Sins of the Father

Genesis 26:1-9
Gregory Broderick | Sunday, September 04, 2022
Copyright © 2022, Gregory Broderick

This is a very familiar sounding story.  I think I have heard it before.  In fact, I am pretty sure I preached it recently.  In Old Testament times, before the nation of Israel was founded, a Patriarch and his wife are all alone in the land, and there is a famine.  So he goes to Gerar, the land of the Philistines, to Abimelech their king.  This man is all alone in an apparently hostile land, and he becomes afraid.  He thinks, “They might kill me because of my wife who is beautiful.”  So he cooks up a lie:  “She is my sister.”  God intervenes to expose the lie, and the people of Gerar prove honorable, at least in relative terms, and the man and his wife reap a bounty.  Now, so far, you cannot tell if I am speaking about Isaac or Abraham, for Isaac’s father Abraham did the same thing in Genesis 20.  And if I removed “Philistines” and “Gerar,”  you could not tell if I was speaking about Abraham in Genesis 12 in Egypt.

At first, this story might seem quite repetitive.  We just preached on this within the last few months.  You may be tempted to think that it is some kind of copyist error, that the same story was garbled and attributed to Isaac when it belonged to Abraham.  It is not, by the way.  It is a different story.  Verse 1 says there was a famine besides the famine in Abraham’s time.  So it was not a mistake or an error.  You may be tempted, though, to think that, well, if it was not a mistake, at least there is nothing new to learn here.  But, of course, there is.  “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness” (2 Tim.  3:16).  And, by the way, if it was mere repetition, it would still be valuable.  We are slow to learn and so we require repetition.  Also, repetition brings emphasis.  It does not say “Holy is the Lord God Almighty.”  It says, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.”

But on top of that there are indeed new lessons to learn from this account, and it is especially this:  Our sins, like osmosis, seep into our children, and they will soak up our actions, they will soak up our philosophies, they will soak up our habits.  And, having absorbed them, they will reproduce our sins later in life.  The way Pastor Mathew put it is this:  “What you see in your parents’ home growing up you will repeat in your own home.”

We must be very careful as Christian parents and as Christian people not to saddle our children with the heavy yoke of our empty way of life, and not to repeat the empty way of life handed down to us.  This is true of parents.  It is also true of teachers, grandparents, older Christians—anyone with an influence on another brother or sister in the Lord.  We can put good things into others, but we can also put not-so-good things into others.  For God’s glory and for the good of our children and younger believers, we must be very careful to watch our doctrine and life closely.  Small ears are listening, but more importantly, small eyes are watching, and small brains are learning.  And they are learning much more from what we do than what we say.

1. The Fear of Isaac

Isaac was a man of faith.  He was conceived and born by faith to his faithful parents.  In Genesis 22, he was offered as a sacrifice at God’s command, and he appears to have participated in this without resistance on his part.  In Genesis 24, he marries God’s chosen woman by faith and not by sight.  But even men of faith are just men, and man is prone to fall.  Here, there is a famine and Isaac becomes worried.

As we previously noted, famine was a big cause for worry in this part of the world at this time in history.  There is no food for your household.  That means you just die, or you become destitute, as all of your possessions are sold off to get a little bit of grain.  There is no welfare state in existence at this time.  There is no telethon to raise money for the poor and the hungry.  You just starve to death.  And as the head, you watch as your servants and children and the wife you love die a slow and agonizing death while you sit by powerlessly, and the noose of starvation tightens around your family’s neck.  So this is cause for fear.  Indeed, fear comes to all of us, and usually there is some basis for that fear.  It is not wrong to experience fear.  But our response to fear is what demonstrates our faith.  Will we trust in God, seeking and doing His will, or will we spaz out, convulse in fear?

