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[0:00] Scripture reference this morning is taken from Genesis chapter 12 verses 10 through 20.! That's Genesis chapter 12 verses 10 through 20.

[0:17] ! Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land.

[0:29] When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai, his wife, I know that you are beautiful in appearance.

[0:40] And when the Egyptians see you, they will say, this is his wife. Then they will kill me, but they will let you live.

[0:52] Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake.

[1:04] When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. And when the princess of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh.

[1:23] And the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. And for her sake, he dealt well with Abram. And he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels.

[1:42] But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife. So Pharaoh called Abram and said, what is this you have done to me?

[2:00] Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? And why did you say she is my sister so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife.

[2:15] Take her and go. And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him. And they sent him away with his wife and all that he had.

[2:30] Thank you very much, Faye. But last week, we considered the call of Abram. How God called him out of a life of idol worship to worship the true and the living God.

[2:46] And the Lord called Abram and told him to go from his country and his kindred and his father's house to a place that he would show him. And Abram obeyed.

[2:57] And when he arrived in the land of Canaan, the Lord appeared to him and said, I will give this land to your offspring. And that was meaningful to Abram because Abram had been married long enough to know that he and Sarai were not having children.

[3:19] The Bible tells us that Abram built an altar to the Lord. And then he continued to make his journey in the land. And he came to Bethel. And at Bethel, he built another altar.

[3:31] And for the first time we see, Abram called on the name of the Lord. He called on the name of Yahweh. And when we consider Genesis 12, the beginning of it, it is nothing short of a mountaintop experience.

[3:49] He goes from worshiping false gods to worshiping the true and the living God. And in light of his mountaintop experience, where we consider the passage that is before us this morning, it can rightly be said that Abram went from a glorious call to a disgraceful fall.

[4:12] He came to one of the lowest points in his life. Abram, who had turned from idol worship and built two altars to the living God, calling on the name of the Lord, now finds himself lying, exposing his wife to sexual violation.

[4:37] And he showed that he cared more about himself than he cared about his wife. And he feared the Egyptians more than he feared God. But you know, while all this is true about Abram in this passage, this account about Abram's unfaithfulness in our Bibles is not to teach us about Abram's unfaithfulness.

[5:03] Instead, it is to teach us about God's faithfulness. And what it teaches us about God's faithfulness is this, that God remains faithful to his people and faithful to his promises.

[5:19] He remembers his promises even when his people are unfaithful to him and even when his people forget his promises. Brothers and sisters, this is what this passage is about.

[5:33] This passage is not primarily about us focusing on Abram and how unfaithful he was to his wife and how unfaithful he was to God. This is to remind us.

[5:44] When we consider this passage this morning, I pray this is what we leave with. I pray that we don't leave just thinking about Abram. How could he do that? How could he do that? I want us to leave this morning marveling at a faithful God who remained faithful to Abram even though he was unfaithful and a God who remained faithful to his promise even though the one to whom he made the promise forgot those promises.

[6:15] Let me pray for us before we look at the text more closely. Father, would you come in this moment and speak to our hearts. Lord, you know what we need.

[6:25] You know where each one of us is. And God, although we are together, you are able by your spirit to speak in ways that we need to hear you, not just collectively but also individually.

[6:40] Father, would you cause our hearts to be fine-tuned to your word in this moment. Cause anything that would be distracting to us to be set aside. And would you speak to us.

[6:51] Lord, I pray that you'd anoint me by your spirit. I pray that you would cause your spirit to be a witness in all of our hearts that this is God's word.

[7:03] Would you cause us to both hear it and to heed it for your glory. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. I want to consider this passage this morning under two simple headings.

[7:17] The first one is an unfaithful saint. That's a good description for Abram in this account. Abram was a saint who was called out of darkness, the darkness of idol worship, to worship the true and the living God.

[7:33] He was set apart by God for God's purposes. And that's what it means to be a saint, to be set apart by God for God's purposes.

