Leading The Way

Guest (Male): In a moment, Leading The Way Audio, where Dr. Michael Youssef guides you toward experiencing a deeper life of faith.

Dr. Michael Youssef: These are the six things that can draw you away from trusting in the Lord and trusting in your resources. The things that lead you away from living by faith and begin to live by sight. These are the six things that are going to take you to a proverbial Egypt, away from Bethel.

Guest (Male): In the early pages of the Bible, you meet Abraham, a man of deep faith, and yet a man who shows faith can still flounder and flutter. Thank you for listening to Leading The Way with international Bible teacher Dr. Michael Youssef. Today, Dr. Youssef continues his faith-building series "Counting Stars in an Empty Sky"—practical and biblical words for wherever life and faith have you today.

Please do remember that Leading The Way is listener-supported. That means that Dr. Youssef relies on God's provision through those encouraged by the multiple ministries of Leading The Way. Learn ways that you can support Dr. Youssef at ltw.org, including one-time gifts, monthly support, or generational giving through estate planning. Now though, listen as Dr. Michael Youssef begins a very practical faith lesson from God's word.

Dr. Michael Youssef: From Watergate all the way to Monica Lewinsky's scandal, from all the other public scandals by public officials, you remember how it's not the lying, but is the cover-up of that lying that got them into deeper trouble. While the Bible exhorts us again and again and again, that the confession of sin brings about God's healing and God's forgiveness and God's restoration. The covering up of sin, the rationalizing of sin, or blaming others for our sin, always causes deeper pain.

But perhaps there is no more powerful example of this than the life of the great patriarch Abraham. We saw the sevenfold blessing, the sevenfold promise that God made to Abraham in the first part of chapter 12 of the book of Genesis. We saw on the strength of these promises, on the strength of this sevenfold blessing, Abraham left the Ur of Chaldeans with all of its dear and near to him.

Then in the last message, we saw Abraham's diversion to Haran. We saw that a pilgrim is someone who leaves home, but he's going to another home. He has an aim, he has a purpose, he has a goal to reach. But a drifter is the one who leaves home and he doesn't know where he's going or she's going. And nothing is more heartbreaking than watching a pilgrim becoming a spiritual drifter. It's heartbreaking. And this is not pointing a finger at the great patriarch.

Trust me, trust me when I tell you that is not the case in my case at least. For I know experientially how dreadful it is, how painful it is, those temporary detours from being a pilgrim to becoming a spiritual drifter. Now I want you to turn with me please to Genesis chapter 12 beginning at verse 10 to 20. Throughout the scripture, we see that Egypt is a symbol of going away from God. Throughout the scripture, you see that Egypt is a symbol of trusting in human ingenuity, in trusting in human resources, in trusting in ourselves. Egypt is always synonymous with lack of faith and living by sight, and not by faith.

I don't know about you, but I know I can identify with Abraham when he went from a pilgrim to a drifter. Here's what often happens when you develop this dependence on Egypt. Whatever your Egypt may be, your proverbial Egypt is very different from the person next to you. Here's what happens. Instead of trusting in the Lord, you will trust in your Egypt. Whether your Egypt is your statement of net worth, whether your Egypt is your financial portfolio, whether your Egypt is some assets or some people, whatever your Egypt may be.

You're going to find that the moment you began to place that faith and that trust in whatever it may be, your intimacy with God goes by the wayside. Your personal affection toward God and toward God's people becomes cold and icy. Your walk with the Lord becomes formal and distant. Just like Voltaire said when he was talking about relationship with God, he said, "We bow, but we do not talk." That is the formality that will take place.

Be very careful. Be very careful. Often when we are in this proverbial Egypt, we rationalize things in our head. We really do. We might not verbalize them, but we rationalize them in our head. "I sure want to obey God, but I have needs and I've got to meet those needs. I need those needs to be met. Well, I sought God with all my heart to get me out of this terrible situation, but he didn't. I'm going to lean on my natural instincts. I'm going to lean on my resources. I'm going to lean on my intellect. I'm going to lean on my own ingenuity."

You may not verbalize it, but that's how you think it. That's how you operate. "After all, God gave me a mind. I've got to use it." But before I get carried away, what I want to do is share with you six things that can draw you away from the trusting in the Lord and trusting in your resources. The things that lead you away from living by faith and begin to live by sight. These are the six things that are going to take you to a proverbial Egypt, away from Bethel.

You ready? Here we go. The first thing: when you begin to use only human logic. You notice I said *only*? Because nothing is wrong with human logic, but you cannot only use human logic. If you use only human logic, you're going to get into trouble because human logic can show you the reality of your situation. And there's nothing wrong with that. After all, Abraham realized that he is in a land of famine. He's in Canaan. There's a famine.

