Well, Meridy, we found out what you were introducing before day by day. What a lovely trio that was. When there are changes, usually accompanists are last to know. Right behind preachers. So thanks a lot. Would you open your Bible, please, to the book of Genesis and the twelfth chapter. We're going to talk this evening about one of the backsliders of the Bible. You say, what is a backslider?
Well, a backslider might be defined as a true believer who slides back from a walk of obedience and fellowship with God. The noun backslider is used only once in the English Bible, and that is in Proverbs 14.14. The Hebrew word there comes from a verb that means to move away, to turn, or to draw aside. So you get the idea that is involved. Thank God that our position before God is an unchangeable position. It is for all of eternity settled between us and God, our position.
But our practice is not so. The standing that we have before God can never change, but the state of our fellowship sometimes is sadly lacking, isn't it? It's true of all of us. So as we study Abram, we need to do this with tenderness and appreciation, even with some identification, not with heaping judgment, but with understanding of what he passed through in this occasion in his life.
Now, the Lord said to Abram, go forth from your country and from your relatives and from your father's house to the land which I will show you. And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great. And so you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
A marvelous statement from God to Abram regarding his call of grace in Abram's life and God's intention to use Abram. Up until this time, God has dealt with all of the families of the earth the same. Now God reaches down to the mass of humanity in the post-flood world and chooses out one man and his wife. And that is the strain, that is the family that he will now begin to work through to bring the Redeemer into the world. So Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him and Lot was with him.
Now Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran, and Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his nephew and all their possessions which they had accumulated and the persons which they had acquired in Haran. And they set out for the land of Canaan. Thus they came to the land of Canaan. And Abram passed through the land as far as the site of Shechem to the oak of Moray.
Now the Canaanite was then in the land and the Lord appeared to Abram and said, To your descendants I will give this land. So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. Then he proceeded from there to the mountain on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on, continuing toward the Negev.
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. And it came about when he was near to Egypt that he said to Sarai's wife, See now I know that you are a beautiful woman. And it will come about when the Egyptians see you that they will say, This is his wife and they will kill me, but they will let you live. Please say that you are my sister so that it may go well with me because of you and that I may live on account of you.
And it came about when Abram came into Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. She was 65 years old plus at this time. A very beautiful woman. And Pharaoh's officials saw her and praised her to Pharaoh, and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. Therefore he treated Abram well for her sake and gave him sheep and oxen and donkeys and male and female servants and female donkeys and camels.
But the Lord struck Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife. Then Pharaoh called Abram and said, What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say she is my sister so that I took her for my wife? Now then here is your wife, take her and get out. Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him and they escorted him away with his wife and all that belonged to him. So Abram went up from Egypt to the Negev.
He and his wife and all that belonged to him and Lot was with him. Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver and in gold. And 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. And there Abram called on the name of the Lord. Holy Father we come to your word tonight with humility.
We pray that the Spirit of God would be our teacher and the applier of these words to our own lives. May we observe important lessons in the life of this great servant of yours and see those lessons supplied to our own walk with you in Jesus name, amen. Abram proves to us that even the most godly is not immune to the sin of backsliding. I suppose that we can take some encouragement from that because we understand that all of us feel the gravity and the pull of the flesh.
All of us feel the pressure that comes from sin that dwells in us. God appeared to Abram with promises. The Bible says that Abram believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. He was saved. God led him forth into the land of promise and of blessing. In that place of obedience and blessing Abram constructed an altar for worship and fellowship with the Lord his God. It seems that Abram lived day by day trusting God for protection.
For the Canaanites were very ruthless and wicked people. He trusted God for provision. He trusted God for direction. He continued traveling through the land and eventually went to the Negev which is the desert area of the south of modern Israel still today called the Negev. He was in the place of blessing. But it was there that his backsliding experience began. I'd like for you to trace with me this evening the cycle of Abram's backsliding.
It seems to me that there are four steps that we can identify in the backsliding experience of this great man of God. The first step is the trial. There in the Negev there was a famine. It was not only in the Negev but throughout the land of Canaan. There was the appearance of an inadequate supply to care for Abram's large herds. God's promise hadn't changed. God had told Abram to go there. Certainly God was able to take care of Abram in the Negev even though there was a famine.
