Connect with Skip - Skip Heitzig

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is Connect with Skip Heitzig, and we're so glad
you've joined us for today's program. Connect with Skip Heitzig
is all about connecting you to the never changing truth
of God's Word through verse by verse teaching. Before we
get started, we want to invite you to check out
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(00:22):
be sure to sign up to receive Skip's weekly devotional
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will help you gain a deeper understanding of what awaits
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for those who've said yes to Jesus and a sobering

(00:43):
picture for those who have not. Get your copy when
you sign up today at Connectiskip dot com. That's connect
with Skip dot com. Now let's get started with today's
message from pastors Skip Heitzig.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Genesis, chapter sixteen, I recall traveling with a friend from
Jordan to Germany, and we landed in Austria. Actually it
was Franklin Graham that I was with and we touched
down in Austria and we was just about an hour
on the plane and then we were going to take

(01:19):
off to Germany, and Franklin said, hey, have you ever
driven from this airport to the city we're going to
end up in Germany? I think it was Frankfurt. Have
you ever driven this? A beautiful stretch? You ought to
get off the plane now, not take the leg of
the journey to Germany, but rent a car. It's only

(01:39):
two or three hours. It's one of the most scenic
drives you can do. So I thought, you know what,
why not? That sounds really good. Well, I eventually talked
him into doing it with me. I said, what did
you get off the plane too, and we'll take that
drive together, And so we did. It ended up to
be nine hour drive and we didn't get to our
Hotelmony till about two two thirty in the morning. It

(02:03):
ended up not being a shortcut, but the long way around,
a detour. We wasted precious time. In chapter sixteen, Abram
and his wife Sarah take a detour. When it comes
to the will of God once again, the man of faith,

(02:24):
the Father of them that believe, displays a shallower kind
of faith than we might expect. Taking the long way
around it actually cost him, and to this day we
are experiencing the fallout and the ramifications of that choice. Now,

(02:46):
some people prefer not to fly airplanes, but they prefer
to drive. And it's not because of economy, it's out
of fear. They actually feel safer in a car than
they do in an airplane. I know a businessman that
drives from coast to coast. He won't fly, he'll drive.
He feels safer. But his feelings are misleading, because the

(03:11):
studies reveal that flying in jet aircraft is seven times
safer than driving in a car. So going six hundred
miles an hour careening through space through a metal tube
at thirty five thousand feet is safer than an eight

(03:33):
cylinder machine that never leaves the earth. It might feel
as if it's unsafe to get in that airplane, but
it's actually safer. I'm sharing that because there's a parallel
with the wolf of God. Sometimes when we just trust
the Lord, it feels really scary, it feels unsafe. We'd

(03:55):
rather live by sight rather than faith. But the the
safest way to navigate through your life is to live
a life of faith, trusting in the Lord rather than
what you can only see. Well, let's let's find out
what happens now Sarah, Abram's wife, had borne him no children,

(04:19):
and she had an Egyptian made servant whose name was Hagar.
So Sarah said to Abram, see, now the Lord has
restrained me from bearing children. Please go into my maid.
Perhaps I shall obtain children by her. And Abram heeded
the voice of Sarah. That was a mistake. It's not

(04:44):
always a mistake. Sometimes it's the best thing a man
can do. But in this case, it was a mistake.
They were unable to have children. Were presented with that
in chapter eleven, when they're first introduced to us. You
remember that old saying, Have you ever heard it? God
helps those who helped themselves? Where does that come from?

(05:06):
Because when I grew up, my father said, you know,
the Bible says God helps those who help themselves. And
I thought it was in the Bible, and I read it,
and I read it, and I read it in different translations,
and I looked in the concordance to try to find
that verse, God helps those who help themselves, And I
never found it in the Bible. Jesus didn't say it.

(05:29):
Paul never wrote of it, the prophets never declared it. Now,
maybe it's in First flesh Alonians, but it's certainly not
in any of the real books of the Bible. It's
one of those phantom verses made up, imposed by people
who don't know what the Bible says. I actually did

(05:50):
a little research and discovered it was Ben Franklin who
said that it wasn't God at all. But we get
this mistaken notion that if we set the gears in
motion we start moving. Eventually God will see that we're
serious and we're moving and catch up to us and
then take us all the way through once he sees

(06:12):
that we're serious and we're gonna work hard. Well, here's
the case of people trying to help themselves, or should
I say, help God out, help God fulfill a promise
because God said you're going to have a child, and
we see here that his wife Sarah decides to do
it this way. Now, before we completely trash Abram and

(06:34):
Sarah in this, let's assume the highest Let's imagine that
they had really good intentions. So let's imagine a conversation
they're in the tent one night, burning a candle, having dinner.
I don't know, lamb and olives and humus and peter
bread sounds so good. And they're having this conversation and