[7:44] But here in this passage, we see him, though a saint, being unfaithful, first to the Lord and then to his wife. Abram who left in faith, the certainty of what he knew back in Haran, for the uncertainty of the unknown that was in front of him, he finds himself in a situation where he has no faith.

[8:13] We're not told how long this famine existed in the land. But in verse 10, we're told that he went down to Egypt to sojourn there.

[8:24] He just went there for a while. He didn't plan to stay there. But in the circumstances, he felt he needed to go there. But there's no evidence that Abram prayed before heading down to Egypt.

[8:38] He would have known that Egypt, having the Nile River, was well positioned to sustain human life and the life of animals and to be able to raise crops in the midst of a drought.

[8:52] So he headed to Egypt with his wife, Sarai, and also with his nephew, Lot. And as they were about to enter Egypt, he realizes he has a problem.

[9:07] His problem is that his wife, Sarai, is very beautiful and Abram feared that the godless Egyptians will kill him and take his wife. And evidently, this must have been a practice in those days where you go into a strange place and if they loved your wife and they thought you were married, well, they killed you and they take your wife.

[9:29] So this must have been some practice in that day. And so Abram devises this lie with Sarai's help to tell everyone that she is his sister and not his wife.

[9:45] And he felt certain that this scheme would work and obviously Sarai felt it would work too because she went along with it. But one of the interesting things about this, and we'll see this as we work our way through Genesis, when we come to chapter 20, we'll see that Abram does this again.

[10:03] He does it with Abimelech some years later. And what we see is that Abram had concocted this deception from day one when he left Haran with his wife Sarai.

[10:19] And when he lied to Abimelech, the Lord appeared to Abimelech in a dream and said, don't you touch this woman. Because she is another man's wife.

[10:29] And Abimelech feared the Lord and so he confronted Abram and said, what have you done? Why have you done this to me? And this is what Abram says to him. I'll just read it. You don't need to turn there.

[10:40] This is Genesis 20 verses 11 to 13. Abram said, I did it because I thought there is no fear of God in all this place. There's no fear of God at all in this place.

[10:53] And they will kill me because of my wife. Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father, though not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife.

[11:06] And when God caused me to wander from my father's house, I said to her, so he's going way back to when they left Haran. He said, when God caused me to wander from my father's house, I said to her, this is the kindness you must do to me.

[11:21] At every place where we come, which we come, say of me, he is my brother. So this is what Abram did from the moment he set out on this journey.

[11:33] God had gloriously called him, and he was fearful. And so he concocted this deceptive scheme from day one when he left his father's house.

[11:48] And so when they entered Egypt, really he was just telling Sarai what he had already told. He was reminding her what she was supposed to do. And sure enough, they go into Egypt, and the Egyptians find that she's a beautiful woman.

[12:02] She's the talk of the town. And Pharaoh's princes recommended a Pharaoh, said, man, there's a beautiful woman in town. And Pharaoh says, go get her. And they take Sarai into Pharaoh's household, and she joins the line of his many wives.

[12:23] And Pharaoh was generous with Abram, gave him things that Abram didn't have before, gave him camels and donkeys and male and female donkeys, and gave him oxen.

[12:38] And really, he was paying Abram, in a sense, what they would have considered like a bride price. When you got a bride, you would compensate. But he didn't know that he was giving Abram all these valuables for his wife.

[12:55] And I wonder what was going through Abram's mind. I mean, there's one thing, when you start this thing out, and there are some theologians who believe that what Abram was doing was a practice where a brother would stand in place of a father, and if you were going to come to get his sister, they'd have to come to you and ask for permission and all this stuff, and you could kind of put them off and say, well, do this and do that.

[13:25] And this is what we see later on happen with Jacob when he was trying to marry one of Laban's daughters. He kept on, you know, changing things, and some say that's what was going on with Abram, that that's why he did what he did, but we don't know.

