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We begin to read this evening in the book of Genesis chapter sixteen. The book of Genesis chapter sixteen. mhm Now Sarah, Abram's wife, bare him no children. And she had an handmaid, an Egyptian whose name was Hagar. And Sarah said unto Abram, Behold now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing. Go in, I pray thee, unto my handmaid. May be that I shall obtain children by her.
And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarah, and Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her husband, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to Abram, her husband, to be his wife. He went in unto Hagar, and she conceived, and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes. And Sarah said unto Abram, My wrong be upon thee. I gave my handmaid into thy bosom, and when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes. The Lord judge between me and thee.
Abraham said unto Sarai, Behold, thy maid is in thy hand, do to her that which is good in thine eyes. Sarah dealt hardly with her, and she fled from her. The angel of the Lord found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur. And he said, Hagar, Sarai's handmaid, whence camest thou, and whither goest thou? And she said, I flee from the face of my mistress Sarah. And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Return to thy mistress and submit thyself under her hands. The angel of the Lord said unto her, I will greatly multiply thy seed, that it shall not be numbered for multitude.
The angel of the Lord said unto her, Behold, thou art with child and shalt bear a son, and thou shalt call his name Ishmael. Because the Lord hath heard thy affliction. He shall be a wild ass among men. His hand shall be against every man, and every man's hand against him. He shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren. She called the name of the Lord that spake unto her, Thou art a God that seeth. For she said, have I even here looked after him that seeth me?
Wherefore the well was called Ve'er Lahai Roi. Behold, it is between Kadesh and Bereth. Hagar bare Abram a son, and Abram called the name of his son, which Hagar bare, Ishmael. And Abram was fourscore and six years old when Hagar bare Ishmael to Abram. When Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, said unto him, I am God Almighty, walk before me and be thou perfect. I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly. Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying, As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be the father of a multitude of nations.
Neither shall thy name anymore be called Abram, but thy name shall be called Abraham. For the father of a multitude of nations have I made thee, and I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee and to thy seed after thee the land of thy sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.
God said unto Abraham, and as for thee, thou shalt keep my covenant, thou and thy seed after thee throughout their generations. This is my covenant which you shall keep between me and you and thy seed after thee. Every male among you shall be circumcised. The Lord give us good understanding of his holy word. We have been spending our time on these last occasions considering the first great period of Abraham's personal pilgrimage.
That is the first period after he was freed from his father Terah, and on his own steam moved onwards to complete his journey to the Promised Land, there to live his life of pilgrimage with God. And we found that the major lesson that the Holy Spirit was teaching Abraham in that first period of his pilgrimage, was to develop a right attitude to material goods. And we have seen how, after much initial faltering and certain grievous mistakes, Abraham in the end learned his lesson, faced his temptations, and triumphantly passed his exam.
Now we are to move on this evening to the second major period, pi- period in his pilgrimage, and we shall find that it too is concerned with one major lesson, and that lesson is not so much now a right attitude to material goods, rather is the lesson how to deal with the flesh. Now, this particular period of Genesis is divided into two halves, roughly, and we shall be taking this evening the second half of the section first, because there the lesson is so easily seen.
As we read the sad story of what happened to Lot and his family, it is not difficult at all to see at once what the lesson is that God has written at large for our warning and our learning through the experiences of Lot. The story is sad, immeasurably sad. We must not, of course, be more severe in our judgment upon Lot than God is himself. Through Peter the Apostle, he tells us in Peter's second letter in chapter two that Lot was a righteous man.
He was a man who, like Abraham, had learned to believe God, and it was counted to him also for righteousness. And we are further told that here was a man at least this much in touch with God, that when he became surrounded by the evil behavior of the Sodomites, he vexed his soul from day to day. There burned in that man's heart, and we have no right to deny it, a certain sense of the holiness of God, a certain revulsion at the extreme wickedness of his fellow citizens.