(06:58):
Sarah looks at Abram, she's past seventy five, and says, sweetheart, now,
I know that you're really into this having a kid thing,
and I know you really like me to have a child.
But sweetheart, look at me, I'm over seventy five years
of age. Ain't gonna happen, sweetheart. Now, sweetie, Abe, what

(07:26):
exactly did God say when he made all those promises
to you? Can you recall, oh, sweetheart, it's like yesterday.
Of course I can recall. God said specifically that from
my own body, I'm going to have a son. Okay, well,
now that helps Abe, because God said it's going to

(07:49):
come from your body. God said nothing about it coming
through my physical body. So because it's going to come
through your body and not necessarily mine, I propose we
help God out a bit on this. I have Hagar,
this Egyptian made she's much younger, she's capable of bearing children.

(08:09):
You go into her and you have a child, and
will adopt that child, and will say that's God's promise fulfilled.
And it says that Abram heeded his wife. Now you
just have to imagine what it was like those eleven
years they've been waiting for this promise. Eleven years. It's

(08:30):
hard to wait on the Lord. It's hard to wait
and wait and wait and wait, because your flesh gets
really antsy. And proverb says, hope deferred makes the heart sick.
And we have a tendency when we've waited on the
Lord and waited for the Lord, when we don't get
what we think we should get to just push it

(08:52):
a little bit, make it happen, and impose our own
scheme and designs, and produce something of the flesh rather
than the spirit. That's what they're doing. They've been waiting
eleven long years since God first said I'm going to
make you a great nation. Now, I imagine that every
time Sarah had a twinge of pain or walked a

(09:14):
little bit differently, that Abraham noticed and said, ah, you
must be pregnant. But she wasn't pregnant. And year after
year after year after year, she wasn't pregnant. And so
now this, hey, this is crazy. She's saying, let's just
get on with our life. Let's have a child. If

(09:35):
God promised that through your body you'd have a son,
he didn't say anything specifically about my body. So just
take Hagar. Then verse three, Sarah, Abram's wife, took Hagar,
her maid the Egyptian, and gave her to her husband, Abram,

(09:55):
to be his wife. After Abram had dwelt ten years
in the land of Canaan. And so he went into Hagar,
and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived,
her mistress became despised in her eyes. Where did Hagar
come from? Where's she from? It says Egypt. So they

(10:19):
must have picked her up on that little foray down
into Egypt when they didn't trust God during those famine years.
You remember, it seems that that's when she arrived into
their household. You know, the past has a way of
catching up with you, doesn't. She becomes pregnant, So now
it's pretty obvious that the real problem isn't with Abram,

(10:42):
it's with Sarah. And maybe up to that point they
didn't really know because they were unable as a couple
to have children. So is the problem with her womb?
Or was he not virile. Was he unable to have children? Well,
now the proof he has no problem bearing a child
with fertile woman. And so it would mean in ancient

(11:03):
cultures that SARAHI must somehow be cursed, and anger rises
up in her heart. And moreover, Hagar despises SARAHI her mistress,
and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress
became despised in her eyes. We know this problem too well,

(11:23):
I believe. In Galatians three it says, well, Paul asks,
having begun in the spirit, are you now trying to
be made perfect in the flesh. God has started something,
are you now trying to bring it to completion by
your flesh?

Speaker 1 (11:39):
You're listening to connect with Skip Heitzig before we get
back to Skip's teaching. In his book Is God Real?
Lee Strobel, author of the New York Times best selling
book The Case for Christ, provides a rational exploration the
proof of God's existence and the basis of our eternal hope.
Writing to skeptics and believers alike, Strobel turns his critical

(12:00):
mind and expert interviewing skills to perennial questions like how
do we know which God is real? And if God
is real? Why does he seem so hidden? Is God real?
Along with two messages preached by Least Roble at Calvary Church,
are our thanks for your gift of at least fifty
dollars today to help share biblical teaching with more people
around the world through connect with Skip Heitzig. Go to

(12:23):
connect with Skip dot com slash offer or call eight
hundred ninety two to two, eighteen eighty eight and request
your resources when you give at least fifty dollars today
to reach people around the world through connect with Skip Heitzig,
Let's continue with today's teaching with pastor Skip.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
How many times in your own situation, in my own
situation have we stepped in to help God fulfill his
promise and sometimes even counsel the Lord, give God advice
as if he needs it. Maybe you haven't done it verbally,
but I bet you've thought things like God, I know
you're busy running the universe. Step into my office. There