[13:39] That's speculation. But even if Abram was thinking like that, I wonder what was going on in his mind when the princes came for Sarai.

[13:54] When they came to take her in Pharaoh's house, and he watches his wife going into Pharaoh's house.

[14:07] I wonder what was going through his mind. Here he is, the man whom God called, the man whom God promised that he is going to bless all the families of the earth through with the gospel.

[14:23] And he is allowing his wife to be selfishly taken into Pharaoh's house as one of his wives, and he accepts gifts from Pharaoh's hand in return.

[14:37] And God had made these glorious promises to him. God also said to him, he said, those who bless you, I will bless, those who curse you, I will curse. God says, I'm going to protect you, I'm going to take care of you.

[14:48] Whatever you come to. But in that moment, Abram's fear got the better part of him, and he was remembering the promise that God said, I will take care of you. And he gave in to his fears, and he put his wife in harm's way to be sexually violated.

[15:05] Abram and his fear drove him to be unfaithful to God, to be unfaithful to his wife. He cared more about pleasing himself than pleasing God.

[15:16] And he was more concerned of protecting himself than protecting his wife. Abram, the man of faith, in this situation, lacked faith.

[15:31] Abram was a saint, but he was an unfaithful saint. You know, it's easy for us to read this account this morning, and we could just think, well, we're reading a story in the Bible.

[15:43] And I pray we are doing that this morning, brothers and sisters. Let's not read this account in a vacuum. I shared last Sunday that Abram's call out of Egypt is very similar to our call out of a world of sin.

[16:00] Our call out of a world of sin mirrors Abram's call out of a land of idolatry and darkness. And you know what? When we follow Christ, just like Abram, we're going to meet our challenges.

[16:13] We're going to meet our obstacles along the way. And I think we need to see this as someone who is starting out to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. A challenge comes up.

[16:24] And how do we respond? Abram's challenge was a famine in the land. For us, it might be loss of a job.

[16:36] It might be the loss of a business. It might be a health situation. It might be the loss of a relationship. It might be something else. But whatever it is, it brings fear to us and it causes fear to fill our souls.

[16:54] And it's in those moments where we can so easily respond the same way Abram did. Like Abram, we can forget the glorious promises God has made to us.

[17:05] One of the most glorious promises God has made to us is I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. The unlying God, the God who cannot lie, has made us that promise.

[17:16] You know what, brothers and sisters, that is better than God putting money in our bank account. You think about it. Would you rather the God of the universe say, I will always be with you, or would you rather him just give you some money and send you on your way?

[17:32] If you choose the money, the money is going to run out at some point. But if we have the promise of the God who cannot lie to say to us, I will always be with you.

[17:44] When you're in the fire, I'm going to be with you. When you're in the water, they will not overtake you. You will not drown in them. He has made this promise to us. But when we face challenges, it is so easy, just like Abraham, to forget the glorious promises that God has made to us.

[18:05] And just like Abraham, instead of seeking the Lord, we lean on our own understanding. And we do what seems right in our eyes.

[18:17] Abraham thought the right thing to do was to go down to Egypt. The brothers and sisters, God was able to take care of Abraham in the land of Negev.

[18:31] where there was a famine. He's able to do that because he is God. He's able to take care of his people in the midst of a famine. And so it was not a natural thing or automatic thing for him to leave and go down to Egypt.

[18:47] And we know this because when Pharaoh finds out his lie and Pharaoh runs him out of Egypt, where does he go? He goes right back to Negev where he came from.

[18:58] And there's no indication that the famine was over. But he goes right back to where he was and God was the one who was going to take care of him in the same place that he had left.

[19:14] But I wonder what was going on in Sarai's mind. I wonder what was going on when the princes from Pharaoh's household came to get her.

[19:29] And Abram was right there pretending to go along with it, believing, yeah, she is my sister. I wonder what was going on in her mind when they came and they were taking her away.