Therefore, we praise God for what we see of God in this man's character. Moreover, within all our sadness, we have occasion to rejoice. Indeed, one doesn't know whether to be more sad at Lot's end than glad at God's wonderful faithfulness to his failing servant. For Peter reminds us, taking Lot for his text, that the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation. The Lord knows how, when he brings his judgments upon the earth, to distinguish quite clearly between those who are his own, who are basically righteous because they have believed God and are right with him.
He knows how to distinguish between them and the outright ungodly who have never been regenerate, never reconciled to God. And it is a triumph of the grace of God, fit to make our hearts rejoice, that in the midst of all that evil, calling so desperately for the judgment of God upon those ancient cities. The judgments of God were, so to speak, held up, and the divine hand stayed while an angels came and rescued Lot, even though it were against Lot's will, rescued him from those cities. Words burn in upon our memories.
Said the angels as they dragged Lot by hand out of Sodom with his wife and daughters. We cannot do anything until thou art come hither out of danger's way. It is a wonderful reminder of the faithfulness of God. When God promises to those who trust the Savior that, uh, they shall not come into judgment. God is absolutely true to his word. Never shall one drop of penal judgment fall upon any who have trusted the Savior.
God's works were burned, though Lot himself was saved, which reminds us of what the Apostle Paul tells us. All who have trusted Christ are built upon that one and only foundation, which is Jesus Christ. But if a man build upon that foundation gold, silver, and precious stones, he shall in the coming day receive a reward. But if a believer grows so lax and careless that he builds on that foundation unworthily wood, hay, and stubble, then the day shall declare it.
His work shall be tried by fire, and if his work be unworthy, it shall be burned up, and he shall suffer loss. Yet once more, the scripture reminds us that given that extreme case where a believer's works are totally burned up, yet and nevertheless, he himself shall be saved. Knowing the weakness of our own flesh, we have good occasion to rejoice here in the faithfulness of God. But having said that, Lot's end remains immeasurably sad.
He was saved, yet so as by far. Saved, but he lost his wife, physically speaking. And who can be sure that he didn't lose her spiritually and eternally as well? He himself was saved, but could we, any of us, be sure about his family, his daughters? As we watch their sad behavior, there must hang a very large question mark over whether they were righteous in that basic sense as their father was.
Sad, I say. For Lot had come from Ur of the Chaldees along with Abraham, and presumably had shared the vision that had brought Abraham out of Ur of Chaldees. For the God of glory had appeared to them in all the wonder, the radiant wonder and holiness of his being. Lot with Abraham had left those ancient cities, marvelous cities, gloriously beautiful cities, because he with Abraham had had the vision of that greater and eternal city that has the foundations whose builder and maker is God.
Lot, I say, had stretched out after that eternal city and gone some way on the road there. But he ended living in a cave. A caveman. And behaving exactly like one. Behaving worse than they behaved in the city that he left. Behaving worse than the ungodly in Ur of Chaldees, for they were at least civilized and polite and sophisticated.
And if they sinned, they knew how to sin with a certain good taste. Not the pilgrim to the eternal city, so far lost his vision, ended up living like a caveman, brutish, Cruel. crude. A mob. But that isn't the saddest thing, perhaps, you could find to say about Lot. The thing that it frightens me most of anything as I read that story, and it frightens me because I say to myself, look here, old fellow, you're no better in yourself than Lot was.
Your flesh is no more, uh, righteous and holy than his flesh. You too could fall, but for the grace of God, as Lot fell, and therefore I say it frightens me. What frightens me most about Lot is that not that he lost his goods, and that he lost his testimony, and that he lost his family. The thing that frightens me most is what happened to Lot himself, and in particular to his moral judgment. Something went terribly wrong with that man, didn't it?
Listen to him. With angels in his house, he's standing outside talking to the crowd and bargaining with them, and in the end offers his daughters for that crowd to abuse. Doesn't seem to think of the enormity of the sin that he is proposing. What I say has happened to his moral judgment. This is a very solemn thing because our moral judgment is a part of ourselves.