Here Isaac fails the test.  He goes down to Gerar, perhaps to stay there or perhaps thinking that he would head in the direction of the fertile Nile River valley in Egypt, where there always seems to be food.  But while in Gerar, he begins to be afraid again: “They will kill me and take my wife,” he thinks, “because she is beautiful.”  So in fear he lies.

God is a God of truth, and He commands us not to lie.  Leviticus 19:11 says, “Do not lie.”  Proverbs 12:22 says, “The Lord detests lying lips.”  As God’s people, as God’s children, we are to speak truth.  There are very, very limited circumstances—wartime scenarios and such—that are exceptions to that rule but let us be honest:  Few of us are likely to face those scenarios, and we are much, much more likely to lie without justification.  So we must speak the truth because our God is truth.  We must also speak truth because our God commands us to do so.  We must speak truth because it is an outward act of our faith.  I don’t have to lie because God will take care of me.  He will not let harm come to me for obeying His command to speak truth.  I believe His promise that all things work together for the good of those who love Him and who are called according to His purpose.  So I can speak truth even if that truth results in momentary unpleasantness.

But Isaac fears, and he falls, and he fails the test.  It is important to see that his lie is in fear and unbelief, and that is exacerbated by the fact that he has received God’s direct reassurance.  After Isaac goes down to Gerar in verse 2, God appears to Isaac and He says, “Do not go down to Egypt.”  He says, “Stay here in this land” (v. 3).  God says to Isaac, “I will be with you and will bless you” (v. 3).  He says, “I will give you all of this land,” reaffirming the oath that He made to Isaac’s father Abraham.  God says, “I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky” (vv. 3–6).  God promises this all on oath.  So by God’s own inviolable word, Isaac knows, “Everything will be okay for me if I stay here.”  That is mighty assurance.  It does not get any more assuring than that.  God is essentially saying, “No harm will come to you.  I will take care of you in this place.  I will bless you and your offspring for many generations.”  And yet Isaac falls in fear.  We know it was fear that was the motivation “because he was afraid to say, ‘She is my wife’” (v. 7).

I want to point out that this is an irrational fear.  First, because they do not appear to be that kind of people.  The Philistines they are staying among might not be God’s people, but they appear to be relatively honorable.  In verse 10 Abimelech says to him, “One of the men might well have slept with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us.”  I don’t know whether that is inherently in the moral code of the Philistines or if Abimelech just remembers what happened last time around and he doesn’t want to repeat that.  But either way, they have a moral code now where they do not do that.  In verse 11, Abimelech says, “Anyone who molests this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.”  Abimelech acted honorably towards Abraham and now he acts honorably towards Isaac.  And as I said, perhaps he is just rationally self-interested, and he remembers the problems he had before.  So it is an irrational fear for that reason.

But, second, it is an irrational fear because Isaac has God’s word on the matter—His personal assurance.  Now, when we have God’s word, particularly on a specific matter, there is no rational cause for fear and no rational cause for faltering.  God is sovereign and God is good, so everything will be all right, even if we do not understand how He is going to make it all right.  God is powerful—powerful to do what He promises.  Mere men cannot thwart His will.  Proverbs 19:21 says, “Many are the plans in a man’s heart,” but His purposes will prevail.  Circumstances cannot surprise God (Matt. 10:30).  Not a sparrow or a hair of our head can fall to the ground without God’s say-so.  Not even our mightiest enemy the devil can defeat God, can alter God’s plans, or can even delay God’s plans for a moment.  In Matthew 16:18 Jesus says, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”  Colossians 2:15 says that God disarmed the powers and authorities, triumphed over them, and made a public spectacle of them on the cross.  God wins.  He  cannot be defeated.  He cannot be thwarted.  When we have His word on a matter, it is guaranteed.