[19:47] The Apostle Peter, in 1 Peter chapter 3, he seems to touch on what Sarai was feeling, what she was going through in that moment where she was being taken into Pharaoh's wife, Pharaoh's house as his wife.

[20:07] And she knew what awaited her. I want to read it. It should be projected on the screen for you as well. This is Peter in 1 Peter chapter 3. he is addressing husbands and wives and towards the end he says this to wives, calling them to submit to their husbands.

[20:26] This is what he says. For this, this is in verse 5, for this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves by submitting to their husbands.

[20:39] As Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord. Listen to this last sentence. And you are her children if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.

[20:56] Evidently, what Peter is referring to is this frightening situation that Sarah found herself in with her husband who was more concerned about protecting himself than caring for his wife and was putting her in harm's way.

[21:12] and Peter says it was a frightening thing. He says, but Sarah did not fear that which was frightening. And he caused wives in general to take the same approach.

[21:29] And I think he does for good reason. He does for good reason because sadly many times we as husbands can be like like Abram. Many times we can put our wives second to ourselves.

[21:45] Many times we can put our wives in frightening situations and they're called to submit to our leadership and what he's saying to these wives, what he's commending to these wives is you must trust God and you must not fear what is frightening.

[22:04] Now before anyone misunderstands me this morning, I'm not saying that if your husband tries something like what Abram did, that you must go along with him.

[22:17] I'm not saying that at all. But the principle is still the same, that even though a husband may not try something as selfish as that, there are times in a marriage where a husband makes a decision and it is a frightening decision for a wife because she's convinced that it's the wrong decision.

[22:38] It's not the right thing. And Peter says, don't fear anything that is frightening but trust yourself to the Lord.

[22:52] Again, brothers and sisters, none of us is exempt from failing the way Abram failed and even failing graphically in our walk with the Lord.

[23:04] None of us is exempt. And if you think you're exempt this morning, you are at risk. If you believe that you're not capable of this kind of failure, this kind of contradictory living in your walk with the Lord, you are at risk.

[23:25] Because you will go on in your pride, you will go on in your self-confidence, and you will not draw near to the Lord and say, God, have mercy on me and help me to be faithful in every circumstance.

[23:39] None of us, brothers and sisters, is exempt. Like Abram, we can forget God's promises. Like Abram, we can allow our fears to cause us to not pray and not console the Lord.

[23:54] As Brother Linden prayed for us this morning, one of the things he prayed about was that there have been times when we have moved on and we have made decisions without consulting the Lord.

[24:06] Brothers and sisters, none of us is exempt this morning. And I want that to settle in our hearts. But again, this account does not end with the unfaithfulness of a saint.

[24:27] God. Instead, this account ends with the faithfulness of God. And this is my second and my final point, a faithful God.

[24:40] Notice we're told in verse 17 that God afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife. We're not told anything about the nature of the plagues.

[24:52] We don't know at what point God brought the plagues. plagues. But we have some idea when you consider the plagues in Exodus, we have some idea that these were serious plagues and obviously more than one.

[25:09] And so God was supernaturally afflicting the household of Pharaoh. And it was limited to Pharaoh's household. We don't know the point they came.

[25:20] We don't know how long this situation lasted. And we're not even sure how Pharaoh became aware that Sarai was Abram's wife.

[25:31] We're not told. Possibly everyone in Pharaoh's house was afflicted by these plagues. Some of them would have been boiled. And it could very well be that God protected Sarai and she was untouched.

[25:50] And so obviously that would raise questions. How is it that you're in the house and you're the only one who's not affected in this way? And perhaps naturally Sarai would have confessed when questioned.

[26:04] But we don't know for sure. But what we know is that Pharaoh found out somehow that Sarah was Abram's wife and he confronted him.

[26:18] And in case you're wondering why we're not told how Pharaoh found out, the reason is we don't need to know. It's not important to know.

