God's Grace and My Stubborn Sin

NOTE:

This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.

Engagement

They are not quite as prevalent as they used to be, but most of us are probably familiar with plans for our cell phones that have limits on the number of texts we can send or the amount of data we can use. With those plans, once you exceed those limits, you are either prohibited from using that service any further for that month or charged an additional fee in order to be permitted to continue.

Tension

Unfortunately, I think some of us tend to view God’s grace kind of like that. We are tempted to think that we can exhaust God’s patience and use up all His grace - especially when we keep committing the same sin over and over. Like those cell phone plans, we figure there must be some limit to the amount of sin that God will forgive and once we exceed that limit, God quits extending His grace, or He at least requires that we do something to get Him to raise the limit.

If you’ve ever thought about God’s grace like that, even a little bit, then the passage we’re going to study this morning is going to be very encouraging because we’re going to see that God doesn’t extend His grace begrudgingly or sparingly, but that He delights in offering that grace to those who are seeking Him, even when they mess up over and over again.

Truth

This morning we’re going to continue or sermon series on Grace in the Old Testament by looking at the lives of Abraham and Sarah. In particular, we’re going to focus on one particular event in their lives that has a lot to teach us about how God’s grace operates in our lives and how we ought to respond to that grace.

Most of you are probably at least somewhat familiar with the lives of Abraham and Sarah, but let me remind all of us of some of the important milestones in their lives.

At the age of 200, Terah, Abram’s father, moves the entire family from Ur to the city of Haran. Abram is now 70 years old and his wife, Sarai, is 60.

Five years later, God calls Abram to leave Haran and go the the land of Canaan. Abram immediately obeys God and sets out for Canaan.

As they pass through Canaan on their way to Shechem, God promises to give the land to Abram’s offspring.

When a famine comes to the land, Abram takes his family to Egypt. There, fearing that Pharaoh would take his wife and kill him, he instructs Sarai to claim she is his sister. All I have to say is that Sarai must have been quite a looker to cause Abram to worry about that, especially considering she is now around 70 years old. When Pharaoh takes Sarai into his house, God afflicts his house with great plagues.

Abram parts ways with his nephew Lot and settles in Canaan while Lot settled in Sodom. An alliance of three kings defeat the king of Sodom and Lot is taken captive.

Abram gathers up 318 men and rescues Lot and defeats the alliance of three kings. Afterwards, he receives a visit from Melchizedek, who is either a physical manifestation of Jesus or at least a type, or picture, of Jesus.

At the age of 85, God promises to give Abram a son. But Abram and Sarai get impatient and take things into their own hands and Abram bears a son named Ishmael with one of Sarai’s servants named Hagar.

When Abram is 99, God institutes the practice of circumcision and He repeats His promise to Abram regarding the birth of a son. God even changes his name to Abraham, which means “father of a multitude”. He also changes Sarai’s name to Sarah, which means “princess”. When God reveals that Sarah will have a son a year later when she is 90 years old, Abraham fell on his face and laughed.

That brings us to the passage we’re going to read this morning in Genesis chapter 20. But before we do that, I just want to point out that Abraham and Sarai were certainly far from perfect. They have lied. They have failed to trust God. They have even laughed in God’s face. But God continues to use and bless them strictly as a manifestation of His grace. There was nothing in either of their lives that would have caused God to choose them to birth a new people and nation that would one day bless all the nations of the earth. In chapter 20, we’re going to see this even more clearly.

Genesis 20:1–18 ESV

1 From there Abraham journeyed toward the territory of the Negeb and lived between Kadesh and Shur; and he sojourned in Gerar. 2 And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, “She is my sister.” And Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah. 3 But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him, “Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man’s wife.” 4 Now Abimelech had not approached her. So he said, “Lord, will you kill an innocent people? 5 Did he not himself say to me, ‘She is my sister’? And she herself said, ‘He is my brother.’ In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands I have done this.” 6 Then God said to him in the dream, “Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart, and it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore I did not let you touch her. 7 Now then, return the man’s wife, for he is a prophet, so that he will pray for you, and you shall live. But if you do not return her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours.” 8 So Abimelech rose early in the morning and called all his servants and told them all these things. And the men were very much afraid. 9 Then Abimelech called Abraham and said to him, “What have you done to us? And how have I sinned against you, that you have brought on me and my kingdom a great sin? You have done to me things that ought not to be done.” 10 And Abimelech said to Abraham, “What did you see, that you did this thing?” 11 Abraham said, “I did it because I thought, ‘There is no fear of God at all in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.’ 12 Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father though not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife. 13 And when God caused me to wander from my father’s house, I said to her, ‘This is the kindness you must do me: at every place to which we come, say of me, “He is my brother.” ’ ” 14 Then Abimelech took sheep and oxen, and male servants and female servants, and gave them to Abraham, and returned Sarah his wife to him. 15 And Abimelech said, “Behold, my land is before you; dwell where it pleases you.” 16 To Sarah he said, “Behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver. It is a sign of your innocence in the eyes of all who are with you, and before everyone you are vindicated.” 17 Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children. 18 For the Lord had closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.