And our salvation is directed, is it not? Not merely to releasing us from the guilt of sin. Not merely at taking us at last home to God's heaven. Our salvation is geared and directed to fashioning us anew, not conformed to our former lusts in our ignorance. We are to put off the old man and be renewed in our minds, created after the image of him that created us in true holiness. And the developing of a believer's moral judgment is high on the list of God's purpose.
When we first come to Christ, our moral judgment perhaps is warped, maybe by years of sin, by years of living distant from God and from his word. And it is the purpose of the Holy Spirit at once and continually to cleanse our moral judgment, to exercise our moral judgment, to instruct and to educate our moral judgment as he prepares us and makes us men and women fit to inhabit eternity. And it is a sad and immeasurable tragedy when a believer wanders so far from the Lord that he not only does wrong, but his moral judgment becomes seriously perverted.
Listen to the man, with judgment about to fall round his ears, with his way of life about to land him in eternal loss, pleading with the angel not to take too extreme a view of this world, and allow him peace not to have to go too far out of Sodom and Gomorrah. You would have thought a man in that situation would have begged the angel, don't let me stay, take me not one mile, nor ten miles, but a hun- nor a hundred miles, but a thousand miles and as far as you can get me out of this city.
Not lots. Judgments of God about to fall around his ears and his whole life's work be burned up. Moral judgment is so deadly that he pleads with the angel to be allowed to stay near Asada than it was the angel's intention to allow. I say this is solemn. It happens still. At least elders here present will know what I mean.
When I say that it happens still to believers, not merely that they fall, caught out in a moment of sudden temptation, yielding to pressures that are almost insupportable. But alas, something more than that happens. Men who will go into sin that in days past would have made them shudder. And when you try to talk to them, you find that something's gone so awry with their moral judgments that they know no shame. You sense no conviction of sin or any shame at their doing, and they treat it as a very ordinary matter, as you might expect a man of the world to treat it.
It's a solemn thing. You see, it means that Lot will not merely arrive in eternity, and all his life's works burned. But the man Lot that arrives in eternity will be a far smaller man than what he could otherwise have been. Instead of a large, healthy, well-developed moral judgment, an understanding of the ways of God and sympathy with the ways of God.
There will rise a man who began to grow and then forever was dwarfed. He shall, to use Peter's term, have an entrance into the eternal kingdom. That is secured by the blood of Christ. But an abundant entrance. What hope has not. Or an abundant entrance. Into that eternal kingdom. You say, where did it all happen?
Where did it all start? Not given to us to know the secrets of a man's heart, is it? Nor for us to apportion blame. One cannot help watching and seeing certain obvious contributory causes. Some at least of the blame must attach, must it not, to Abraham himself. You may trace the beginnings of Lot's going astray to that fatal choice that he made when he and Abraham had to choose and separate.
As we said the other night, when Lot chose him the grassy plains round about Sodom and Gomorrah, he was, from one point of view, making a very wise business-like decision. He had goods, he had flocks, he had much cattle, and if you have cattle and sheep, you must have grass to feed them. And if you have any sense of your stewardship before God, and God has given you thousands of cattle, you can't take them to a wilderness and let them die. That is to fail in your stewardship towards God. God has given you sheep to look after, look after them you must.
And one must take a business-like attitude to our biz- to our stewardship. God seems to have forgotten that you can't decide life's big issues simply on business terms. Chose him the well-watered plains, knowing full well, apparently, the evil and the wickedness of the cities to which he drew near. All this world is with you. My brother, if you are tempted to set up a, a sweet shop in the red light area of Soho, well, think again, particularly if you have children.
It may be an eminently good business deal. It could cost you everything short of your soul. As I say, whatever was it that brought Lot to the point where he had to make the decision? Ah. Why this that they had amassed so much goods in Egypt? And how did they amass them? Through, directly through Abram's unprincipled decision to deny his wife in order to make goods.
And it was the success, the succ- seeming s- the seeming success of that business deal, in terms of increased goods, brought Lot to make the decision that was so fatal in his experience. When at length we see Abram standing before God, having learned his own lesson and successfully passed through his temptations, now standing before God to intercede for Lot, who didn't learn the lesson.