And he realized that the Canaanites are in the same fix that he's in. He realized that these Canaanites are not about to go out and help a stranger and provide him with food. They're in trouble themselves. So Abraham's first step on this downward slope was that he did not go to the God who appeared to him, the God who made him the sevenfold promises, the God whom he trusted enough to leave home in the Ur of Chaldeas and to go somewhere where he did not know where he's going.

He did not seek that God's resources. He did not seek that God's provisions and power and strength, and he used only human logic. Here's what happens when you use only human logic at the time of your difficult circumstances. You're looking at your circumstances, either a circle or a square. You only seeing the circumstances. You are not able to see the whole picture. And that's why use of human logic alone is going to get you into trouble. Because using human logic might let you see your circumstances in their reality.

But the big picture is going to reveal to you the God of your circumstances. And that the God of your circumstances is bigger than your circumstances. Amen? Using only human logic and not seeing the whole picture is the first step that will begin to take you away from the God of power and might.

Secondly, ceasing to worship. And I'm not talking about singing on Sunday morning. No. Worship includes personal worship. Personal worship includes offering sacrifices unto the Lord. Worship includes self-giving to God. Worship includes that place of meeting with God on a regular basis, on an intimate basis. And when Abraham left Bethel, which means the house of God where he has built an altar, he went to Egypt, and we see no evidence of him building an altar in Egypt.

And he did not come back to the heart of worship until he left Egypt in humiliation. We have no record of him worshiping God in Egypt, only coming up with this cockamamie scheme and ceasing to trust in God. Using human logic and failing to see the whole picture and the God of circumstances is going to take you to the second step. And worship will become boring. Worship will become a chore. Worship and spending time, it becomes a drudgery. Albeit it happens slowly. It happens gradually. And it begins by that first step.

Spurgeon, the great preacher of yesteryear, wrote the following. He said, "Biblical truth is like the pinnacle of a steep, slippery mountain. One step away and you find yourself on the downward grade." Beloved, wherever you are right now, only you and God know where you are. Wherever you are, you can come back and trust God again. You can come back to the heart of worship.

Now there are some people who think that they can go to church for one hour, or maybe an hour and a half, if you stretch it, it's two hours. And they think that one hour a week, or two hours a week, is going to give them victory the whole week. Don't fool yourself, please. Because the world is too powerful and the devil is too conniving for you to just spend an hour with God each week. First, using human logic only and not seeing the whole picture. Secondly, worship—personal worship—goes by the wayside.

Third step, which is self-sufficiency. You look at your accomplishments, you look at your accumulations, and you're not necessarily verbalize what I'm going to say, but you think it inside. "Man, I'm good. I really am good. But look what I did. Oh, thank God. Yes." You give him lip service, but then you go back and say, "I must be clever. I must be wise. I must be really, really good. Look where I came from. Look where I am now. I got myself here."

Others may be falling and stumbling, but I am self-sufficient. I am financially independent. I don't owe anybody anything. Abraham probably thought to himself, "These dumb Egyptians..." now I don't take that personally. I mean, these dumb—what would they know? I can out-negotiate them. Sarah was not only my most important asset, she is a beautiful woman. If Pharaoh ever finds out that Sarah is my wife, he's going to kill me and adds her to the concubines. So I got a scheme. I got a self-sufficient plan.

What is Abraham doing? Listen to me. He not only did not trust God to provide for him in the time of the famine in Canaan, he did not trust God to protect him from Pharaoh. He forgot the promise of God—counting stars while you can't see any. That is the promise of God. And you want to say, "Hey, Abe, my man, didn't God say that you should be counting the stars because he's going to give you descendants as many as the stars in the sky? Didn't God say, 'I'll give the land of Canaan to your descendants?'" "Didn't God say?" "Oh, yeah, that was then, but that's now."

And so he takes matters into his own hands and concocts this scheme with Sarah. Question: what was Abraham's number one concern? His wife's husband. That was his number one concern. Look at verses 11, 12, and 13. I have no doubt in my mind that Abraham probably did not think he was lying. "Well, at least it's not a black lie, it's a white lie. It's a half lie. It's not quite a full lie." Because in Genesis 20, verses 11 and 12, it says that she's half-sister. So it's really a half-lie, it's a white lie.

Back then, they did this kind of thing. And he probably reasoned in his head. He said, "You know, I mean well by this. I really mean well, and I need to survive. I can out-negotiate these Egyptians. I can drag this negotiation long enough until I leave Egypt." And it backfired. Now beloved, a lie is a lie is a lie. And here's what God does: he does not wink at lie. He might not take you up on it or you see the consequences the next day or the next month or the next year, but God never winks at sin.

He does not. He forgives sins, but he doesn't wink at sin. Using human ingenuity and human logic and not seeing the whole picture, stopping true worship—personal worship—becoming self-sufficient. Fourthly, unconfessed sin will always lead to more sin, not less. And that will always happen when you cease to be a pilgrim and you become a spiritual drifter. It always happens.

