Leading The Way

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining Leading The Way listeners across six continents for the passionate teaching of longtime pastor and international Bible teacher, Dr. Michael Youssef. As today's episode begins, we know not everyone understands all that it means to be Christian, all that it means to be a follower of Christ. Maybe you had a bad experience, or someone or some church did something to turn your heart away from God.

Well, Leading The Way's passion is to help you move forward in your faith journey. So if you have questions or if you'd like to connect with a Leading The Way pastor or counselor about spiritual things, let me encourage you to visit ltw.org/jesus. The team is always happy to facilitate that kind of conversation. Just go to ltw.org/jesus. Up next, Dr. Youssef continues his series called Counting Stars in an Empty Sky. Let's enjoy today's message together.

Dr. Michael Youssef: The last time we left Abraham in Chapter 15, he was on an emotional and spiritual high. God had already passed through the animal that had been cut in half, and the half was separated. God Himself is the one who took responsibility for the covenant and walked in that blood, which is a foreshadowing of the cross of Jesus Christ, where He alone hung on that cross and shed His blood so that everyone who would come to believe in Him and trust in Him would be saved.

God affirmed His covenant to Abraham. In Chapter 15, we saw how God personally took responsibility for not only the making of the covenant but for the keeping of the covenant. We saw how God assured Abraham that His delay does not mean His denial. You would think right after that, it would have been sufficient for Abraham to just keep on waiting patiently and to keep on counting stars.

Instead, in a moment of impetuousness, in a moment of impatience, he did an about-face. Abraham stumbled headlong into one of the biggest messes that he has ever made. I want to submit to you today that here we are 4,000 years after that mess was made, and we are suffering and experiencing the pain of that mess. Don't ever think that when you sin, you're just sinning against yourself. Your sin is going to impact everybody around you, and it could impact generations to come.

You often hear me say that a test always nips at the heels of a blessing. So if you are blessed right now, heads up, a test is around the corner. Beloved, I know that biblically and I know that experientially. I want to show it to you from the Word of God right here because if Genesis Chapter 15 can be called the chapter of faith, Genesis 16 can be called the chapter of failure.

If in Chapter 15, Abraham walked by faith, in Chapter 16, he walked by the flesh. If in Genesis 15, Abraham listened to God, in Chapter 16, he listens to his wife. Just before the elbows start flying, let me stop and remind you that it was Abraham who asked Sarah to lie for him when they were in Egypt. The ground is level here. I know I speak for many men when I say that I get wise counsel from my wife. I get very good advice from my wife, godly counsel.

Furthermore, I'm going to show you today something about Sarah's counsel to Abraham. I want to show it to you as a selfless act. I want to prove it to you in a minute. But to do that, I have to transport you 4,000 years back in history, not only in history but culturally so you understand what was going on. You hear me often say to make sure you put the text in its context. Context doesn't only mean the verse before and the verse after, but you have to understand to whom it was written, who are the recipients, what it intended to say, and what was the culture like at that time.

That is very important in faithfulness to the Scripture. The Bible is always relevant to the people it's speaking to, so we learn from it and we take lessons from it. Men in those days, particularly at that time, their standing in society was dependent on how many children they had. Abraham's importance in his society, in fact, his manhood is at stake here. Sarah felt deeply for what is perceived to be her husband's disgrace in society.

In fact, I want to submit to you that Sarah wanted the world to know that the reason they were not able to have children was her fault and not her husband's fault. That's something I wanted you to really take a grasp of and understand what's going on here. She was absolutely sure that if she followed the cultural norms, and make no mistake about it, it was the cultural norm. Everybody was doing it.

When you can't have children, you give him your slave, your servant, and when the slave becomes pregnant and is ready to deliver a baby, she would sit on her mistress's lap and deliver the baby as if it's her own. It was the done thing. Everybody was doing it. Beloved, not everything that is legal or accepted by society is good and right. Abortion is legal and accepted, but God said it is wrong; it's a sin.