Here is the main idea we’re going to develop from this passage this morning:

God’s sovereign grace is greater than my stubborn sin

I don’t know about you, but when I read this account, my first thought is “really Abraham? How did it work out the last time you tried this same lie when you were in Egypt? Didn’t you learn anything?” But then my next thought is how many times I’ve done essentially the same thing in my own life - how many times I’ve committed the same sin over and over. That is very humbling.

So I want to do two things with this passage. First I want to see what it teaches us about the nature of God’s grace. And then I want to close by talking about the implications for our lives - how are we to respond to that grace?

THREE ASPECTS OF GOD’S GRACE

God intervenes on my behalf even when I fail Him repeatedly

While this may very well be the most important thing we’ll learn about grace today, it comes with a couple important caveats.

There are serious consequences for those who deliberately sin over and over and who don’t genuinely repent and take concrete steps to turn from their sin. I’m going to address that idea a bit more in a moment.

The second caveat is that even though God may intervene even when I fail Him repeatedly, He doesn’t always remove the consequences of my sin. Fortunately, God does often protect us from the full effects of our sin. But He is certainly not under any obligation to do so.

If the account in this chapter sounds somewhat familiar, that is because this isn’t the first time Abraham tried to pass off Sarah as his sister. I already mentioned that earlier he had done the same thing in Egypt. But if we look carefully at verse 13, we’ll see that apparently those weren’t the only two times Abraham had lied like that:

Genesis 20:13 ESV

13 And when God caused me to wander from my father’s house, I said to her, ‘This is the kindness you must do me: at every place to which we come, say of me, “He is my brother.” ’ ”

Notice that Abraham had instructed Sarah to claim to be his sister “at every place to which we come”. So this appears to be something that had occurred continually. And yet God still extends His grace to Abraham and Sarah. In fact, God even calls Abraham his prophet when He appears to Abimelech in a dream.

This should be very encouraging to any of you who feel like you have reached the limits of God’s grace, that you’ve sinned so many times or so greatly that God just won’t forgive you any more. As John reminds us at the beginning of his gospel account, in Jesus we find abundant grace:

John 1:16 ESV

16 For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

Jesus is the fullest expression of God’s grace. And in Him we don’t just receive grace, we receive grace piled on top of grace even if we fail God repeatedly.

God exposes my sin when I’m working hard to conceal it

I know that right now some of you may be thinking that God exposing my sin doesn’t really sound like grace. But because He loves us so much, God will not allow our sin to go unexposed because our sin will separate us from God and ultimately bring destruction to our lives. So exposing our sin is often an important aspect of His grace.

Here God uses Abimelech as His instrument to expose the sin of Abraham. Abimelech confronts Abraham about what he has done by asking a series of questions that expose his lies and deceit. Abraham attempts to explain and justify his sin. But Abimelech won’t let him get away with that. While technically Sarah was Abraham’s half sister, the fact is that half-truth masquerading as truth is a whole lie.

But as bad as the sin of lying was, the greater sin here was that Abraham and Sarah didn’t trust God to protect them. Even after all they had seen God do in their lives and the promises that God had made to them, they took things into their own hands because ultimately they just didn’t trust God. That is probably something most of us do far more than we’d like to admit.

This morning some of you are struggling with some persistent sin in your life. And if that’s the case you’re probably working really hard to conceal it. You might be successful in doing so for a while, maybe even a long while, but God already knows about that sin and at some point, if you don’t confess that sin to Him and quit trying to hide it, He is likely to bring someone into your life who is going to expose that sin. And when that happens, I want to encourage you not to get angry with that other person, but to thank them for being a messenger of God’s grace.

God blesses me so I can bless others

Abraham and Sarah deserve only God’s judgment for what they have done. But instead God blesses them. He causes Abimelech’s heart to be favorably disposed toward them and he gives them livestock, servants and silver as well as a place to live.

