Trusting God When the Wells Are Dry
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Trusting God when the wells are dry.
I want to ask you something this morning. Where do you go when you are in a tight place? If someone in your home is having a heart attack you call the paramedics, if you have a fire you call the fire department.
But what do you do when there is no one who can take care of your problem for you? What do you do if your spouse walks out of the marriage?
What do you do if you are accused of something that you didn’t do, and it cost you everything?
What then?
What if the doctor walks into the room and tells you things about your body that you thought would only be true about somebody else. YOU HAVE CANCER....
What then?
Broken relationships and pain, lost loved ones, wayward children, sick children, where do you go?
I chose this topic because I think times will come at some point and sometimes during those times of struggle and some of you are in that place right now we wonder what to do and where to turn.
This morning we are going to look at a man who faced an unexpected trial. What he did right, what he did wrong and where did he turn.
The man’s name is Abraham and his story is found in the 12th chapter of the book of Genesis.
Abraham was in a town called UR of the caldees and God called him and told him that he was to go into a land that God would show him. He traveled without a map.
Genesis
Now the Lord had said to Abram:
“Get out of your country,
From your family
And from your father’s house,
To a land that I will show you.
I will make you a great nation;
I will bless you
And make your name great;
And you shall be a blessing.
Abraham goes and I wonder how he convinced Sarah to go. I mean can you imagine? Honey I have heard from the Lord it’s time to go…
ok darlin where are we going?
I dont know yet… God’s gonna tell us on the way.
I will bless those who bless you,
And I will curse him who curses you;
And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
So they leave and they come and God confirms that this is the land He is going to give Abraham now there are enemies there but God says this is the place.
Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” And there he built an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.
And he moved from there to the mountain east of Bethel, and he pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; there he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord.
Abraham journeyed on and he headed towards the desert. Is he in the will of God? YES
Is he there by being obedient to God? YES
This land was a gift to him from God and he was obedient in following the Lord. That’s why were surprised when we get to verse 10.
There was a famine in the land, so Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine in the land was severe.
In the middle of obedience in the middle of doing God’s will right in the place of blessing there is a severe famine. Maybe you have experienced that too. You left one job and you took another and you prayed about it and you gave it over to God and now 6 months in the company is being downsized and you have been let go and you say to yourself...
“how can this be, I must be outside of God’s will, not neccesarily. Abraham right in the middle of God’s will being obedient experienced a sever famine.
Remember the disciples Jesus said get into the boat and go to the other side. were they in God’s will doing what Jesus told them to do? YES
In obedience to Christ they experienced one of the most devastating storms they had ever seen. Don’t ever think that the most holy path is the smoothest path.
Sometimes the roughest path is God’s path for you and for me. Well the famine came to the land and as trials often come they came with no warning or instructions. There wasn’t a tag on it that said Abraham you have a severe famine and you have a wife and camels and servants to take care of I want you to do this.
No
Trials come without instructions without guidance. God has a purpose but we sure dont know what it is while were going through it. Now I need to say that it was wrong in this sense for Abraham to go to Egypt.
Abraham in the land that god gave him experienced a famine and what did he do? He went down to Egypt. He went down to Egypt, I think the writer not only means that he went down geographically.
I think he also means that he went down spiritually doing something in a panic that seemed reasonable to him, a better opportunity rather than trusting God.
So now we have Abraham in a land he is not supposed to be in and what does he do now? He resorts to lying.
When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “Look, I know what a beautiful woman you are.
When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ They will kill me but let you live.
Please say you’re my sister so it will go well for me because of you, and my life will be spared on your account.”
Well Abraham that’s funny you say your life will be spared for your wives sake…
Actually its a half truth, did you know that sarah was really his cousin. He explained that later. so in a sense it was a half truth, became a whole lie.
Abraham was willing to jeopardize his wife to save his own skin. She apparently went along with it. So Abraham knows that his wife is beautiful and the Egyptians will see her and they will want her.
So what happened now was that his lying became profitable. You see if they said that she was his sister, now the custom was that the pharoah was going to have to negotiate with Abraham and give him some sort of dowry and buy him off so that pharoah could marry his sister.
That’s exactly what happened.
Pharaoh’s officials saw her and praised her to Pharaoh, so the woman was taken to Pharaoh’s household.
He treated Abram well because of her, and Abram acquired flocks and herds, male and female donkeys, male and female slaves, and camels.
Abraham thought to himself my deceit is paying off. Not all lies are immediately exposed sometimes they work.
It’s like the young boy said in Sunday school when he was asked what a lie was, he said “a lie is anabomination unto the Lord but a present help in times of trouble.”
Not all financial blessing is a sign of God’s blessing. Pharoah gave all of those things to Abraham based on deciet. So Abraham says to himself the lie seems to be working, but there is a shadow over Abrahams soul.
This shadow becomes very clear because the Bible says that he lost his testimony in Egypt.
When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful.