If necessary, God would have supernaturally supplied for him. But God allowed this famine to come undoubtedly in part as a trial to Abram's faith. It was God's way of proving him and grooming him for even greater lessons of faith to come. Tests like this are common experiences to all believers. When God allows famines to come into our own lives, He does that to prove us and to test us not to make us stumble. Abram had taken a great step of faith in the Lord.
He had left his homeland and journeyed ultimately to the land of Canaan where God told him to go. Inevitably tests will follow a step of faith. You can mark that down in your own spiritual experience that any time you take a step of faith in your life, that step is going to be tested. You're going to be proved to be sure that you really mean what you say in taking that step of faith. James tells us that we should count it all joy whenever we encounter these tests.
Peter tells us that we should not think as strange concerning the fiery trials which test us as though some strange thing happened to us. Tests are a part of life. If we did not encounter them personally, if we did not encounter them as churches and as groups of Christians and lands, I say if we did not encounter them, something would be wrong. That would be strange. Tests come, trials come from the hand of God for our own good.
However, sometimes backsliding periods in our lives can be traced back to these trials. Not that God intended them to be the initiation for backsliding, but we have caused them to be so. There may be some kind of a famine at the roots of a backsliding experience in our lives. Abram failed at this point, as we will notice in a moment, and he began to slide in his fellowship with God. Now the famine for you may be a loss of your job.
That has been the trial for you, for it may be the betrayal by a friend that has cut you deeply and hurt. It may be the illness of a loved one that has become the famine-trial that God has allowed in your life, or some other disappointment that has been unspeakably hard for you to bear. Please keep in mind that whatever that experience has been, it has not been outside what God has allowed graciously to come into your life. If God had wanted to prevent that experience, he could have done it.
But God allowed it to come to you through his loving hands as a trial for your faith. Thus it was with this famine for Abram. God intended to prove the faith of Abram, not to send him on a backsliding experience. From the trial, we observe the second step in his backsliding cycle, and that is the temptation. Not too far from the land of Canaan, in fact very close to the Negev, was the land of Egypt. In Egypt for some reason there was still plenty. Prosperity reigned there.
It was not difficult for Abram to observe that that was the case, that where he was there was famine, but over there there was prosperity. It seemed like the logical thing to do to go to Egypt. There's nothing here, there's a lot over there, logical decision, go there. It seemed like the easy thing to do because it wasn't far and it was pragmatic. After all, his flocks and herds might starve to death if they remained there in famine-stricken Canaan. And so Abram made the decision to go to Egypt.
In doing that, he left the place where God had sent him. He left the place of fellowship with God and he did it in unbelief, not trusting that God could meet his need there in the land of Canaan. At this point Abram got his eyes on the famine and off the Lord and his faithfulness. How many times have I done that? How many times have you done that?
The test that we have passed through has seemed so severe that we have taken our eyes off the Lord and we concentrate on the trial that we're passing through and the result is that we forget God's faithfulness and ability to care for us. The journey that Abram made to Egypt was a spiritual journey as well as a geographical journey. Egypt in the Bible pictures the world and the old life out of which God has called us. It has that symbolic meaning in the Scriptures.
How easy it seems at times for you and me to compromise God's will in our lives. The crisis that we face, that trial that confronts us at the moment makes it seem so logical. That seems like the only reasonable thing to do, to compromise what God has said and do this. And it's usually pretty easy to do that. The enemy of our souls makes sure of that. And it often seems so practical and pragmatic. We can apply this in so many ways. Take our daily quiet time for example.
We run up and do a period in our lives when we're under a lot of pressure and it seems so easy to let it slip. It seems like the only reasonable thing that we should cut it back. It seems like the practical thing to do because we need the time. Or even take our attendance at church. Well after all this is the summer time. We've only got so many days with the kids in the summer.
Seems like the easy, logical, the pragmatic thing to do to cut back on attendance during the summer or maybe year round. Maybe it's in the area of our giving and stewardship. But I can tell you this, that Satan will always come to you with a temptation to compromise the will of God in the time when you're passing through one of God's ordained trials. God does not tempt us to evil, but Satan does.