God had to supernaturally intervene to protect Sarah's honor. God had to insert himself supernaturally to protect the promise that he made to Abraham of counting stars even when he can't see any. Let me tell you something about sin. There is a world of difference between sinning and immediately repenting of your sin and confessing and turning to the Lord, and sinning and staying in sin. There is a world of difference between the two.

Because sin always, always, always adds to itself. It's like a snowball rolling down a hill. It gets bigger and bigger and bigger as it rolls down the hill. But remember this: sin is always bigger and stronger than you are. But it is not bigger and stronger than the blood of Jesus Christ that was shed on Calvary. And that is why only the blood of Jesus Christ is the cure to all of our sins.

The fifth step in this downward direction is a terrible loss. Terrible loss. Abraham's scheme turned into a disaster. Abraham thought that Sarah was his meal ticket, but alas. Abraham thought that he could stretch the negotiation with Pharaoh until he leaves, but it backfired. And I just want you to imagine Abraham at that moment of absolute shock and absolute horror and absolute terror and his heart pounding inside of him as they came and snatched Sarah away from his household and took her to Pharaoh.

Beloved, listen to me. There may be another warning and the last warning to some of you. Whenever we choose convenience instead of obedience, we'll lose everything. And we'll lose something very, very precious. Someone said that the world may entreat us well, but that's a poor compensation for our losses. There's no altar in Egypt. There's no fellowship with God in Egypt. There's no new promise in Egypt. Only desolation of his household.

You remember when the prodigal son in Luke chapter 15 left home? When he left home, he said, "Give me." And then when he lost everything, he came back to his father and he said, "Make me. Make me." Whether you lost everything or you got everything, it doesn't matter. Just say, "Make me." Say it with me, "Make me." The downward slope begins with leaving God out of the picture and using only human logic and stopping worship, becoming self-sufficient, which lead to an avalanche of sin and experiencing humungous loss. And finally and sixthly, unconfessed sin brings about rebuke and humiliation.

The greatest blessing in the Christian faith—the greatest blessing—is that God does not let go of his children. Did you get that? He never will let go of you. When he adopts you and gives you his last name, you are held in the very palms of his hands. Jesus said, "Those whom the Father gives me, I lose none." You're a child of God, you will not be lost. Even if you try, even if others try, if the world tries, Satan tries, you can never be lost. And I'm so grateful to the Lord for this.

I'm so grateful that he pulled me by the back of my neck. And even now, if you go to the places where I've been, you will see the mark of the heels of my feet in the sand as he dragged me back to himself. This, my beloved friends, is the greatest news of all. Now some people might not see it that way because sometimes God does this by revealing, exposing our sin. Sometimes we get rebuked by sin. And sometimes our sin can bring about deep humiliation as it happened to Abraham.

But that's not bad news, that's good news. Because from eyes of eternity, he is saving you. He is saving your soul. Here we see a pagan Pharaoh—pagan Pharaoh—rebuking and straightening out the friend of God. Think about this. Think about this. Pharaoh said, "What have you done? Why did you not tell me that she's your wife? Why did you tell me that she's your sister? Take her and get out of here." It was a greatly subdued, humiliated and—but more importantly—wiser Abraham who departed from Egypt and back to Canaan.

It might not be very pretty, a pretty sight, but sin is never pretty. It's never pretty. Even if society approves it, are you with me? The good news is this: Abraham is now back to Bethel worshiping again. Someone said that had Abraham stayed in Canaan during the time of famine, no doubt he would have suffered. But his faith would have grown in leaps and bounds. He would have seen the hand of God working in a way he could never have dreamed of. He would have seen the supernatural, miraculous provision of God.

Thus the famine that took him away from God would have been the instrument of God for his spiritual growth. Abraham discovered the hard way that it takes more grace to stay in Canaan than to run away from Canaan. Because God loves us and he loves to rearrange our steps of faith to take us upward and onward. Can you say that with me? Upward and onward. Regardless of where you are, I believe with all my heart on the authority of God's word, it's never too late to come back to the heart of worship.

Guest (Male): A reminder that God's heart is always for your faith to grow deep roots. This is Leading The Way Audio with Dr. Michael Youssef. You can listen to this and other powerful messages by Dr. Youssef online, with the Leading The Way app on your smartphone or tablet, or by saying the keywords to your smart home devices. Learn about all of the ways to listen at ltw.org.

Now before our time is gone today, I do want to dig a little deeper into what I mentioned at the beginning of today's episode. Leading The Way is listener-supported, relying on those encouraged in their faith by Dr. Youssef to stand in prayer, to participate in the financial support of this worldwide ministry outreach. We trust God to work through one-time gifts. Some give a portion of their tax refund or their work bonuses. Others participate in the Frontline Mission Partner program, those who give monthly, and in estate giving. So as a partner, you stand with those right on the frontline of declaring the grace and peace God offers through his son Jesus.

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