God is powerful and He is faithful.  So no one else can stop Him, but He also will not stop Himself.  He cannot lie (Tit. 1:2).  He does not lie (Num. 23:19).  The short version of that is that God does what He says He will do.  And when it is not in the way that we expect God to do, we are not to be disappointed, for God does exceedingly abundantly more than we can ask or imagine.  So say you have a plan in life:  I am going to get this promotion.  I am going to get married by a certain age.  I am going to have this many children, and they are going to be all boys—for whatever reason you would want that—or all girls—a superior option.  When we do not get what we want, what we are getting is something better from God—exceedingly abundantly more than what we can ask or imagine.  So we have nothing to worry about.

The devil is the one who sows worry, who sows fear, who sows doubt, and who sows confusion and anxiety.  God gives a peace, a peace which passes all understanding to guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus—the peace of knowing that I am in Christ, I am eternally secure.  The believer has great peace.  So that fear is going to come and shake us.  But the shaking doesn’t last.  We can stand and say, “God is taking care of me.”

The reality is that Isaac sinned and so do we.  And we sin in exactly the same way as Isaac did.  We worry about other things.  We don’t tend to worry about marauding Philistines.  But we worry about a great many things—perhaps our divisive politics that are all around us or destructive policies or the drag-queen story hour or whatever the latest insanity cooked up by the world around us, and it is closing in on us and we think “they are going to get us.”  Or we worry about harm from COVID or harm from the COVID vaccine, or how much money I will make, or what my career is going to be, or will I get a husband or have children?  Will I find a godly wife and how am I going to lead that godly wife as God commands?  Will my children or my grandchildren abandon the faith?  Will they get married or have careers or have kids and so on?  How will I handle old age? What can I do if I can no longer drive or walk or think?  These are all real issues, but they are nothing to fear.  God loves us, His people, and His perfect love drives out fear (1 John 4:18).  God will take care of us.  So, like Isaac, there is no rational cause for us to fear.

Now, perhaps you are thinking, “Isaac had more assurance than I do.  God spoke to him.”  Well, that is not quite right.  God speaks to us too.  In Hebrews 13:5 He spoke to us, “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.”  In Matthew 28:20 He said, “Behold, I will be with you always, even to the end of the age.”  That is the same promise that Isaac got.  Romans 8:28:  “All things work together for the good of those who love Him.”  God not only spoke all these things to us, but he caused them to be written down for our encouragement and for our instruction (Rom. 13:4).  So actually, you are in a better position than Isaac.  He had to remember what God had said, but we don’t.  He had to think, “Did I hear that right, that God is going to be with me?” It says in the Scripture that some time passed, and he became worried.  We don’t have to think, “Did I hear that right?” We can go to the Book—ad fontes—to the source.  And we can be reminded of the great and wonderful and sure promises of our almighty and loving Father.

Fear of enemies may come.  Fear of enemies is going to come, but we say, “The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid.  What can man do to me?” (Ps. 118:6).  Fear of circumstance, fear of the unknown future may come.  But I say to myself, “He knows the end from the beginning.”  I will exercise reason and logic with my renewed and Spirit-filled mind, saying, “God will protect me.  They cannot touch me, not even one hair of my head.”  And if, in His will, they kill me, then I will be ushered into the waiting arms of my Lord and Savior, like the valiant Stephen, hearing “Well done, my good and faithful servant, enter into your Master’s rest.”  Now, when that is your worst-case outcome, you are in a pretty good position.

Let us fear not, for God is with us.  And He will bless us, either in the way we desire or something even better.  We, God’s believing people, those who have trusted in Jesus Christ—we are destined for glory.  We are eternally secure.  We are saved.  We are the objects of amazing grace.  We are the objects of amazing love, amazing mercy, amazing grace.  We were slaves to sin and we were destined for hell.  We owed an infinite debt that we could not pay.  We were dead in our transgressions and sins.  And at that time, when we were His enemies, Christ died for our sins.  Christ gained the glorious victory on the cross, and He said to us, “Live!” He paid it all on our behalf, and He came to dead people and said, “Live!  Trust in Me alone for your salvation and live by faith in Jesus Christ.”