And we see here Abram evidently responding to that temptation from Satan to compromise what God wanted in his life. The sad thing is that when we yield and compromise it takes us from the place of blessing and the fellowship as it did Abram. Isn't it interesting to notice in the text there's no evidence that Abram, number one, prayed when he was in Egypt? Up to this point several times it's specifically mentioned that he prayed and worshiped the Lord.
It's also interesting to note that all the time that he was in Egypt there's no evidence that he heard from God. God had been speaking to Abram, revealing truth to Abram. He even appeared to Abram. In verse seven we see that for the first time in the Bible, God appeared. Now it is true that it says about Noah and it says about Enoch and we would assume it from Adam that they walked with God.
It must have been some sense in which they were either aware of God's presence or God appeared, but it doesn't say that God appeared until chapter twelve and verse seven of Genesis. This is a theophany, a pre-incarnate appearance of God the Son to Abram. But when he was in Egypt there's no evidence that God appeared to him or that God said anything.
I think that we learn something from this, that when you and I yield to the temptation to compromise what God wants us to do when we're passing through a trial, when we yield to that temptation it results in our prayerlessness and our lack of communication with God. It results in spiritual dryness in our souls and suddenly we wonder why God isn't saying anything anymore. We need to look carefully to see if there's been some compromise in our lives.
I think it's a general principle of God's word that he's not going to say anything further to us if we have refused to obey the last thing that he said. The third step in the cycle of Abram's backsliding is the trouble he got into, the trouble. Just turn over to Proverbs fourteen with me a moment. As I said before this is the only verse in the scriptures where the noun backslider is used. In verse fourteen of Proverbs fourteen it says, The backslider in heart will have his fill of his own ways.
Isn't that an interesting sentence? The backslider in heart will have his fill of his own ways. But a good man will be satisfied with his. The verse seems to indicate this, that both the backslider and the man who is obedient to God will have his fill of his ways. The latter, the one who is obedient will be satisfied, but not so the one who is a backslider. There will not be satisfaction.
He will get filled up to here with his own discontent and grumblings, with his own compromise and disobedience, with trouble that comes into his life because of his backsliding. The backslider gets filled up with the fruit of his own life. I want you to know that we see that exemplified in Abram. Everything always leads the believer to trouble. Abram now was caught in a trap going back to Genesis twelve.
As he journeyed toward Egypt he began to realize that when he got there he could face a problem. It was not uncommon for men of a land such as Egypt to observe beautiful women coming in with strangers and to take them as wives even if it meant killing their husbands. That is exactly what Abram anticipated. He asked Sarai to scheme with him to prevent that. He says, you tell them that you are my sister so that I can stay alive. Now of course it is half truth that she was his sister.
She was a half sister to Abram. But a half truth is a half what? It's a half lie. And that is what Abram schemed with Sarai as he went into Egypt. You'll notice here the changes that came over Abram as he backslid. In the first place notice that his courage turned to cowardice.
He's a man who took everything that he owned, all of his family that he was allowed to take, and he left Ur of the Chaldees, traveled for hundreds of miles through difficult circumstances to put it mildly to the land of Canaan which was notorious for its wickedness. I mean that took a lot of courage. And now he has yielded to temptation, he has compromised God's will in his life, and suddenly that courage has turned to cowardice. He's afraid he's going to be killed.
Notice also that his generosity has turned to selfishness. Lot went along with Abram. Abram perhaps is a little too generous in that regard. We see that generally speaking Abram was a man who was more than fair. He can be called generous. We'll see that even next week in chapter 13 with Lot. He was a man who bent over backwards for other people, but not so when he was backslidden. His generosity turned to selfishness. Now his main concern is keeping himself alive.
He wasn't concerned that Sarai was going to have to go live in a harem perhaps. His main concern was keeping his own skin together. And then we see a third change. His faith was turned to scheming. Faith and scheming do not coexist. Warren Wiersbie says that faith is living without scheming. We see his faith turn to scheming here as he begins to figure out a way in which he can keep himself out of trouble hopefully. It changed him and it affected others.