Cannot help but thinking that some of the tears in Abram's eyes are there because in his heart of hearts, he knows that Lot perhaps would never have been in Sodom, hadn't Abram once led him on that questionable Egyptian enterprise. It's a solemn thing, isn't it? None of us lives to himself. It's a s- solemn thing to be pondered.
What my decisions can do to the life of another believer. I once had to talk to a man who for thirty years had strayed from the Lord, whom he originally had trusted. According to him, and I can only quote you what he told me, I cannot evaluate it.
According to him, those thirty years of wasted wandering started when he was himself confronted with a business decision that was not one hundred percent righteous. He knew it was wrong. Said he. I looked around and I saw other businessmen who were Christians, and they did that kind of thing. The young man I believed to. Doesn't excuse him, does it? But reminds us all that we are responsible to be our brother's keeper in these things.
We're responsible not only for our decisions, but some at least of the effect that they may have on other people. Sad? Well, it's not the saddest, is it? But it is ironically sad. The sad thing is this. There is nothing wrong in having goods, as we have said now many times. Had Lot exercised his stewardship over the goods that God had given him in a godly fashion, he could have enjoyed those goods while he lived.
And as one Timothy six says, he could have used those goods to make for himself a good foundation against the time to come. Eternity is real. Eternity will bring us certain needs, will it not? Yes, if a child is going to have a good career when he grows up, keep her in these things. We're responsible not only for our decisions, but some at least of the effect that they may have on other people. Sad?
Well, it's not the saddest, is it? But it is ironically sad. The sad thing is this. There is nothing wrong in having goods, as we have said now many times. Had Lot exercised his stewardship over the goods that God had given him in a godly fashion, he could have enjoyed those goods while he lived. And as one Timothy six says, he could have used those goods to make for himself a good foundation against the time to come. Eternity is real.
Eternity will bring us certain needs, will it not? Yes, if a child is going to have a good career when he grows up in this life and be able to meet all the interesting and exciting possibilities that life will put before him, a child will need to be educated and trained and start life with a good foundation. A wise father, if he has the wherewithal, will think ahead for his child if the Labour government allows it. He will say to himself, now when this child gets to twenty one or twenty five, then he'll need a good foundation to start with.
I'll think ahead. I'll lay him up a thousand or two, so that he has a good foundation on which to embark into life with all its possibilities. Eternity will make demands of us, with all sorts of exciting possibilities and activities and interests, but to do them and to engage in them. My good brother, you'll need a capital. A spiritual capital. And according to what spiritual capital you have, so will be controlled the kind of things you can do in eternity.
Tell them, says Paul to Timothy, tell them in your church, not merely to be content with knowing that they have eternal life, tell them to lay up for themselves a good foundation against that time to come. Lot could have used his material goods in such a way as to provide himself with a spiritual foundation, that when eternity dawned, he should have a good springboard, so to speak, from which to throw himself into the activities of that marvelous world.
And he lost. He lost his good foundation. And he lost his goods here as well. And he lost them not without warning, did he? For God is exceedingly kind. He doesn't sit aloft there in his heaven waiting to clobber us hard the first time we make a mistake. And therefore, when Lot had made his wrong mistake and now had come to dwell in Sodom, the kings came. Do you not remember what chapter fourteen says?
And they took not only Sodom, but they took Lot and his goods. He was fortunate then to get away with his life. And had it not been for the virility and vigor of Abraham, who had stayed outside, Lot would have lost everything then. God, in his mercy, saved Lot and gave him back his goods. How kind God is. Saying, Lot, my man, do better next time with it. Learn like Abraham to avail yourself of the ministry of this great Melchizedek.