He took the worst circumstance—His own unjust execution—and He used it to achieve the best outcome.  Think about that any time you are disappointed by an unexpected reversal or a change in circumstances.  The disciples did not want Jesus to die.  But that was the best thing that could have ever happened to them or to us.  God knows how to take things that look like lemons and make them into lemonade.  Eternal life has come to all of us who trust in Him, who confess with our mouths, “Jesus is Lord,” and who believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead and who walk according to His word.  He has done that for all who have put their faith in Him, and He offers eternal life.  He offers this to everyone else free—free today.  He says to us as He said to them, “Live!”

Having defeated all spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms, surely He can handle a few Philistines.  Surely He can handle your worries or cares.  Surely He can handle your cancer, or your childbirth, or your hardhearted apostate child.  You can do what God wants you to do.  You don’t have to live in fear and sin in fear as Isaac did.  You can speak the truth:  “She is my wife,” or, “Yes, I am a Christian,” or, “There is only one way to be saved, by faith in Jesus Christ.”  You can stand for truth:  homosexuality is a sin.  God said so.  You can stand for truth:  there is no such thing as transgender.  (GTB)  God made them male and female, and He makes no mistake.  The Philistines cannot touch you.

I don’t need to sin and make an Ishmael.  I can wait for my Isaac.  I can wait for the husband that God promises me, that God has provided.  I can wait for the baby I desire, like the godly Hannah, mother of Samuel.  I can, in fact, do all things through Him who strengtheneth me.  So I don’t need to live in fear, and I will not live in fear.  I will fear only my Lord and my God.  That is the true fear of Isaac: God is called “the Fear of Isaac” (Gen. 31:42).  That is our God.

2. The Empty Way of Life

In view of the irrationality of Isaac’s sin so close to God’s advent and reassurance, we are left to ask:  How did this happen?  How did he get here?  Where did he get these ideas that they would kill him and steal his wife?  Where did he get the idea to say, “She is my sister”?

Technically, we cannot say for sure.  But the glaringly obvious inference is that he got these ideas from Abraham.  After all, Abraham did the same thing.  Now, it stares us in the face to such a degree that we cannot reasonably deny it.  And yet it does not quite add up, at least at first glance.  Surely the great man Abraham did not teach this to his son Isaac at home, saying, “If you are ever in a foreign land and you have a beautiful wife, here is what you do.”  Isaac probably heard the story but likely as a cautionary tale:  Here is what not to do.  And even if presented on neutral terms, even if he heard the story with no lesson attached, Abraham does not come off looking very good in that story.  He told half truths—we would call it smarmy lawyering.  He sinned against God.  He sinned against Abimelech.  He sinned against Sarah.  And that is just from our perspective as dispassionate observers from several thousand years after the fact, for whom Sarah is mostly an abstraction.  Imagine if you heard that story and it was about your dad and your mom.  I doubt Sarah griped about it in the tent.  She was a godly woman who was known for submission to her husband.  So my conclusion is that Abraham explained to Isaac the wrongdoing and the sin in all this.  He used it as a lesson and a contrast between Abraham’s earlier up-and-down life of faith and his later rock-solid, persevering, Christ-trusting, Jehovah-Jireh way of living.

What happened then?  If Isaac heard this as a “don’t do it” story, what happened?  Well, he simply soaked it up around the house.  Whatever was in Abraham that caused him to panic and to lie to Pharaoh and Abimelech, to hide behind his wife for his own safety—whatever that was seeped into Isaac by osmosis.  Surely not every sin or error of Abraham is recorded.  You can imagine as they sat at home, as they sat around the dinner table, as they went  out into the field and into the marketplace, Isaac was soaking up some kind of philosophy.  And this idea, likely from the story told, was planted in Isaac’s head.  And so in the moment of testing, he panics and he goes to the old way, thinking that it is okay to lie to get out of trouble.  Now, I am not excusing Isaac here.  Isaac is culpable for his own sin.  But my point is, he picked it up some place.  He may not even have been totally aware of his own mode of thinking.  But sin was aware, and sin was waiting for the opportune moment.  There it sat, crouching by the door and ready to strike Isaac (Gen. 4:7).