It affected Sarai undoubtedly to go through this experience. Remember that Lot, his nephew who later caused him untold grief, was watching all of this. And it affected Pharaoh and Pharaoh's servants who were aware of what took place. Abram got himself into a heap of trouble. Sarai was taken even to Pharaoh's harem. It seems clear from the scriptures that she was never actually taken as wife to Pharaoh, but that was in preparation.
That might have happened, except the Lord struck Pharaoh with great plagues. Now how it was that Pharaoh discovered that the plagues were the result of Sarai were not told. Perhaps God directly told him. Perhaps it was Lot who somehow indicated to Pharaoh who Sarai was. We don't know how that happened. But through some means, Pharaoh became aware of why these bad things were happening to his household. And so he called Abram in and rebuked him. Why have you done this to me? He said.
Abram was in a lot of trouble. Who can measure the heartaches and the trouble of a backslider? Who can know the regrets, the frustrations, the feelings of loneliness and emptiness that come to one who is a backslidden believer? Well, I can tell you who can know. I can tell you one who can measure every bit of it, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. He knows it all. He knows all of the trouble that we get into in our backsliding. God graciously intervened on Abram's behalf here.
That brings us to the fourth and final point in his cycle of backsliding, and that is the turning. Isn't it interesting that God used a worldly man to rebuke Abram? Has that ever happened to you? Has that ever happened to you? I heard a dear friend of mine preaching in a Bible conference a couple of weeks ago. He shared an experience when he became impatient with a gentleman who was the gatekeeper, baggage handler, ticket taker, etc. for a small airline in Kokomo, Indiana.
He said they called it the Kokomo International Airport. There was one airline that served it, and one man who was there on duty. One morning this friend of mine had to get from Kokomo to Grand Rapids, Michigan. The place was socked in with fog. The plane was circling overhead. The pilot radioed in once. My friend heard it. He was going to try to come in. He heard the engines come in, and then heard them disappear.
My friend went to the ticket agent, baggage handler, etc., and said to him, you've got to get that plane in. I've got to get in Grand Rapids in two hours. He said, well, the pilot is going to try once more. He went outside and listened. Here came the plane in once more. He heard the engines, and then the plane lifted up and went on. My pastor friend had not identified himself as a pastor. He went over to the ticket agent and let him have a piece of his mind. He had to get to Grand Rapids.
He was to speak in chapel at 10 o'clock that morning and let the ticket agent know what he thought about his airline. The ticket agent said, you're a pastor, aren't you? My friend just wanted to die on the spot. The ticket agent said, God will take care of you. God did take care of him. Suddenly he remembered a man in his church who had an airplane, and it offered to fly him anywhere at any time if he needed.
So he called his friend, and his friend was there in 20 minutes and flew him to Grand Rapids. God did take care of him. Have you ever had an experience where a worldly man has rebuked you? I have. God did that with Abram. It was Pharaoh himself. Notice that Abram lost his testimony. He might have had a positive influence on Pharaoh, but as a result, that Abram had no respect, or rather, Pharaoh had no respect for Abram, or for that matter, Abram's god.
He was corrected by a man to whom he, Abram, should have been a witness. And Abram was broken by that. He doesn't say that Abram wept, but I can't help believe that he did.
He was embarrassed and humiliated, and all of that prepared him for a deep repentance for his backsliding, because it says that he went up from Egypt to the Negev, and he went on, it says in his journey, to 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. Notice what he did.
In his turning, he went back to the place called Bethel, the last place where he had communicated, as far as the Scriptures tell us, with God, to the place where he had built an altar. And there he fellowshiped with God again. I think there are three lessons that we observe in Abram's turning. In the first place, the place to return to the Lord is where you left him in your backsliding.
I don't know where that may be for you, but if tonight you are in a backslidden condition as a believer in Jesus Christ, I can't help believe that if you will meditate for a few minutes and ask God to show you, He will isolate for you that point where you left the place of blessing and compromise and went to Egypt. That my friend is the place you must go back to if you would be restored from your backsliding.
The second lesson I see is that all the time that is spent in backsliding is wasted time. Abram did not hear from God. He did not pray to God. The time in Egypt was wasted time. It was only when he got back where he belonged that the clock began to move again in Abram's life and God's blessing was his. Then there is a third lesson I see and we all need to take heed of this. It is that we may well pay for our backsliding. You say, I thought God forgives backsliding. God does forgive backsliding.
