn’t a tomato in sight, even when the groundhog stole the one tomato I was watching like the devil tries to steal things from us, and even though I didn’t have much patience to wait and wait on that sandwich, I did wait. So when you pray today, remember that the answer will be coming along in due season.
“Hey, Walter, how about a bacon/tomato sandwich?”