(13:02):
could be a couple of things you just have overlooked. Well,
let me educate you. I've gone to college. I can
help here, and we might step in with an agenda
and with a plan that is simply trying to fulfill
God's promise by a work of our own flesh. What
does it say to us in Proverbs chapter three, Trust

(13:26):
in the Lord with all your heart, Lean not onto
your own understanding in all your ways, acknowledge him, and
he will direct your paths. Well, they're not doing that here.
There's this great old Jewish proverb that says it's better
to ask which is the right road ten times than
to take the wrong road. Once they take the wrong road,

(13:50):
And as I mentioned, the repercussions are still felt today.
We'll see why. And Sarah I said to Abram, I
watch this. Here's Sarah, my wrong be upon you. Whoa
I gave my maid into your embrace. And when she
saw that she had conceived, I became despised in her eyes.
The Lord judge between you and me. Well, now, whose

(14:12):
idea was it to begin with? It was her idea.
It was Victor Hugo who said, hell, hath no fury
like a woman scorned. So here's Abram. Oh, okay, sweetheart,
whatever you say, dear, And then he does it. And
then this happened, and she blames him. So Abram said
to Sarah, indeed, your maid is in your hand. According

(14:34):
to ancient custom, she was the property of Sarah. That's
what he meant by that, due to her as you please.
And when Sarah dealt harshly with her, she fled from
her presence. Wow, it was the Scottish poet and author
George MacDonald who said, in whatever man does without God,

(15:00):
he will fail miserably or succeed more miserably. Here's Abram
and Sarah with the plot, with the plan, and they
succeed so miserably, helping God out. And what do I
mean by that? What I mean has been four thousand
years since this, and we are still experiencing the Arab

(15:24):
Israeli conflict, the seed of Ishmael and the Seed of
Isaac at war with one another, with suicide bombings, with
problems in the Gaza, with the nine to eleven bombings,
and America's policies concerning Israel. And it seems that year
after year the focus gets back on that. And this

(15:46):
is where it all began. Verse seven. The Angel of
the Lord found her by a spring of water in
the wilderness, by the spring on the way to shore.
So she has now traveled all the way down, going
toward Egypt. She's trying to go act to Egypt, where
she's from, which is nothing but barren desert. On this road.
She would have died in the wilderness. She wouldn't have

(16:07):
made it. So she's by a spring of water in
the wilderness. And he said, Hagar, Sarah's maid, where have
you come from? And where are you going? She said,
I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress Sarah.
The Angel of the Lord said to her, return to

(16:27):
your mistress and submit yourself under her hand. Now, this is,
by the way, the first mention. And I'm trying to
give you all of the rules of first mention when
we come up to them in Genesis. Here is the
first mention in all of the Bible of the term
the Angel of the Lord. Are you going to read
about it a lot in the Old Testament. There's conjecture
as to who this person is. Some people believe here

(16:48):
that it's Gabriel, the one who announced to Mary and
to Joseph and to Zacharias all of the events around
our Lord's birth. But this is the first mention of
the Angel of the Lord coming. Now here's what I love.
This is the story of failure, fumbling, bumbling failure. And

(17:10):
yet in the midst of that we see the mercy
and grace of God, the overriding, overruling, intervening hand of
God in being merciful and just not letting them go
through all of this without some movement of his own hand.
And so the Angel of the Lord said, I will
multiply your descendants exceedingly, so that they shall not be

(17:32):
counted for a multitude. And the Angel of the Lord
said to her, behold, you are with child. You shall
bear a son, and you shall call his name Ishmael,
which means God hears. So every time she would call
out her son's name, Ishmael, come on for dinner time,
to go to bed, Ishmael, she would be calling out

(17:53):
the remembrance of God's mercy in her life. God hears.
The Lord intervened down there by that well, because the
Lord has heard your affliction, he shall be a wild man.
His hand shall be against every man, and every man's
hand against him, and he will dwell in the presence
of all his brethren. So rather than just letting her

(18:17):
leave the home maybe die in the wilderness, the Angel
brings them back to Sarai and Abram and Ishmael will
grow up in the household of SARAHI and Abram. God overruling.
I don't know who said it, but somebody said, when
God can't rule because we won't let him, he always overrules.