The reality is, we are all in this same position.  We all have an empty way of life that has been handed down to us.  Even if we come from a godly Christian home, there is still a portion of that that is an empty way of life handed down to us.  We all have weaknesses passed on to us by predisposition or learned behavior.  If we do not identify and master such things and remain on vigilant watch against those things, they will strike and they will cause us to fall.  We are, after all, mere men and mere women—renewed and regenerated perhaps, but not yet free from temptation to sin and not yet free from falling into sin.

So we must walk carefully along the narrow way, watching our every step; keeping in step with the Spirit, lest we fall into one ditch or the other.  And the truth is, it will happen to all of us.  We are all sinners.  There are no exceptions.  Our parents, saved or not, are sinners.  Our children, born again or not, are sinners.  So we cannot think that we are the exception or our children are the exception or our parents are the exception.  It is not true.  “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23).

So even if you have come out of the empty way of life, recognize that you must continue to be watchful and to be diligent toward that old, empty way of life.  Now, at first, sin will fight you like a wild animal to dominate you.  But if you stand firm and repulse your sin by the power of the Holy Spirit, sin does not just give up.  The devil hates God and hates you far too much to just give up.  No, sin will simply change its tactics.  It will go dormant for a while, playing possum and pretending to be dead.  It will go into hiding so that you will not see it anymore.  It will wait a week or a month or a year or a decade or even longer.  And then when you let down your guard, thinking that you have won the final victory, sin strikes.  Sin will attack.  You may wane in your watchfulness, but sin does not wane in its watchfulness of you.  It remains perhaps out of view, but still eagle-eyed and on high alert for you to leave any little opening.

So we must be careful.  And we must take action to keep our sin at bay, to keep the walls repaired and strong.  The first action we must take is to examine ourselves.  Knowing is half the battle.  Know your sins and your temptation.  Know your issues and your areas of weakness.  You cannot defeat an enemy of whom you are unaware.  In about a week, it is going to be the 21^st anniversary of 9-11, where radical jihadists flew airplanes and crashed them into the sides of buildings and killed thousands of people.  They were able to do it because we were asleep.  They were at war with us, but we thought we were at peace with everyone.  We did not know that they were coming, that they were sneaking into the country, that they were training to fly airplanes.  And we figured it out when they crashed into the buildings and killed thousands of people.  If you are not aware of your enemy, you cannot stop him.

Look at your life.  Look at your family life and do so soon.  Know that you are likely to be attacked at the weak points in the wall.  Go and examine.  Ride around the wall and see where the weak points are.  Not to put blame on your mother and father.  Not to nitpick.  Not to do anything like that, but to prepare yourself for the coming attack.  So, first, examine yourself.

Second, be examined.  Be under authority, especially God’s delegated authorities—your parents, your pastors, your elders, your husband, your teachers, and so on.  It depends on your stage in life.  You will likely see some of your issues.  Here is a hint:  If you don’t see any of your issues, it is happening to you already.  But just because you see some of them doesn’t mean that you see all of them.  So you may see some, but you may not see them all.  You may miss some issues altogether.  Or you may undershoot the severity of the issues, or you may simply misinterpret events.  The truth is, others have a different perspective on us, which is often a better perspective.  I can see things about you that you cannot see about yourself.  I can see the person sitting behind you.  You can see things about me that I cannot see.  I cannot see my tie.  I cannot see the banner behind me right now.  We have a different perspective on one another.  But with that different perspective comes a fuller picture.  God appoints people over us to help us in this regard, and they can often see what we cannot.  So we must be examined and examinable, especially by those that God put over us.