But God didn’t bless Abraham and Sarah just so they could hoard those blessings for themselves. At the end of this account we see that Abraham prayed for Abimelech and his family and that as a result God healed his wife and female slaves so that they could bear children again.

I’ll come back to this idea again in a moment, but when God gives us His grace, He doesn’t want us to just hoard those blessings. In almost every case He blesses us so that we can bless others. So every time we experience God’s grace we need to be asking what we can do to bless someone else.

This incident in the life of Abraham and Sarah certainly demonstrates our main idea:

God’s sovereign grace is greater than my stubborn sin

Application

Let’s close our time by talking about...

HOW TO RESPOND TO GOD’S GRACE

Be grateful

When we consider the way that God’s grace is greater than even my most stubborn sin. How can we not be grateful?

Throughout the Bible we are commanded to give thanks to God because of His grace. We’ll look at just one of those verses:

1 Chronicles 16:34 ESV

34 Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!

Although we don’t see the word “grace” in this verse, God’s grace is a major component of God’s “steadfast love”. If you were part of our Bible reading plan last year, hopefully you’ll remember that the underlying Hebrew word that is translated “steadfast love” is hesed. Hesed is not merely an emotion but involves action on behalf of someone who is in need. That is exactly what God does when He extends His grace an mercy to us. He takes action to forgo the judgment we deserve and instead forgive us.

That is something we should thank God for every day.

Don’t presume

As I mentioned earlier, there are serious consequences that come with committing the same sin over and over again. While God is willing to forgive and extend His grace, even for repeated sin, we must never get complacent and think that our sin doesn’t matter.

I think the greatest heartbreak I’ve ever experienced as a pastor are those occasions when I’ve had someone tell me, “I know what I’m about to do is sin, but God will forgive me”. It is a dangerous thing to presume upon God’s grace like that. In his letter to the churches in Rome, Paul confronted that mindset directly:

Romans 6:1–2 ESV

1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

Paul is warning here against using God’s grace as a license or excuse to sin. Any time that we choose to sin because we presume on God’s grace and with the expectation that God is obligated to forgive, we are on very dangerous ground.

Extend it to others

The way God has treated us ought to have a profound impact on the way we treat others. I know that personally I have a tendency to be very judgmental towards others and to be really impatient with theirs mistakes, faults and shortcomings. That’s something I’ve been working on for a while now and honestly the one thing that has really helped is to continuously remind myself of the grace that God has extended to me.

These words of Jesus are also very convicting to me:

Matthew 6:15 ESV

15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Although grace and forgiveness are not exactly the same thing, I think the principle still applies. If I want God to extend His grace toward me, I need to do the same with others.

Action

God’s grace is available to all. As Paul reminds us, it is a gift from God:

Ephesians 2:8 ESV

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,

But in order for that grace to operate in our lives, we must accept that gift put placing our faith in Jesus alone and not in anything that we can do. If you’ve never made that decision, I want to encourage you as strongly as I can to not leave here today until you do that. The deepest desire of my heart is that you would personally experience the grace of God that is greater than even the most stubborn sin in your life.

If you’ve already made that decision, and I’m confident that most of you here have done that, then I want to encourage you to take some time today to thank God for His grace in your life. We’re going to do that together in just a few minutes, but I hope you’ll do that on your own as well.

I also want to encourage you to spend some time asking God to reveal any area of your life where you’ve been presuming on His grace. Perhaps that is some persistent sin that you keep on committing with the idea that God is obligated to forgive you every time you ask Him to. Ask God to help you see that sin the way He does and have genuine godly sorrow over that sin that leads to genuine repentance.

Finally, as you deal with other people this week, keep in mind the grace that has been extended to you and treat others like that.

Inspiration

We’ve learned this morning that...

God’s sovereign grace is greater than my stubborn sin

Do you feel like you’re defined by your failures? The passage that we’ve studied this morning is proof that God’s grace means that you don’t have to be.

Obviously Abraham appears a lot in the Bible - both Old and New Testaments. But what is really fascinating to me is that from this point forward, the Bible never mentions this incident again. God never highlights Abraham’s failures. Not once. Not in Romans, not in Galatians and not in the “Faith Hall of Fame” in Hebrews 11.

That’s grace, the same kind of grace that God wants for you to experience in your life. God does not dispense that grace begrudgingly or reluctantly. He delights in manifesting His grace in the lives of those who love Him and who are seeking after Him. So go ahead and revel in that grace and find the peace that passes all understanding.