Learn to fill your hearts with a sense of the wonder and greatness of God, Lord of heaven and earth. You don't need to go into those shady things. Lot didn't learn his lesson, did he? Went back to the same old way. But if we won't let God teach us the easy way, then God will teach us the hard way.
work. So Lot stands in scripture as an example of what the flesh can do to us as believers, if instead of living after the spirit, we choose to live after the false. I say the lesson is easy to be seen, more difficult to learn and put into practice, but easy to see it. No need to be told that the evils of Sodom and Gomorrah were the evils of the flesh, for there it is in its crudest, most blatant fall.
form. But now as we turn to the beginning of the section, we shall need all the help we can get from the New Testament to remind ourselves that in this particular period of history, Abram too failed, and failed miserably, and failed for precisely the same reason. He had overrated the flesh, or shall I say underrated it? I don't know which way around to put it. But instead of learning at once to rely totally on God for the fulfillment of the promises of God, Abraham, though he believed the promise and wanted to fulfill the promise, got to depend on God and went about it in the strength of the faith.
And it was a mistake that had far longer Consequences, and perhaps far more serious than the mistake Lot made. Why it's difficult to see it is this. If what we do is obviously sinful in itself, we say to ourselves, well, yes, that's the flesh, you can see it, can't you? But if what we are doing is in itself good, then it's much more difficult to see that good attempted in the power of the flesh is just as wrong as evil done in the power of the flesh.
It is a hard lesson to learn. It was taught to Saint Paul himself through much grievous experience. The evil, the exceeding evil, the rebellion, and yet at the same time the weakness of the flesh. Sarah came to Abram, so chapter sixteen tells us one day. Abe, my dear, she said. Now it would be nice, wouldn't it, to have a child?
You're getting older, you know. Wouldn't it be nice to have a child? Isn't that what God has promised us, that we shall have a child? And in our seed shall all the nations of the world be blessed. Wouldn't it be a good thing, don't you think, if somehow we contrived to have a child? Then she said a very strange thing. She said, the Lord, mark it, the Lord has restrained me from bearing. Has the Lord done it then? And, uh, sense would have had it, the Jews would have said, well, if the Lord has done that, well, that's that then.
We shall have to wait God's time for him to fulfill his promise. But she added, the Lord has restrained me from bearing, therefore you take Hagar. Really? So now, uh, Sarah, what the Lord can't do, you will. What the Lord hadn't, uh, intended to do just yet, you'll do. But you won't do it with the Lord's help exactly, will you? Or will you do it? And right there, with the very best will in the world, for I don't suppose that Sarah really realized that what she was proposing was dire independence of God.
The very best will in the world to fulfill the glorious promise of God. Sarah suggested, and Abram followed, the idea of proceeding in independence of God. I wonder if you feel in your own heart much more of an arrow of conviction beginning to stick its barbs in than you did when we were talking about Lot. How many of us, having been justified by faith and at peace with God and determined now to live godly lives and see that all God's purposes for us are fulfilled, have gone past the stage of simply cooperating with the power of God and have attempted to do it in our own religious flesh.
Forgetting that the flesh inside a believer is no more acceptable to God than it is and was in his unregenerate days, and that the flesh can no more accomplish for God than it could before a man was converted. Is it not true to say that a great deal of the frustration and the disillusionment that we experience in our Christian lives, when we had expected to be so far advanced in the things of God, a great deal of the disillusionment comes from this, that we have tried, have tried to be spiritual simply by the power of the faith.
Because we have not yet come to a deep enough and a radical enough assessment of the evil and wickedness and rebellion and weakness of the flesh, and haven't learned realistically and meaningfully to say, in me, I know it now, in me, that is in my flesh, there dwelleth no good thing. How many churches have been disturbed? I mean, assemblies is disturbed, if you prefer the term. By men who thought they were standing for God's truth, but stood for it by the ugly, fleshly.
Energies of their own power. So that the resulting squabbles and phariseeism is open evidence for all to see that this is no work of God's Holy Spirit, but sheer religious flesh waging its vendetta against other religious flesh, producing unfortunate Pharisees. So at any rate, Abram had to be taught, and the lesson wasn't long in coming.