This requires, of course, transparency.  They must be able to see the truth.  This requires humility.  I must be willing to hear the truth—the truth about me, the truth about my child.  This requires trust.  When the hard word comes, I must remember that my God-appointed authorities are for my good.  They are not there to beat me up.  They are there to build me up and to call me up to be more and more like Christ.  Your parents, my pastors, my husband, and so on, have authority over me from God (Eph. 6:1; Heb. 13:17;  Eph. 5:22).  And that authority from God is not for their good.  It is a hassle for them.  It is for your good.  Second Corinthians 10:8 speaks about “the authority the Lord gave us for building you up rather than pulling you down.”  So also 2 Corinthians 13:10:  “This is why I write these things when I am absent, that when I come I may not have to be harsh in my use of authority—the authority the Lord gave me for building you up, not for tearing you down.”  I want to be built up, so I go and see that authority, and I am built up.

Now, this building up can come in a lot of different ways.  It can come in the form of encouragement (1 Thess. 5:11).  It can come in the form of comforting me in a difficult time (2 Cor. 1:4).  It can come in the form of teaching and training and rebuking and correcting from God’s word (2 Tim. 3:16).  However it comes, it is all God-authored and it is all for your good.  Therefore, you can follow the injunction of Hebrews 13:17 to “obey your leaders and submit to their authority.”  They are building you up.  They are from God, and they are for your good.  And if you are worried about them, don’t worry.  They have someone greater to report to.  The rest of that verse says, “They watch over you as men who must give an account.”  We must give an account to God—God who knows everything, God who sees everything, even the motives behind the thoughts, even the heart behind the motives behind the thoughts.  Your God-appointed godly leaders are accountable to God and therefore they will be careful in their handling of that authority.

3. You Must Fight

Knowing is half the battle, but it is not the whole battle.  We must strap on the whole armor of God and then we must go and we must fight this enemy on the field of battle.  We must submit to God and resist the devil (James 4:7).  We must say “No” to sin and “Yes” to righteousness (Tit. 2:12).  We must refuse to give the devil a foothold, even a foot of ground (Eph. 4:27).  We must take our stand against the devil’s schemes (Eph. 6:11).  We must take every thought captive (2 Cor. 10:5).  I want to pause and say there that the mind is actually the most important battlefield.  We are to fight hardest on that battlefield.  It is not a mystery what goes on in the mind.  We are responsible for our thoughts—the thoughts that we generate and also the thoughts that we entertain.  It is not beyond our power to control what we think about or how we think about things.

The point of all these verses is that we have got to get out there and to fight.  It does you little good if you know who your enemy is and if you know your enemy is coming, but you do not go out to fight.  So we must set our hearts and our minds on things above.  We must think about “whatever it true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, and whatever is admirable” (Phil. 4:8).  We must resist evil and keep on resisting evil, persevering to the end.  We must resist even to the point of shedding blood in our mighty struggle against sin (Heb. 12:4).

It is a fight.  It is a war.  It is tiring and it is bloody and it is messy, and it ebbs and flows.  Sometimes we experience great victory, and sometimes we experience battlefield reversal.  But we must fight, and we must keep on fighting—for ourselves, for our children, for our churches, and for the lost people of this fallen world who need to hear the gospel.  For the stakes in this battle are as high as it gets.  It is a battle for eternity.

4. We Can Win the Fight

We are not losers.  We are not weak and defeated.  We are super-conquerors through Him who loved us (Rom. 8:37).  We have power: divine power to demolish strongholds (2 Cor. 10:1).  It is not something that is inherent in us.  It is not something that we have achieved.  But we are made able—able by the person and work of Jesus Christ to defeat and overcome sin.