[26:30] What is important to know is that he somehow found out. And what is even more important than that is that God showed mercy to Sarai and protected her even when her own husband left her to the mercy of Pharaoh.

[26:47] while he protected himself and accumulated wealth from Pharaoh, who with certainty was going to sexually violate Sarai had God not intervened.

[27:04] There are some people who think that Pharaoh actually slept with Sarai. But such a conclusion reads into the text what is not there.

[27:14] And there are very good reasons to conclude that God did not permit him to sleep with Sarai. First of all, she would have been joining a long list of, a long line of other wives who Pharaoh had.

[27:31] And you would remember from the book of Esther, when Esther went into the king's harem, she had to go through some preparation procedures and it took quite a long time before she was able to come before the king.

[27:48] And I believe that there was something very similar. Sarah didn't just jump from outside and into the arms of Pharaoh. There was no doubt some process, some delay, some grooming that was supposed to take place before she had ever come before the king.

[28:08] But another reason that we can conclude that Pharaoh didn't sleep with Sarah is for the reason I mentioned earlier in Genesis chapter 20, the situation with Abimelech.

[28:23] The fact that Abram and Sarah used the same lie with Abimelech is good enough proof that the lie worked the first time and they thought it would work the second time.

[28:36] I don't think that if she had been violated with Pharaoh that Abram or Sarah would have agreed to lie and put her in harm's way again with another king.

[28:48] I think the fact that they did it was, oh, we got away with it the first time and so they try it the second time. But God protected Sarah because God is faithful.

[29:02] And the Bible says those who put their trust in him will never be put to shame. She put her trust in God because she couldn't put a trust in her husband. But you know what?

[29:15] God was not only faithful to Sarah. God was faithful to a man who was unfaithful. God was faithful to Abram even though Abram was unfaithful.

[29:31] God didn't abandon him. And this takes us back to the call of Abram. And we should remember it's very similar to our own call.

[29:41] When God calls us out of darkness into light. Notice if you look back in verses 2 and 3 in Genesis 12. Notice that God is the one making all the promises. He calls Abram to himself.

[29:54] Abram was worshipping the moon. Abram was into idol worship. Abram was not looking for God. God called him and God said to him, I'm going to do these things. I'm going to make you a great nation.

[30:05] I'm going to bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and those who dishonor you. I will curse. And then later in verse 7, when Abram arrived in the land, the Lord said to him, I will give this land to you, to your offspring.

[30:29] Brothers and sisters, God is faithful to his promises. And when God called Abram, God knew that Abram was going to fail at every point that he failed.

[30:40] God wasn't surprised by his failures. God knew it in advance and he still called him. And God didn't have a plan B with Abram.

[30:52] He was the one through whom God had promised, I'm going to bless the whole world. I'm going to bless all the families of the earth through you. There was no plan B. God had no plan for it to be any way other than with Abram.

[31:07] And yet, Abram, as we'll see as we work our way through, he was a stumbling saint along the way. Brothers and sisters, it's not just to Abram that God was faithful and will always be faithful.

[31:30] God remains faithful to all of his children, even in the midst of their failures. You know, this is one of the most important lessons that we can teach a young believer.

[31:46] One of the most important lessons we can teach a young believer is that God does not abandon his children when they sin. He doesn't abandon them. even when they sin in the most serious ways, as some of God's children sometimes do.

[32:08] And this does not in any way diminish what Scripture calls us to. We are called to live holy lives. We are called to live with our lives unspotted from the world.

[32:22] But here's the reality. The reality is that just like Abram, we sometimes find ourselves as unfaithful stumbling saints. Sin breaks our fellowship with the Lord.

[32:40] It interrupts our fellowship with the Lord. But sin does not break our relationship with the Lord. If it did, we would have to keep getting saved over again and over again every single time we sin.

[32:50] And what we see with Abram, I mean, you read this passage, you read all of this, and all we see is the kindness of the Lord and the faithfulness of the Lord to this man who was unfaithful.

