Passage: Gen. 13:1-4
It’s been observed that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is easy to see in our daily lives; how often do your victories give way to failures? How often does a great day end on a sour note? How frequently does a string of positive worship, reveal rotten fruit on the vine of our lives?
This trend goes beyond the individual experience of Christians and blends into the body of Christ as well. Richard Lovelace in his book "Dynamics of Spiritual Life" observed that the key problem with revivals is the failure to take into account that every assault on the enemies territory will be met with a vicious counterassault.
So if, perchance as we discussed this morning you should come under attack and if that attack should cause a failure. If because of that you find yourself not walking where you should... If you should look up one day this week and discover to your dismay that sin has crept into your life, I want to give you a strategy for STARTING OVER... AGAIN.
Do you remember what has just happened to Abram in Genesis 12:10-20? He convinced his wife and everyone with him to lie to Pharaoh and pretend she was his sister. He did this for all the reasons that we fall into sin.
Remember that the foundation of Abram’s failure was that he failed to take God’s word into account. Abram fell into fear, he fell into second guessing God, he fell into lying, he fell into sin, because he didn’t keep God’s word in his heart. He lied about his wife, and it nearly cost Sarai her purity, the Pharaoh his life, and Abram his safety. And it did cost the family a place to stay. They had to leave Egypt (12:20).
So what do you do when you realize that you’ve moved out of obedience and into sin? The first thing you should do is:...
1) RETRACE YOUR STEPS:
(Gen.. 13:1-2 / CREF: Gen.. 12:5,8,9)
"So Abram went up from Egypt to the Negev,
he and his wife and all that belonged to him, and Lot with him."
Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver and in gold."
Compare that text with Gen.. 12:5,8,9. There you see Abram doing the same things here, that he did at first. He took his money, his wife and his nephew and moved. In Genesis 12 he’s moving from north to south, while in Genesis 13 he’s moving from the South Back to the Middle of the country. Why is he doing that?
*** He’s returning to a previous point of victory. ***
My dad and I used to take annual trips up to Michigan in the spring to go mushroom hunting for Morel mushrooms. Typically we’d bring back enough for 1 or 2 good meals, the rest we ate in camp. But we always enjoyed the trip. What always amazed me was my dad’s ability to find his way in the forest. We would walk literally for miles around the woods, finding these little mushrooms.
Most of the time you had to walk with your eyes to the ground or you’d never get any. I remember more than once wondering where we were, and wondering, even more importantly if we’d ever get back to camp. But my dad never seems to have gotten lost. If I would say something to him, he could easily climb a hill and point through the woods to some landmark he’d picked out, which would clearly mark our path back.
That’s what you and I need to do. If we find ourselves getting lost, we need to climb back up the hill with Jesus, look around us and find the landmark we’ve picked out. Then we need to go back to that one place before our troubles started. We need to:...
2) RETURN TO THE PREVIOUS VICTORY:
(Gen. 13:3-4a)
"He went on his journeys from the Negev as far as Bethel,
to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai,
to the place of the altar which he had made there formerly;
Abram looked into his past and decided to return to where he had once walked well with God. Long before he had ventured into the southern hills of Canaan which is called the Negev, he had lived for a time in Bethel. And when he had lived there, he had worshipped God. There he had built an altar to God. There he had experienced the giving of the promise, he had known the fullness of the spirit and had enjoyed living in righteousness. That was Abram’s landmark.
That’s what we need to do when we find ourselves in sin, we need to RETRACE OUR STEPS. Get out of the area, There’s no use staying there. If Abram had stayed in Egypt they might have killed him, but they escorted him out instead. If you choose to ignore your surroundings and to stay where you are tempted to sin, you might well fall again. You have to leave the area; retrace your steps and return to the point of previous victory.
How do you do that? How do you return to a point of victory? There are many ways. You cannot go back in time, but you can return to the place. You can literally return to the geographical place that God last impacted your life. Or you can return to that mental state, to that point of utter reliance upon God, or to that point of the promise that God made to you, or you can return to that point, where God met you clearly! But you can only do that if you know where that spot is.
That’s why Abram built an altar. It was a physical mark, a literal place that God had met him, and he had met God. How can you build an altar in your life?
You can build an altar by keeping a journal. I’ve got a paper journal that I keep. I’ve had it for nearly 8 years now; I don’t write in it every day. That’s where I record the MAJOR Moment’s of spiritual victory in my life. If God uses me to markedly change and transform someone’s life, I write it down; so I can go back to it. If God uses his word, and his spirit to make a mark on my soul, I record it there so I can go back to it. When God moves, and speaks to me to chart my course in a new direction, I mark it down so I can go back to it.
Many times, I’ve returned to my little journal, and read from it. I’ve received from it, fresh faith, fresh reminders of God’s grace in my life, and I see in it challenges and reproofs. The challenges push me onward when the journey gets tough and the reproofs provide a sort of compass to help me find my way back.
You also can find your altar points upon which to mark your faith journey. But that Altar will really only do for you what it can if you will return to it.
In 1758 Robert Robinson looked into the pages of Scripture and penned these words:
Come, thou Fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet, sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it, mount of thy redeeming love.
Here I raise mine Ebenezer; hither by thy help I’m come;
and I hope, by thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God;
he, to rescue me from danger, interposed his precious blood.
O to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love;
here’s my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.
Late in life however, Robinson did stray from the faith. Once in a stagecoach, he sat by a lady who was reading a hymnbook. She showed him "Come, Thou Fount," saying how wonderful it was. He tried to change the subject, but couldn’t. Finally he said, "Madam, I am the unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds to enjoy the feelings I had then."1
When you find yourself apart from God, RETRACE your steps, RETURN to a place, a location or a situation where once you have experienced a victory. And then you:...
3) RENEW YOUR WALK:
(Gen. 13:4b / CREF Gen.. 12:8b)
and there Abram called on the name of the Lord."
It’s the same thing Abram did in Genesis 12:8 when he was there in Bethel the first time. He called upon the name of the Lord. It was there that Abram Prayed, it was at Bethel that God would repeat his great promises again to Abram in Gen.. 13:14-17.
I urge you then this evening, to renew your walk with God. You don’t have to be deep in sin before you know it’s necessary. I wonder what would have happened if Abram had built an altar in the Negev. If he had he would have been able to return there instead. It’s like hitting the save Game button in a video game. If something goes wrong you just go back to the last point of success.
So even if sin in your life isn’t a problem, perhaps right here, right now is a good time for you to build an altar to God. Perhaps right here, right now is the place in your spiritual walk to declare a place of victory.
Because Satan is out there, and he wants to crush you. He wants to destroy you. With every day that you assault his territory he’s going to respond with a viscous counterattack. And eventually, you may fall into sin.
When that happens I want you to be able to RETRACE your steps to here. I want you to be able to RETURN to this point of Victory, and then I want you to RENEW your Walk again.