It is true that we were weak, we were defeated, we were slaves to sin (Rom. 6:20).  If you read Romans 6, it says “slaves” nine times in seven verses.  We were slaves.  We were weak.  We were sick.  We were dead in our transgressions and sins.  We were, by nature, objects of wrath.  We were.  But an amazing thing has happened to us.  Jesus Christ, the conqueror, came and crushed the head of the ancient serpent, our enemy and His, the devil.  In His great love, He paid the full price for all our sins, past and future, on the cross.  He defeated the devil.  He defeated sin.  He took the dead and He made us alive.

By faith, which itself is a gift of God, we have the victory.  God the Father gave us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:57).  God the Holy Spirit applies that victory to us in regeneration, but also even while we go about our daily lives, dwelling in us and saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”  Giving us the power to overcome sin, to overcome the devil, and to gain the victory.

You see, we were slaves, but now we are set free (Gal. 5:1).  And we know that “if the Son sets you free, you are free indeed” (John 8:36).  We who have trusted in Christ alone are no longer slaves to sin.  We don’t have to go back to our own sin that we repented of.  We don’t have to go back to the old way.  We can stare that sin down and say “No” and make it stick.  We do not have to replay our parents’ sins in our homes, as Isaac did.  You see, we have an empty way of life handed down to us (1 Pet. 1:18), but what that verse says is that we have been redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to us.  We have been redeemed.  We do not have to do it anymore.  We have been redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to us from our fathers.

We can fight and we can win.  In fact, we will win by the power of the Holy Spirit and by the victory that Jesus Christ won on the cross for His people.  Was your father a passive man? You do not have to be a passive man.  Your DNA is not determinative.  Your socialization is not determinative.  The word of God determinative.  The power of the Holy Spirit is determinative.  The victory of Jesus Christ on the cross is determinative.  Faith is the victory that overcomes the world (1 John 5:4).  You can submit to your husband as to the Lord in everything.  You can obey your parents in the Lord.  You can obey your boss in respect and sincerity, and work hard even when his eye is not on you.  You can be patient and joyful in your singleness, or in waiting for that baby.  You can rejoice in your sufferings also.  You can be content, though you have “mere food and clothing.”  You can be happy in your unmet expectations, knowing that God has something better for you.  You can overcome your temptation, strong as it may be—you can overcome your temptation—temptation to discontent, temptation to homosexuality, temptation to anything and everything.  You can forgive that other person as God in Christ forgave you.  Even when it is hard to let go of that thing you have against that other person, you can do it.  God will help you.

Conclusion

We do not have to fall into our parents’ sins as Isaac did.  We do not have to fall into our old sins as Samson did.  And if we do fall, we do not have to stay down.  We don’t have to wallow in them and remain defeated.  We can be like Isaac and David and Abraham.  They sinned, but they rose up, and they lived victorious lives through Jesus Christ.  We can do the same.

If you are outside of Christ this morning, as you hear this word, you do not have to remain a slave to sin either.  You don’t have to remain dead in your transgressions and sins.  You don’t have to remain an object of wrath.  You too can have victory—great victory, victory in Jesus.  Confess with your mouth, “Jesus Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, and you will be saved.  God promises it (Rom. 10:9).  You can have victory; in fact, you will have victory, “for, ‘Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved’” (Rom. 10:13).

Have victory—victory in Jesus.  Hallelujah!  Call on the name of the Lord and be saved.  Live a new life, a victorious life, by the power of His Holy Spirit who He will put in you and who will indwell in you and who will empower you.  Who will pray.  Even when you don’t know what to pray, He will pray on your behalf with groans.

We can walk in obedience to His word and live that life that is truly life.  Glorify God and enjoy Him forever.  We can do it.  We can do it until we go to Him in glory to be with  God forever.  It sounds impossible, perhaps, but it is possible through Jesus Christ our Lord.  In fact, it is not just possible, it is guaranteed.  It is here.  It is here right now.  God moves among us.  God speaks right now.  So cry out to Jesus Christ, “Have mercy on me a sinner,” and be saved.  And live that new life starting today.  Hallelujah!  Amen.