[33:10] And, you know, we shouldn't think it's strange that God does not abandon his children when they sin. None of us, especially those of us who are parents. We who are evil, we don't abandon our children when they sin.

[33:25] Even when they sin in the most graphic ways, we remain faithful to them. We draw near to them. We try to help them. How much more will our Heavenly Father, who loves perfectly, who knows all things, hold on to those who are truly his own, even in their worst failures, even in their worst sin?

[33:45] And I stress this this morning because there are so many who somehow came to believe that their relationship with God was based on their performance, and when they failed, they felt they failed too greatly, their sin was too grievous, and so they, instead of repenting, they went deeper into their sin, instead of repenting and returning home.

[34:10] And I want to say to us this morning, God does not abandon his children when they fail and when they sin. And we see this with Abram, we see this with the man he called who sinned in such a graphic way against the Lord and against his own wife.

[34:26] The Lord didn't throw him away, the Lord did not abandon him. I don't know why this is on my heart this morning so strong, but I want to say to us.

[34:45] There is no sin that is greater than the grace of God. It doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter what you have done, if you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, he will remain faithful to you, even when you aren't faithful to him.

[35:05] And here's why, because he cannot deny himself, he cannot deny himself. He will not do tit-for-tat with us. We do that. We push others away when they don't perform as we want them to perform, but not our faithful God.

[35:22] And we see him doing it with Abram. As I said last week, the two most important men in our faith are the Lord Jesus Christ and then Abram.

[35:36] Those are the two figures that stand out above all else in scripture. And Abram is the one who we see failing in this particular way, and God remains faithful to him.

[35:51] This is one of the reasons I love the hymn, Marvelous Grace. I love it because it reminds me, not just of a beautiful hymn, but it reminds me of the truth of scripture, that God's grace is greater far greater than all of our sin, than our greatest sin.

[36:13] And brothers and sisters, that is good news. That is good news that no matter how I fail, I can go home to my father who will not fail and who will receive me and who will restore me and who will forgive me and who will cleanse me and will remain faithful to me even when I have been unfaithful.

[36:45] It's quite interesting the way this account ends. Pharaoh rebukes Abram and there's no recorded response from Abram.

[36:57] It's as it were he was speechless. He was no doubt ashamed that he had let God down, ashamed that he had let his wife down and there's no recorded speech.

[37:10] And Pharaoh gave his man orders and told him to leave, told him to go with your wife, take your wife and all that you have and go. And I imagine what that conversation was like with Abram and Sarah as they went on their donkey, Abram with all the things he got from Pharaoh.

[37:30] I wonder what they were talking about. I think the wives probably have a better idea of what she would have been saying to him than we men. But there's no recorded response.

[37:45] Abram had also been a very poor example to his nephew Lot. When you read the account, Lot was right there with him as well. I saw the other day this man took his young daughter on an interview with him.

[38:01] This is not a true story. I'm sure it was just something that I saw on Facebook. So he's in an interview and he's answering all these questions and he's lying through his teeth.

[38:13] And his daughter says, that's not true. And he just goes on lying and lying and lying and she just walks off because she knows he is telling lies.

[38:27] And so Lot was right there listening to his uncle lie to say, this is my wife, my sister, when that was his wife. He was a poor example to his nephew.

[38:44] We're going to cover this next Sunday, but I want us to look at the first four verses of Genesis 13. And listen to what it says.

[38:56] You can just look over it. It's right at the end of the chapter. It says, so Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had and Lot with him, notice Lot with him, into the Negev.

[39:11] Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver and in gold. And he journeyed from the Negev as far as Bethel to the place where his tent had been at the beginning between Bethel and Ai.

[39:27] to the place where he had made an altar at the first. And there Abram called upon the name of the Lord.

[39:38] Again, notice, what does Abram do? He goes right back to the place where he couldn't trust God, where he couldn't believe God. He went right back to Negev. Again, no indication that the famine was over.