Take Hagar, my servant girl, said Sarah. So Abram did. And then, you might have expected it, mightn't you? Girlie now had been a servant, was a slave girl. Now she saw suddenly that she was to be a mother of Abram's child, and Sarah was barren. I say, going around dusting the objects in the tent, uh, that morning was quite an experience. Oh, what a madam she became overnight, uh. How much better than her ma- mistress she was, when she wasn't for taking orders now.
You know. And Sarah, well, she believed in God and all that, but, uh, I mean, this was too much. Little skiddy of a girl, she says. I- I- I'm not going to stand for that, coming in here and bossing me around the place and not doing what I tell her. Abram, she said, my dear, you'll have to send her out. I won't stand for such insolence and impertinence and such insubordination. There is he, servant turned Her master. Despising her mistress. Getting uppish and insolent and insubordinate and disobedient.
Never do. I shall be thrown out, Abram, she says. And Abram says, but my dear, that's a bit tough, isn't it? I mean, it was your suggestion. Well, my wrong be upon you, and the Lord judge, said Sarah, between me and you. I see. Now that is very interesting, Sarah. Are you really invoking the Lord as judge in your life? You know what you do, I hope. Oh yes, we all ought to, should we not?
Though we forget it sometimes. We don't forget to remember that in the penal sense we shall never come into judgment. Sometimes we forget, don't we, what Saint Peter says about daily life. If you call on him as Father, who without respect of persons judges according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear. It is part of God's office as judge that he shall train us to agree with his judgments, to discover the sinfulness of the flesh.
And if we ask him, he will, and if we don't ask him, he nevertheless he will. Sooner or later, by pleasant lesson or by painful, God the judge, who judges every man's work, set out to teach us, in our private and in our family life, the exceeding sinfulness of sin. Sarah thought they could e- easily be dealt with. She said, well, Abram, my dear, it's no good, sir, you know, standing there and fussing and dithering, oh boy, get on with it, you're master, aren't you in this house, or who wears the trousers?
Uh, I mean, you're not going to have a skivvy like that. Uh, defy you, are you? Get her out. All right, says Haden, I suppose I have to do what we're told. I really wonder myself exactly who was boss in that house, but never mind. Um, out Hagar had to go. Settle it. You shan't have any more disobedience. I will be mistress in my own tent. Oh, will you? What, uh, by this method of doing things independent of God, Sarah Oger? We'll be mistress with you.
Adrian Ishmael went. Ishmael as yet unborn. And the, or notice the term, the angel of the Lord appeared to them. And many times over, lest we forget, the historian keeps on telling, and the angel of the Lord said this, and the angel of the Lord said that, and the angel of the Lord said something else, and the angel of the Lord, uh, yes, the angel of the Lord. And she asked for God as judge to settle the matter. Right now you'll get God in his official capacity with the angel of the Lord.
And first of all, he says, no, my dear Hagar, this is no place for you to be in your condition. What do you think's going to happen to you? Look, you think that by keeping out of the traces and defying Sarah and not obeying, you're going to get freedom. But my dear, the woman will perish. And your unborn child. For sheer sake of survival, you'll have to go back and be subject to your master and mistress. What a chaotic world it would be if there were no masters and no mistresses, and nobody obeyed anybody.
What an old savage jungle of the flesh that would be. Better some rule, however imperfect, than no rule. So back went Hagar and her unborn child. Presently he was born. And into that house, now by the insistence of God, was born. He shall be a wild ass amongst men.
Oh, I wonder, can you imagine what life in that tent was like for the next thirteen uh years? Wow. I should imagine there were not seldom what you might euphemistically call scenes. Zismer wouldn't eat his marmalade at breakfast and threw it at Sarah, and then Hagar got up on her hind legs and wasn't going to have her child smacked. Oof. Poor old Abel. Fancy having a wild ass in your home and trying to control him?
Independent brute. Ah, Sarah. Sarah. Now you can see, Count Jill, where it's easy to see it in somebody else. Now you can see what independence of God is like. Wild, untamed ass. And virtually untameable. Struggle to control him and get a moment's peace and keep the furniture without being broken to bits. Ah. So did Sarah have to learn what we all have to learn, that the mind of the flesh, be it in the most cultivated and socialized dainty lady that you ever saw, as well as in the outright criminal, the mind of the flesh is enmity against God.