Homosexual marriage is legal now, but God said it's contrary to His created order. Not because adultery and fornication is accepted, it's still sin in the sight of God. The list goes on and on. But here's the kicker: regardless of how selfless Sarah tried to be, regardless of how much she wanted to take the blame for not having children, regardless of how she wanted to vindicate her husband, it was the wrong course of action.

I'm convinced that if anybody else suggested that other than Sarah, Abraham would not have gone through with it. And so Sarah suggested to Abraham that he could have children through her Egyptian maid, Hagar. Read Galatians Chapter 4 very carefully. Paul argues that we, the believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, are the spiritual descendants of Abraham because it is the seed, not seeds, and he's talking about Jesus.

That is why Jesus the Messiah was born from the free woman, Sarah, not the slave woman, Hagar. But you remember back a couple of messages ago, I showed you how Abraham tried to do a run-in on God's promise. He did it before. He did his estate planning and he said to God, "Now I'm working my estate here, and I'm doing my estate planning here, and now my chief of staff, Eliezer from Damascus, will be my heir."

You know what God said to him? Here is a Youssef translation: "Read my lips. You're going to have a child by Sarah." But somehow, somehow this time, waiting for Abraham and Sarah became hard. Waiting became difficult. Sarah and Abraham felt that they had to do something to help God out. Have you ever dealt with people who are God's little helpers? Let me pour my heart out to you for a minute and tell you that when we stop trusting God to fulfill His promise, no matter how rational, no matter how reasonable, no matter how good it sounds, we are actually blaming God for our difficulties.

I've been there and done that, and I promise you, I have the t-shirt to prove it. Look at Verse 2 with me, please. Sarah said, "The Lord has kept me from having children." Well, as a statement of fact, that is true. That is true. But there's more to this verse and to what she just said than meets the eye. I want you to listen carefully as if Sarah was saying, "I know we should trust God. I know that we should take Him at His word. I know that we should trust in His promise. I know we should wait. I know we should be counting stars and getting ready, but look at us. We are ready for the nursing home, not building a nursery."

Beloved, I know and you know that sometimes we do the wrong thing with good motives. We say our motive was good. Just remember that. Question: Who's at fault here, Sarah or Abraham? Both of them. Both of them. The only person involved here who's not at fault was Hagar. She was a servant. She was a slave girl. She had to do what she was told to do. She had no authority. Now let me give you a counsel that I give myself. Trust me, I give myself a whole lot and very often. It's a counsel I give myself, and it is this: When I'm waiting for God to do the supernatural, I am very careful not to try to do the natural.

When you're waiting for God to do the supernatural, be very careful not to go for the natural. But you know what? I often point to the problem, I show you the problem, I show you the sin, I show you the mistake, but then I want to lift up your eyes from Abraham. Lift up your eyes from Sarah, from Hagar, from all of the mess that we are looking at right now. I want to lift up your eyes to the Lord Jesus. I want to lift up your eyes to our God and show you how gracious He is, how incredible our God is.

He supernaturally specializes in picking up the threads of our disobedience and our distrust of Him, and He weaves them into a beautiful, beautiful tapestry. God is renowned for pasting together the fragments of our fractured lives into a beautiful picture. God is famous for picking up all the throwaway material, and He produces a magnificent tapestry. That's the God I want you to look at. That's the God I want you to encounter today.

Remember when our kids were little, we used to read them nursery rhymes. Actually, my wife reads them and I'm sitting there listening, and now of course we do it with our grandchildren. I've always listened to this thing about Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall; Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. None of the King's men or the King's horses could put Humpty Dumpty together again. Remember that? And I remember sitting there one day and saying, "Yeah, because Humpty Dumpty does not need the King's men or the King's horses. He needs the King."