[39:52] And we see him doing in the end what he should have done in the beginning. we see him calling on the name of the Lord. He should have done that in the beginning.

[40:05] Later, as we work our way through Genesis, Isaac came to a very similar situation. There was a famine in the land. And he was minded to go down to Egypt. And the Lord said to him, don't you go down to Egypt.

[40:18] Dwell in this land. You stay in this land and I will take care of you. God blessed him in the midst of a famine. Ten times over what he had sown in the ground.

[40:32] Generally, you don't sow in famine. You keep what you have in famine because you put it in the ground, there's no guarantee it's going to come up. But the Lord blessed him in that famine. And so it was not a foregoing conclusion that Abraham was supposed to leave.

[40:44] But now he's calling on the name of the Lord. Initially, he would have been calling on the name of the Lord for direction, for guidance. Lord, what do I do? And now, no doubt, he's calling on the name of the Lord in repentance and seeking forgiveness for his unfaithfulness, both to God and to his wife.

[41:07] But it's still a beautiful thing that even after his failure, he's able to call on the name of the Lord. And brothers and sisters, I want to say that to us this morning.

[41:20] The first place we should run, the safest place we should run when we have failed is we run to the throne of grace. We come to the Savior, we come to our Father, and we cry out to him, and we throw ourselves on his mercy, and I believe that's what Abraham was doing after this graphic failure.

[41:42] Failing God, and failing his wife. He was praying to a God who remained faithful even though he himself was unfaithful.

[41:57] But you know, we peel back all the layers of the famine and Abram's fear. You know what the bottom line issue is? The bottom line issue is that Abram did not love his wife as he loved himself.

[42:13] He loved himself more. He was willing to lie to protect himself and expose his wife to sexual violation rather than tell the truth and be willing to lay down his life to protect his wife.

[42:30] And there's no doubt when you read scripture that Sarai, she respected Abram. She obeyed Abram. But the reality is she couldn't trust him.

[42:40] she couldn't trust him to do what was in her best interest. Because Abram didn't love her as he should.

[42:51] He loved himself more. She had to look to Christ for that. Brothers and sisters, as we consider Abram this morning, let's look to the one whom Abram's failure to love his wife and lay down his life for, points us to.

[43:14] See, Abram's failure doesn't point us to him. Abram's failure is to point us to the one who is unlike Abram. The one who perfectly succeeded at every point where Abram graphically failed.

[43:32] The one who perfectly loved his bride and sacrificially laid down his life for her, that he might save her, that he might sanctify her. That husband who is the better Abram, that husband who is Christ, who laid his life down for his bride, the church.

[43:53] And to all the married men, including myself, Christ is our example. Christ is our example for loving our wives. But I think if all of us are honest this morning, we would say that we have been more like Abram in loving our wives than we have been like Christ.

[44:19] We have been at times unwilling to sacrifice ourselves as we need to in order to love our wives and care for our wives and to protect our wives.

[44:31] We've been like Abram, not sacrificing the way Christ has sacrificed for his bride that he gave himself for her and he gave himself on a cruel cross to reconcile sinners to himself.

[44:52] And to whatever degree this morning and whatever circumstance this morning, that is true for us as husbands. brothers, let's repent. Let's repent and let's look to Christ.

[45:06] Let's repent and look to Christ, trusting him as the faithful one, our refuge we can run to even though we ourselves have been unfaithful.

[45:20] And to the wives this morning, I say to you just as Sarai did when Abram failed her, you must look to the Lord. You must look to the Lord and trust in the Lord.

[45:34] See, oftentimes it is for a lot of wives that you look to the one who has already failed you and you begin to demand from the one who has already failed you, do this and do that and do the other thing.

[45:46] No, what you need to do is do what Sarai did. Look to the one, look to the Lord himself, the one who is able to take care of you, the one who is able to protect you, when you trust him more than you fear anything that is frightening.