Genesis 12:
Genesis 12:
But the Lord struck Pharaoh and his household with severe plagues because of Abram’s wife Sarai. So Pharaoh sent for Abram and said, “What have you done to me? Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife?
Genesis 12:19
Why did you say, ‘She’s my sister,’ so that I took her as my wife? Now, here is your wife. Take her and go!” Then Pharaoh gave his men orders about him, and they sent him away with his wife and all he had.
Abraham backslid when he was in Egypt he resorted to deceit and lying and panic. He didn’t trust God, you’ll notice that there is no altar in Egypt. There is no sign that he asked God for help in the midst of this famine, in the midst of these dry wells.
He did not seek the Lord but he did what seemed right and it invloved lying.
here he is being reprimanded by a pagan king. The pagan king says, GET OUTTA HERE!
Can you imagine abraham turning around and saying to him you know you shouldnt believe in all of your pagan idols you should agree with and worship the God who I sevre could Abraham say that with integrity… NO
So Abraham leaves and it has negative influence on his family. Remember this that when we backslide you and I may come back as parents but maybe our children dont.
This was true int he case of David, He bounced back from his case of adultery he recieved forgivness, but his kids never recovered. So here you have an instance where Abraham was deceitful, it affected Sarah. You can imagine what it did to her, as she had to become a casualty.
But it also affected Lot, he had to have gone with Abraham into Egypt because the text says they were together, they seperated later in the next xhapter.
Lot looked at the riches of Egypt and even though lot came out of Egypt, Egypt didn’t come out of Lot’s heart. He had seen something that he wanted, and he never got over it. you say well is there any evidence for that and the answer is YES
Genesis 13:
Lot looked out and saw that the entire Jordan Valley as far as Zoar was well watered everywhere like the Lord’s garden and the land of Egypt. This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.
He said this is so good it reminds me of Egypt...
Lot made that decision, and he ended up in Sodom and Gomorrah, and what a sad story that turned out to be.
But theres something else that happened in Egypt, when he was there they brought back with him and Egyptian slave girl, and her name was Hagar.
The Bible refers to her as Hagar the Egyptian, and Abraham got her while they were there in Egypt. You know the rest of the story how Sarah couldn’t have children at that time and she gave to him Hagar because she thought if I can’t give him children maybe my servant can instead and Ishmael was born and the middle east has been affected ever since.
So there are extreme consequences for Abraham’s sin.
But after he leaves Egypt he is back in right fellowship, he deals with his sin, and begins to listen to the Lord again.
Genesis
to the site where he had built the altar. And Abram called on the name of Yahweh there.
He had to go back where he made the wrong choice and make the right one. The backslider is now worshipping god again and the backslider came home and was restored by God.
So whats the point?
How does this change our lives, and the problems I am facing?
Let me give you some observations.
The God who saves us, is the God who sustains us.
The God who went with Abraham into the land would have been able to keep Abraham in the land. No question about it, now it isn’t wrong for us to move when were in a famine in one part of the country and go to another.
But for this case it was wrong, because Abraham believed in God’s guidance into the land, but he couldn’t trust God to sustain him while he was in the land.
There’s a very interesting story in the 26th chapter o f Genesis.
There was another famine in the land in addition to the one that had occurred in Abraham’s time. And Isaac went to Abimelech, king of the Philistines, at Gerar.
Genesis 26:
The Lord appeared to him and said, “Do not go down to Egypt. Live in the land that I tell you about;
stay in this land as a foreigner, and I will be with you and bless you. For I will give all these lands to you and your offspring, and I will confirm the oath that I swore to your father Abraham.
Then Isaac trusts God in the middle of the famine and to give him the strength to stay there. What comes next is surprising, because Isaac.
Genesis
I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of the sky, I will give your offspring all these lands, and all the nations of the earth will be blessed by your offspring,
Isaac sowed seed in that land, and in that year he reaped a hundred times what was sown. The Lord blessed him,
because Abraham listened to My voice and kept My mandate, My commands, My statutes, and My instructions.”
That’s interesting isn’t it, he is in the midst of a trial, in the midst of the famine, but God says I am going to take care of you right here. I am not going to take the famine away but I am going to grant you the grace and strength. so that you can live in the midst of the famine.
So Isaac settled in Gerar.
For those of you who are struggling right now what this means is that we are where we are. We cant change our situation, we can’t change where we go, we cant just pick up and run away, GOD CAN SUSTAIN YOU IN THE MIDDLE OF YOUR PROBLEM!!!
Genesis
When the men of the place asked about his wife, he said, “She is my sister,” for he was afraid to say “my wife,” thinking, “The men of the place will kill me on account of Rebekah, for she is a beautiful woman.”
Isaac reminds us that you should be willing to do anything, you should be willing to trust God for a harvest, but also the rest of the chapter says that the Philistines had filled the wells that Abraham had dug.
Isaac re dug Abraham’s wells and they had water, look around there may be some move you can make that you have not thought of.