It's not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. Which I hope she soon learned that lesson. So did she. But it was God this time that would decide how long we would take teaching it. Not one year, nor two years, nor three. Many a long year. So Sarai and Abram thought they must sometimes go crazy. Wouldn't we like our spiritual lessons to be all enjoyable and lovely?
And wouldn't we love to be filled from Monday morning to Saturday night with a sense of tremendous success. Just, just occasionally I do hear some Christians whose spiritual life seems to be that. You know, one marvelous success from Monday morning to Saturday night, oh, marvelous in the clouds. And I come to the conclusion that they weren't altogether sinners like I was when they started. Perhaps they were made of different stuff. I know the nineteen twenty five material was pretty poor stuff when I was made. What a long lesson it is when you think you have learned it, and now you're sure of it, and you'll depend on the Lord, and you're certain now this week you're going to depend on the Lord.
Now, by Friday at eleven o'clock, old Ishmael was there still. We have to face him. I guess, but unpleasant as it is and seemingly bad for our ego, who would like to be successful, wouldn't we? It is marvelously healthy, having to face the old enemy and learn that the flesh is utterly incorrigible. So Paul had to learn it. He said, you know, in my inner mind, well, in my heart and in my mind, well, I delight in the law of God.
And with my mind, I serve the law of God, emotionally, intellectually. Paul loved the law of God. He could see it was right, and he wanted to do it. And then he told himself that he would do it. The good I would do. Will, emotion, intellect, all ranged on the side of doing the will of God, only to find another law working in his members. Oh, wretched man that I am, he said, I conclude that in me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good.
God does not enjoy seeing our failures. God's very heart is made good when he sees us beginning to come down to reality and face the flesh for what it is. It is, as we discover, the incurability of the flesh. We should be gradually taught not to rely on it, even to fulfill the things of God, and be driven to seek God's will of making us holy.
So what might that way be? Well, chapter seventeen of Genesis, in its old world language, will tell us, for it contains the rite of circumcision, the cutting off of the flesh. For we are the circumcision who worship in the spirit of God and have no confidence in the flesh. I wonder, do I speak for a Christian that's grown discouraged? You thought that by now, surely, you would have made tremendous strides.
And you say to me, but you know, it isn't as though I weren't keen. I mean, there was a period in my life when I was just about saved and couldn't care less and was not very keen to go on with God. But since I've become keen and wanted to please the Lord, oh, what an up and down thing it's been, and uh, instead of making a vast progress, here I am today, and all I seem to know is how strong the flesh is. My dear good friend, that is progress. God save you if you got home to heaven without knowing that the flesh is bad. It is the negative but necessary part of the world that we discover that the arm of the flesh pays.
God took a long while to demonstrate it in Abraham's life. Not until the promised seed Isaac was eventually born, was Ishmael cast out. Eventually it happened. The promised seed was born, and the bondwoman and her son were cast out. What God taught Abraham over those years, God had to teach the nation that came from Abraham for many long, long centuries. God took that nation when he brought them out of Egypt, redeemed by the blood of the Passover lamb and by his own power, and he set them at Sinai and offered them a covenant relationship on the basis of the law.
Do this and I'll bless you. Don't do it and I'll curse you. Come, said God, what do you think of that? Well, they said, yes, we, yeah, oh, that's all right, God. Anything else? I mean, we could do that all right. And to learn through long, long centuries that the law was holy and just and good. Nothing wrong with the law. Had to learn its function. Law came in that the trespass might abide. That Israel, and through Israel the world, might see demonstrated over centuries the impossibility of the flesh to fulfill the law of God.
Long and bitter lessons they were. Not until the promised seed came was the lesson removed. Praise God, one day he came. The old covenant was then made obsolete. The promised seed was born in Bethlehem and died to count, and the new era began. Era of the new covenant and a new method of making people holy. God, who teaches the negative side of the lesson, that the flesh is bad and helpless, will not sacrifice.