You and I need the King because the King can. Trust the King. Wait on the King. Believe the King's word. Sarah and Abraham came with their plan to help God out. "I help You perform a miracle, God," and it backfired. Through the years, there used to be all of these seminars even in churches. "Power of positive thinking, it will produce a miracle." "TM, transcendental meditation, it will produce a miracle." "Visualization, if you can visualize it, it will happen, it will produce a miracle."

None of that is biblical. Only God can bring the miracle. And all He's asking you and me to do is to have faith, to trust in Him, to wait upon Him, and to believe that sooner or later, He will do it. Sadly, when Hagar fell pregnant and Sarah's scheme succeeded, Sarah resented her. And the only thing that Hagar could do at the time was run away. That's the only thing she could do.

What happened when she ran away? Look at Verse 7. The Angel of the Lord appeared to this fatigued slave woman, now pregnant with a boy. By the way, in Verse 7 of Chapter 16 of Genesis, it's the first time you see the term "the Angel of the Lord." And this is no ordinary angel. This is none other than the pre-incarnate Lord Jesus Christ. Theologians call that a theophany because He appeared. Don't ever forget that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, coexisted with the Father before all worlds.

In fact, Paul said it is for whom and through whom the world was created. You see it clearly here in Verse 13. Hagar calls him "the Lord." And then she goes on to say, "He is the God who sees me." He is the God who sees me. Listen to me: Whenever you're tempted to think that God has forgotten you, whenever you're tempted to think that God has forsaken you, whenever you're tempted to think that God does not see or care about what's going on in your life, whenever you're tempted to think that He is not aware of your difficulties, He's not aware of your problems, He's not aware of your pain, He does not aware of what's going on, I want you to remember Hagar here.

Remember what she said: "He is the God who sees me." He is the God who sees you. He doesn't only see you, He sees all of the details in your life. He sees all of what's concerning you. He's concerned about what's concerning you. All the minutest details in your life are before Him. He is watching over all things in your life, all the surrounding things, things that you can't even see or know.

Psalm 139:9-10 says, "If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost depths of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me and Your right hand shall hold me." But I may be jumping ahead of myself here, and I just want to get back to the story. I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand if you have ever tried to run away from the place of obedience. Have you ever tried to run away from the place of obedience?

I mean, when the Lord wants you to be patient and wait, but you run. I know I've tried it a couple of times in my life. It's miserable. I discovered that the place of blessing is in the place of obedience. The place of blessing is where He wanted me to be, not where I want to go. Today, the motto in our culture is, "When things get tough, the tough get going out the door."

You see, most would rather run away than stay and deal with the issues. That's the problem with our culture today. We quit jobs and we quit schools, we quit churches, we quit marriages, and we do it with dizzying speed. What we don't realize is that when people quit whatever it is, thinking they can run away, they're running away with the problems, and they're just going to repeat it and they're going to repeat it until they stop and deal with the core issue.

For Hagar, she probably was going back to Egypt. There's not much call for pregnant unwed mothers in Egypt. She'd only be in misery. Look at Verse 4. You see Hagar began to despise Sarah and Sarah returned the favor. Verse 5, it shows me how fickle my memory is. It showed me how short my memory is. Look at it with me, please. Sarah said to Abraham, "May the wrong you have done to me be on you. May the Lord judge between you and me."

She has forgotten it was her idea. Amazing. Even though it was well-intended, it was well-intended. In my flesh, I try to imagine Abraham's reaction to this. The Bible doesn't say it, so don't go look for it. But I try to imagine the poor guy who's dazed and confused and looking at Sarah and said, "But sugar pumpkin, that was your idea." She said, "What do you mean it's my idea? Don't pin that on me. You could have said no."

Poor Hagar. She thought having the baby's boss is going to earn her a promotion, but it only got her the boot. And the more Hagar's figure blossomed, the more cantankerous Sarah got. I think you have to agree with me that up to this point of Hagar's life, she experienced undeserved troubles, right? You agree? But here's what I want to show you, more importantly, that she received unexpected blessings.