(18:42):
I love that beautiful verse of scripture in Romans five.
I think it's around verse twenty says where sin has abounded,
grace did much more abound. He had overflowed. And here's
an example of God's grace to this woman and her son.
And she called the name of the Lord who spoke

(19:02):
to her. You are the God who sees, For she said,
have I also seen him who sees me? Therefore the
well was called the heir la hey Roi, the well
of the living God who sees observe. It is between
Kadish and Barrett. So if you were ever wondering where
that well was, now you know. So hagar boor Abram's son,

(19:23):
and Abram named his son whom hagar boor Ishmael. Abram
was eighty six years old when hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.
Now we have a gap between these two chapters of
thirteen years thirteen years by now Ishmael is a young

(19:44):
teenager Abram is ninety nine years old raising a thirteen
year old teenager. Have pity on him. Sarah, I is
about ninety years old and they're raising this child. But

(20:04):
it's not over yet. Man, it's just the beginning, because
that son of Promise hasn't yet been born into their household,
and that's coming. That's Isaac. So Abram isn't going to retire,
he's not going to go long bowling for the rest
of his life. He's going to have more children. Abram
was ninety nine years old, and the Lord appeared to

(20:24):
Abraham and said to him, I am Almighty God. Walk
before me and be blameless. Now. Somebody once said that
one of the great things about being ninety nine is
you don't have much peer pressure. Of course, it would
be obvious, why right, you wouldn't have any peers. He's

(20:45):
ninety nine years old and the Lord speaks to him.
Now we have the very first mention of this title
of God, God Almighty el Shadai. El Shadai is mentioned
in the Bible about thirty four thirty six times. It
means Almighty God or God the mighty One, or better yet,
God the most sufficient One. Interestingly enough, the term El

(21:10):
Shadai is found more in the Book of Job than
any other book in the Bible. It's around this time frame,
same era, patriarchal era. Now el Shadai, it is thought,
is an old Akkadian word from that whole Semitic Serio
Babylonian region, an old Acadian word that means mountain or breast.

(21:36):
And the idea is that some of the ancients would
when they would see hills in the distance, it was
as if the earth was flexing its muscle. It represented
like a buff muscle coming up out of the earth.
So here is God saying, I am God, the eternally
sufficient one, the divinely buff one, the one who can
do anything that you can't do. I'm strong, you're weak.

(21:58):
I'm God. That's how he introduces himself. Now, why does
he call himself El should I Because Abram's ninety nine
years old. That's why he's almost one hundred years old.
If anybody's feeling weak, it would be Abram. And so
God says, let me just tell you who I am,
buddy boy, I'm el Shadai. I have unlimited muscle. Man.

(22:24):
I can do what no man or no country or
no ruler could ever do. It's interesting that the Lord says,
I am Almighty God, walk before me and be blameless.
What does it mean to walk before God and be blameless?
The idea is this, walk or literally, live your life

(22:46):
knowing that you're living your life in plain view of me.
You know how it's like when you're a child and
you know your parents watching you, act differently, don't you
If you're alone in your room you act, You act
one way, but when your dad is watching you, you
act a different way. Abram, you're ninety nine years old.

(23:07):
It's time for you to grow up. Time for you
to learn how to walk, buddy, Finally, walk before me.
Live your life knowing that I'm watching everything you're doing,
and be upright, Be blameless, be pure, be a man
of integrity. I think God tells him this because of
Abram's history. When Abram went to Haran for fifteen years

(23:32):
and waited before he went into the land, God told
him to He wasn't walking before the Lord. He was
walking before his father and his family. When he went
down to Egypt because of the flood, he wasn't walking
before the Lord. He was walking before his three hundred
and eighteen servants who needed food and water. When he
pulled the Hagar stunt in chapter sixteen with Sarah, he

(23:56):
was walking before his wife, not before the Lord. But
here's what's cool to me. He's ninety nine and God
still comes to him and says, you can still walk
with me. You know, a new walk with God can
begin for you at any age. Doesn't matter who you are,
what you've done, how old you are, what you've been through.

(24:18):
This tonight could be the night of a brand new
relationship with Him, a relationship of obedience, a relationship of love.
A walk with God can begin at any age.

Speaker 1 (24:32):
Thanks for listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig. We hope
you've been encouraged in your walk with Christ by today's program.
Before we let you go, we want to remind you
about this month's resources that will help you confidently respond
to questions and challenges to God's existence.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
It's Lee St.

Speaker 1 (24:48):
Trobels book Is God Real, and two messages he preached
on the topic at Calvary Church. Request your resources when
you give fifty dollars or more to support connect with
Skip Heitzig eight hundred ninety two two, eighteen eighty eight.
That's eight hundred ninety two two eighteen eighty eight, or
visit connectiskip dot com, slash donate and did you know

(25:11):
that you can get a weekly devotional and other resources
from pastor Skip sent right to your email inbox. Simply
visit connect with skip dot com and sign up for
emails from Skip. Come back next time for more verse
by verse teaching of God's word Here Unconnect with skip Heidzig.

Speaker 3 (25:28):
Make Connects, Make Connects, cross song makes.

Speaker 2 (25:47):
Next.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
Connect with skip Heidzig is a presentation of connection communications
connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing
times