But one thing you can know at one moment the enemy is trying to destory what God started and the next minute you can be drinking from the well he tried to stop up.
Listen you maybe in a situation right now where there seems to be no way out. There may be a hurt inside that you tell no one about, there may be a heavy burden on your mind that you cannot stop thinking about no matter how hard you try.
GOD WILL MAKE A WAY WHEN THERE SEEMS TO BE NOW WAY!!!
YOU HAD BETTER TAKE THIS TO THE BANK, IF YOU REMAIN IN THE CENTER OF GODS WILL SEEKING HIS FACE DAILY THEN NO WEAPON FORMED AGAINST YOU SHALL PROSPER AND YOU WILL OVERCOME WHATEVER HAS HIT YOU IN THIS SEASON OF LIFE AND GOD WILL TURN YOUR TRIAL INTO A TESTIMONY!
God says DO NOT LOSE HEART DO NOT GIVE UP HOPE BECAUSE WHEN YOU ARE DOWN TO NOTHING GOD IS UP TO SOMETHING!
NEVER LOSE SIGHT OF THE SIZE OF YOUR GOD WHEN THE WAVES OF LIFES BURDENS SEEM LARGER!!
GOD IS IN CONTROL AND HE LOVES YOU MORE THAN YOU COULD EVER IMAGINE! NEVER FORGET THAT!
2. God doesn’t leave us even when we leave Him.
heres Abraham and He is supposed to be sustained in the land and he panics and decided to do something foolish, goes into Egypt, and finds more trouble than he wanted.
In life when trouble comes our knee jerk reaction is not to pray it is to think. We wanna have a plan we want to create for ourselves a way out of this trouble whatever it may be but I am here to tell you friend there are somethings you cant punch your way out of.
You need the finger of God on areas of your life to heal you, to fix the problem, but we think we have better ideas than God thats why we think first and pray leter but God says you better call on me I AM YOUR DELIVERER!!!
There are 2 kinds of famines.
Theres the kind of famine over which we have absolutely no control. That’s the famine that Abraham had when he was in Egypt. You dont control those kinds of things. None of us can control our circumstances in life.
But the famine that Abraham had when he was in Egypt that mess, he could have avoided. He created that problem himself, and there are some of you in this room this morning that are in a self created famine.
Somebody told you dont marry that guy.... but you thought you knew better. Somebody said dont do this or that and you thought you knew better and found more trouble than you were barganing for.
The point is this, some messes are self made. Does God say you know Abraham when you left to go into Egypt I stopped at the border, because I am not going to have anything to do with somebody who is going to disobey me and uses deciet to get ahead.
NO
God walks with us, he is there with us, He goes with Abraham into Egypt and god brings a plague on the pharoah for Abrahams benefit, God restores Abraham even though his testimony is lost and he discovers that you know what “This God who lead me is also the God who forgives me and gives me more chances. He is the God I can worship again. I can build another altar, I can come back from my backsliding.
Some of you you have become so numb in your walk with God and you think He has abandoned you. If you are a Christian you need to know that is not true God is there with you, He is rooting for you, but He wants you to come back into fellowship.
He wants you to say listen I have done my own thing long enough. I want to come back because it is better, to have a dry well in Canaan, than it is to be disobedient in Egypt.
It is better to have a dry well, than a poisned cup, so the lord says come back to me, believe me and trust me. Theres a final lesson and really is the bottom line ifor everything.
EVERY FAMINE IS A TEST OF OUR TRUST.
It is always a TEST
We have to stand back and think about it again.
WHY DID ABRAHAM SAY:
IF WE GO DOWN INTO EGYPT THEY MAY KILL ME
What do you mean?
Was there any chance at all that Abraham would die in Egypt?
ABSOLUTELY NOT!
God just plainly told him, I am giving you this land and I am giving it to your descendant but he didnt have any kids yet!
how could the promise of God possibly be fufilled if the Egyptians killed him. Even if abraham had said I am going down to Egypt were gonna tell the truth my life is in God’s hands not in the pharoahs hands. God gave me a promise that someday through my family, this land would be populated and thats good enough for me, my life in God is secure.
Now the Scripture saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and told the good news ahead of time to Abraham, saying, All the nations will be blessed through you.
This actually means Abraham believes the gospel. but there is no mention of Jesus dying for our sins, He hasnt even been born yet so what does this mean?
Inside the promise ALL THE NATIONS OF THE EARTH WILL BE BLESSED THROUGH YOU
Within that promise there was the promise of the coming Messiah Jesus the redeemer. Wow the bottom line was that Abraham never really believed the gospel, he never believed the person who lead him into the land could sustain him in the land.
Abraham experienced a crisis of faith.
He could not trust God to continue.
He couldnt grasp it and he failed.
EVERY FAMINE IS A TEST
CAN WE TRUST GOD WHEN THE WELLS HAVE RUN DRY?
WHEN OUR HEARTS ARENT SATISFIED IN THE HERE AND NOW?
CAN WE TRUST HIM?
THats always the issue.