Don't ever underestimate God to give you unexpected blessings when you're going through undeserved trouble. And now people say life is not fair and all that. I understand, but God also is a God of justice and He sees what's going on. But before she receives that blessing, that unexpected blessing, she had to go back. She had to go back into the path of blessing.

Look, let me tell you something. There is a path of blessing and there's a path of no blessing. Bible makes it clear. There's just no third way. And in order to receive the blessing, you have to stand in the path of blessing. Running away from the place of obedience is not going to bless you. Running away from the place where God wants you to be will not bring about the blessing, and you can fight it all you want and for as long as you want. You can take this to the bank: only where He wants you to be is the place of blessing.

In my early years in my walking with the Lord, like many people, I would cry to God in a situation and I would say, "God, please change my circumstances. Please change my circumstances." And I would cry to God, and God let me cry for a little while, and then in His sweet, quiet voice, He would say, "Michael, I want to change you. I want to change you before I can change your circumstances, before I will change your circumstances."

Here God said to Hagar, "I will bless you, but when you go back to the place of obedience, I will bless you. You will have a son and you shall call his name Ishmael. Shama, God who hears, El, the name of God. Ishmael, God hears." He heard you. And as God is saying to Hagar and He's saying to so many of you, He is saying, "I hear the cry of your affliction. I hear the cry of the one who's been wronged. I hear the cry of the inner pain of those who have been deceived. I hear the cry of injustice. I hear the cry of a true victim of unfaithfulness. I hear your cry."

And that is why when God asked Hagar, "Where did you come from and where are you going?" It's not because God did not know where she's coming from and where she's going. He's omnipresent, omniscient. But because He wanted her to verbalize her pain. He wanted her to verbalize her pain. Beloved, I'm convinced that when Hagar returned back, she returned back a changed woman.

But that's not all. God also changed the heart of Abraham and the heart of Sarah. And it went on for 13 years. Next message I'll be talking about the 13 years of silence of God. He changes things. Sometimes in our eagerness to change our circumstances and we want to change them our way, we want to change them in our time. In our eagerness, we don't see how God works and how that He's working on so many fronts all at the same time.

He's preparing so many hearts all at the same time, how He's setting up all the events, how He is lining up all of the circumstances so that the blessing can be revealed and His purpose be fulfilled. Wherever you are today, whatever your circumstances, only you know. Whatever your cry may be this very moment, whatever your pain is, only you and God know. Whatever your hopes and dreams, if they are shattered or they are being fulfilled, wherever you are, I want you to do something with me in a moment. I want you to pray this prayer: "Lord, take me to the place of obedience. Lord, take me to the place of blessing. In Jesus' name. Amen."

Guest (Male): Counting Stars in an Empty Sky. That's what Dr. Michael Youssef has called this thought-provoking message series on Leading The Way Audio. Learn more about Leading The Way and find the tools to dig deeper into your faith when you visit us at ltw.org. Begin your day with the timeless wisdom of Scripture and be encouraged as you reflect on Dr. Michael Youssef's daily devotional, The Daily Way. Journey with Dr. Youssef into the very heart of God through 365 daily Bible readings and devotional reflections designed to help you grow in Christ.

Whether you're looking for guidance in marriage and family, want a clearer understanding of prayer and praise, or are eager to explore the profound teachings of Christ, The Daily Way is more than a book, it's a companion for your spiritual journey. In addition to the teachings, it includes blank pages for your notes, prayers, and reflections as God works in your life throughout the year. In The Daily Way, you'll be reminded that God's grace is for our past, present, and future, transforming us into the people He intends us to be.

The Daily Way is available now for your gift of any amount to Leading The Way at ltw.org. That's ltw.org. Begin your journey today. Take advantage of this month's special offer to get your very own copy of The Daily Way. Give us a call, 866-626-4356. You can also look for the link when you visit ltw.org. This program is furnished by Leading The Way with Dr. Michael Youssef, passionately proclaiming uncompromising truth around the world.