Is it two weeks later already? How about that....
[Genesis 16:1-3]
There are a lot of interesting things happening in this section. Abram and Sarai both know that there's supposed to be a bunch babies going on, since that's the entire reason they decided to go wandering the desert and getting into wars and do all this fun stuff they've been doing. However, Abram's pushing 90 years old and, even when people are still living 150-ish years, that's pretty old. Sarai understandably gets impatient and does a couple of things to try to remedy the situation:
First, she accuses God of deliberately messing this up. Her thoughts aren't that there might be something else they need to do or that it's just not time, but that God is stopping her from having a baby just for the lulz.
Second, she comes up with a plan to let Abram also marry her maid and possibly have a baby with her instead. Also notable is that Abram was all for this plan.
For the most part, these guys have been pretty good about having faith in God to fulfill these promises. But here it seems like their patience ran out. They didn't see the promise coming fast enough to suit them so they decided to take matters into their own hands and fulfill this promise themselves. Even though God was pretty clear that the descendants would come from Sarai herself, they were tired of waiting and decided to rely on their own strength and their own plans to make this promise happen.
We often don't like God's version of a plan, so we come with a plan that's pretty similar but a lot more appealing to us. God says you're going to be a missionary and you say "Well...I'm a missionary to my business." God says you're going to be a business owner and you say "Well...I set up a separate checking account for missions donations so that's kinda like a business." God says to go give someone specific encouragement to their face and instead you poke them on Facebook and post them a funny picture.
More dangerously, this attitude is most prevalent when it comes to salvation and morality teachings. The Bible teaches that submitting your heart to God makes you a new creation; that as you grow closer to God you develop spiritual fruit and God transforms your heart to be more like Jesus. Alone, you are broken and fallen and the best works you can will yourself into doing are just rags made filthy by the pride that comes with forcing yourself to be a "good person." We know this, and yet we are not satisfied with the speed that it happens in ourselves or in other people so we feel like we have to force the matter.
You see this the most in youth sermons. The youth pastor knows that God transforms hearts, but also feels pressure to preach a sermon so good that 15-year-olds who got saved last week live with the same maturity and wisdom of a 40-year-old who has been saved since he was 17. The youth pastor knows that the reason he doesn't have sex outside of marriage is because he loves his wife, loves God, and so would never defile himself and cheapen the gift of love he has to give his wife; he knows the reason he doesn't do drugs is because he has a purpose in life that can't be achieved when he is stoned out of his mind or when his body is destroyed by these substances; he knows that he is a "good person" because God has worked on his heart throughout the years and now his desires line up better with God's, but this does not work fast enough, so he throws in other things to try and get the kids to clean up their act immediately. Love is slow, so scare them with STDs; self-respect takes time, so show them disturbing pictures and play to their pride so they'll pressure each other in a more acceptable way; spiritual maturity takes time, so we'll come with disgusting false sermons from out-of-context passages scaring kids into thinking it takes longer to get back into the presence of God than it does to "fall out" of it.
God promised us righteousness as a result of our marriage with Jesus, but we don't see it happening so we suggest our congregations take on fear as a wife and try to bear righteousness through her. We marry ourselves to pride, success, hatred, and things of the flesh to try and bear through them the fruit God promised we would bear through Christ.
Abram's faith had already been counted to him as righteousness; the plan was laid out and everything was on track before Abram and Sarai decided they could give it a push. And though we struggle with sin and watch those around us fall, we have already been declared righteous through the finished work of Jesus. You still help each other do the best you can, but when you get to the point where you think you're helping the salvation process or you start trying to modify behavior with petty fleshly incentives instead of an attitude grounded in our relationship with God, you are over-stepping your bounds and throwing a wrench of works into God's plan of Grace.
---
I was going to keep going there, but I think that's quite enough for today. The rest of chapter goes into some of the consequences of this decision, so we'll have some more fun with it next time.
No comments:
Post a Comment