[46:04] And so bottom line is all of us, we need to look to Christ. And we don't need to go with our heads hung down, we can go with our heads lifted up because he's invited us to come.

[46:19] He said, you come to the throne of grace that you might find mercy to help in the time of need. Brothers and sisters, we have a welcome awaiting us when we fail.

[46:36] And there's a God who doesn't fail because he cannot fail. And I can't think of any better news this morning.

[46:48] I can't think of better news this morning to know that we have a faithful God who doesn't abandon us when we fail, but who has given us a standing invitation to come before the throne of grace to find mercy to help us in our time of need.

[47:10] And let us avail ourselves of that this morning, brothers and sisters. And if you're here this morning and you have not trusted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, and you are walking, bearing the weight of the guilt of your sin, the invitation is there for you as well.

[47:29] Jesus says, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And he promises that whoever comes to me, I'll never turn you away.

[47:43] And he doesn't mean if you come in the moment, that first time he will not turn you away. What he means is he will never, ever turn you away. No matter what.

[47:58] Even if you are an unfaithful saint like Abram, even if you sin in the most graphic ways, if you truly belong to him, that door of grace is open to you to come and to find mercy to help you in the time of need.

[48:24] I'm going to say this and then I'm going to close. We live in a world that is daily becoming more and more disloyal.

[48:38] We watch people in all kinds of different situations experience disloyalty. People fail them, let them down, who've made promises to them and they didn't keep those promises.

[48:53] promises. For the believer, here's one thing we know. If everyone fails us, if everyone ceases to keep their promises, there's one who will not fail us.

[49:14] There's one who will not fail to keep his promises. And we can always go to him. Those who live this life without Jesus Christ, I don't know you do it.

[49:25] I don't know you seek to go through this life without the Savior as your steady anchor and the compass for your soul. And so for those of us who have trusted in Christ, let us rejoice this morning that we have an anchor and a refuge in Jesus Christ.

[49:45] Come what may, it matters not what awaits us in this life. His grace will always be greater than our sin.

[50:02] And if you don't know the Savior, I say to you this morning, come to Jesus. Turn from sin, trust in Christ, and you will find a friend who sticks closer than a brother, a friend who will never leave you, never forsake you, always be with you to the very end of the age.

[50:24] One of the most beautiful passages in Scripture is the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 8 towards the end, when he is assuring us that nothing separates us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.

[50:42] And he says, not height, not depth, not things present, not things to come, and he lists all kinds of adversities that we face. And then he says to the end, I am persuaded that nothing, nothing includes everything.

[51:00] And it means nothing. Nothing will separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. And friends, what this tells me is that the reason I'm going to finish well and make heaven, the reason you're going to finish well and make heaven is not because we are faithful.

[51:19] If that was the reason, none of us will make it because we cannot be faithful in a perfect way for a perfect God. But we will make it because God is faithful.

[51:32] And God keeps his own to the very end. And that's wonderful news, brothers and sisters. And that doesn't cause us to want to run out to sin.

[51:44] It causes us to want to fall on our faces and thank God for his mercy and grace to undeserving people like you and me. May God help us to never doubt his faithfulness to those who belong to him.

[52:10] let's pray. Father, we thank you for your faithfulness to us even when we have been unfaithful. Thank you, Lord, that your grace is truly marvelous, that grace is greater than all of our sin.

[52:30] I pray this morning for those who may be wrestling under a guilty conscience, those who may be under the guilt of sins that have been forgiven.

[52:45] God, would you speak to their hearts and help them to know that you are a faithful God who has promised you'll never leave, never forsake those who belong to you.

[52:58] out of mercy on those who do not know Christ. Convict them of sin, convict them of righteousness, convict them of judgment to come.

[53:14] Lord, may they truly come to know the one for whom to know is life eternal.

[53:30]  Father, would you work in our hearts in these ways as only you can. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's stand for our closing song.