Praise God. If He did not, I would be in a lot of trouble. God does forgive backsliding, but we may well suffer consequences because of it. God forgives the guilt, but God does not often remove the scars in our lives. We bear those scars. God gives us grace for them as we pass through life, but the scars are there nonetheless. The consequences are part of our lives. They are there in part to help us remember not to do what we did again. You say what were the consequences in Abram's life?
He came back exceedingly rich. It seems as though while he was in Egypt, his riches increased. There are those who tell us that when you are prosperous, that is evidence of God's blessing. I would like to suggest that is not always the case. Abram's prosperity multiplied while he was in Egypt and he was out of fellowship with God in that time. He came back exceedingly rich and those riches and the greatly enlarged herds and flocks in chapter 13 cause a problem between Abram and Lot.
Then he came back from Egypt with something else. He came back with a servant by the name of Hagar. Hagar was the servant assigned to Sarai when she was in the harem in Egypt. How is that a problem for Abram? Because it is not too long in the record of scripture until Sarai suggests to Abram that in order to produce a seed which she felt she was unable to do, he should take to himself Hagar, her handmaid. From Hagar has come Ishmael and all the Arab peoples of the world.
So you see there is a sense in which we can say that Abram's backsliding in Egypt is still bearing consequences in the world today. You see we can well pay for our backsliding. But thank God he does forgive and I may be talking to someone this evening who is at that point of turning. I hope that is the case with you if you are backslidden.
I pray that God will bring into your life whatever is necessary to make you see that you have strayed from the place of obedience and fellowship, the land of blessing which God intends for you to inhabit where he wants to speak with you and hear you pray to him. I hope that you will see that you have left that place and compromised God's best, God's will in your life. You will return to that place where you left fellowship with the Lord.
There are three distinctive marks in the life of one who like Abraham as he came to be called seeks a city whose builder and maker is God. Number one, there is worship. There is an altar in the life. There is a worshiping spirit, a heart that is lifted to God in sacrifice and praise. Wherever Abraham went as he was in fellowship with God there were altars that traced his journey. He was a man who knew what it was to worship God.
Second characteristic and distinctive mark of such a man is a pilgrimage. Not only was there an altar but there were tent holes, tent peg holes wherever he went because you see Abraham lived as a nomad, as a pilgrim. He never did all of his life come to that city that God had promised him. Someday he will. But all of his earthly journey he was a pilgrim. He was a man who walked with God as a pilgrim.
One who like Abraham is a man of faith and who seeks for the city whose builder and maker is God. He is a man who does not set his affections on things in this world. He does not allow himself to become too tightly tied down to the affairs of life. He is a man who lives in a tent and just moves before God directs as a pilgrim. And finally the distinctive mark of one who is like Abraham is prayer. Abraham prayed. He was a man who communicated with God. He was a man who depended upon God.
And so it is with one who today seeks for a city whose builder and maker is God. My friend does worship, does a pilgrim attitude, does prayer characterize your life? If not I hope it will. Because those are the characteristics of a person who is walking by faith with God as did Abraham. Let's bow together. Our heads are bowed, our eyes are closed, and I wonder if there's some friend who's here tonight who would say, Pastor, there has come into my life a trial.
There is, there has been a famine that has taken place. And when that famine took place I was tempted to disobey God, to compromise God's will in my life, to stop putting Him first. And I yielded to that temptation. And I've been a backslider and I'm in trouble. My life is filled with frustration, with defeat, doubts, and heartaches. I'd love to pray for you tonight. I'd love to pray that you might come even this evening to that turning point in your life.
Would you give me that opportunity to pray for you? Would you lift your hand and put it down? What I've said describes where you are in your spiritual journey. Put your hand up and put it down. God bless you. Yes. Quite a number. Yes. Anyone else? Before I pray. My Father I pray this evening will be the turning point for all of these. I pray that you will bring to a culmination your gracious work in which you have been seeking to restore your wandering children.
And may they come back to you tonight to begin walking again in fellowship with you as worshippers, as pilgrims, as prayors, as men and women of God like Abram. In Jesus' name, Amen.