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[0:00] So we are going to be in Genesis chapter 12, finishing up Genesis 12. But let's read from verse 9 through the end of the chapter, which is through verse 20.

[0:19] And Abram journeyed going on still toward the south, and there was a famine in the land. And Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was grievous in the land.

[0:30] And it came to pass, when he was come near to enter into Egypt, that he said unto Sarai his wife, Behold, now I know that thou art a fair woman to look upon.

[0:41] Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, This is his wife, and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive. Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister, that it may be well with me for thy sake, and my soul shall live because of thee.

[1:00] And it came to pass, that when Abram was come into Egypt, the Egyptians beheld the woman, that she was very fair. The princes of Pharaoh saw her, and commended her before Pharaoh.

[1:12] And the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house, and he entreated Abram well for her sake. And he had sheep, and oxen, and he donkeys, and men servants, and maidservants, and she donkeys, and camels.

[1:25] The Lord plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife. And Pharaoh called Abram and said, What is this that thou hast done unto me? Why dost thou not tell me that she was thy wife?

[1:38] Why saidst thou, She is my sister? So I might have taken her to me, to my wife. Now therefore, behold thy wife, take her and go thy way.

[1:49] And Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him, and they sent him away, and his wife, all that he had. Lord, we just want to offer up to you this time.

[2:00] We thank you for the reading of your word. We thank you, Lord, for the Holy Spirit who teaches us your word. Lord, truly, Lord, we have need of no man, Lord, to expound the word to us. That we can read it with open eyes because of the Holy Spirit, Lord.

[2:14] But you have determined that the body is to be edified, and to grow, and to be built up in the things of the Lord, and in the gifts of the Spirit, and in faith, through the teaching of the word.

[2:26] Lord, this is to feed us, to feed our souls. The very essence of who we are in you is rooted and grounded in the word of God. We pray that you would open your word to us, that we would hear today what the Spirit has to say to the church.

[2:39] We just thank you, and in Jesus' name, amen. So the message today is expectation versus expectancy. Expectation versus expectancy.

[2:51] We're going to kind of look at a couple different blocks of ideas. We're going to look at Abraham. Kind of when we approach Abram, or Abraham, and the story of Abraham, we're going to be with him a long time.

[3:02] There's two things we need to always keep in mind. The promise of God, and the faith of Abraham. Those two things override everything in the story, or the account, of Abram, or Abraham, and his life.

[3:15] The promise of God, and then the faith of Abraham. And we see that in the New Testament, that over and over, the faith of Abraham is displayed to us. It's used as an example for our faith, and it's in Hebrews 11, the hall of faith.

[3:29] But the promise of God never fails. It never is altered. It never fails. And it's always faithful. Abraham's faith will never fail either.

[3:40] So wait a minute. We're going to see his faith fail. No, his faith can't fail. He will falter. But his faith doesn't fail, because faith is only as effective as what you have faith in.

[3:51] I can have all the faith in the world, in Buddha, but my faith is going to fail, because Buddha's going to fail. I can have the most greatest faith in the world, in the United States government, but they're going to fail too.

[4:06] It doesn't matter how great my faith is. I can have a teeny bit of faith in something really great and unfailing, like the Lord, and that faith will never fail, because he won't.

[4:18] So when we look at Abraham, we're always considering, as we go through the narrative, where's the promise of God in here, and where's Abraham's faith? So expectation leads to compromise.

[4:33] So we're going to see expectations and expectancy, and we're going to see this idea of compromise. These are kind of the two ideas that we're going to bring out of the text today. But expectation will lead to compromise, where expectancy will lead to faith.

[4:46] What do I mean by that? Expectation places all of the focus on my circumstances, and how I expect God to respond in those circumstances.

[4:57] When those expectations are not realized, the natural result is to compromise. I expect God to work out in my circumstances a specific way. And then when that doesn't happen, I'll compromise.

[5:09] Either to help God, okay, well, he needs my help, because this is supposed to turn out this way, and it didn't. So God is failing, or God's not coming through. So I will either compromise to help God, fulfill my expectations, or I'll compromise my faith in God and lower my expectation of who he is.

[5:28] Well, maybe God isn't what I thought he was. Okay, I was a little wrong. You see that happen a lot. And unfortunately, what the world does to our faith, especially in the academic realm.

[5:40] Well, you can believe in God, but he's not all that. Bring your expectations down a little of who God is. Expectancy, on the other hand, places all of the focus upon God, knowing he will be faithful to act on my behalf, according to his promise and his word, because of who he is.

[5:59] I'm expectant of him, not of results and circumstances. So we are to have expectancy in who God is. We should always expect God to work on our behalf, that he will be faithful to his word and to his promise, that all things work together for our good, to those who love God and are called according to his promise.

[6:16] That does not mean I can take that and then have an expectation of how that's going to operate in my life. Well, I should never be sick. You see that a lot of times when you talk with people. Well, if God loves me, why did I just get in a bad car accident?

[6:30] My mom just died. But we can have this idea of how God will work in our life instead of just expecting of him great things. So if we look in the text here, Abraham has just finished building an altar.

[6:44] He's called upon the name of the Lord. He's in communion. He's in fellowship. He's right where God wants him to be. And when you know you are where God wants you to be, stay there. No matter what the opposition, you stay there until God tells you to move.

[6:58] But Abraham doesn't do that. He gets a little antsy because, in verse 10, there was a famine in the land. And Abraham went down into Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was grievous in the land.

[7:11] So Abraham, his expectations and what he expected of God's promise and blessing, remember when God said to him, get out of your country, get out of your land, because I'm going to bless you.

[7:23] He's like, well, I know what blessing looks like. I live in Ur of the Chaldees. I'm in the Fertile Crescent. I'm either in Babylon or very close to Babylon. Whatever Ur was, it either was another name for Babylon or was very close to it.

[7:36] He's like, well, I know what blessing looks like. I'm very blessed here. Then he goes into the land of Canaan, and things are going good. God appears to him. Things are going great.

[7:47] And all of a sudden, there's a famine. It was very grievous. Or it means heavy beyond bearing, what that means. So this is too great for Abraham to bear. God will always, always lead us into situations that are too great for us to bear.

[8:02] Hard to hear that sometimes, because I want to know that I can do it. I can press through. But God always leads us to a place where we can realize our own weakness, so that he might, what? Show himself strong.

[8:14] He says in, I think it's Chronicles, that the eyes of the Lord look to and fro throughout the whole earth. He might show himself strong on behalf of those whose hearts are perfect towards him. So Abraham needs to learn this.

[8:26] Abraham needs to go down into Egypt. Why? Because he needs to learn, and I have it here somewhere, the trial of Abraham's faith in Egypt was not to prove, as we're going to see to Pharaoh, that God was real.

[8:39] It's not to prove to Abraham that God is able to keep him in a famine. It's to prove to Abraham that, in material of all circumstances and all expectations, God's word and God's promise never fail.

[8:51] God is going to use Egypt to refocus him back off of his circumstances and back on to the Lord. And so Abraham here, his expectations have not been realized through the promise and the blessing of God.

[9:07] And so he does the natural thing. He compromises. We ought to keep our eyes on the promiser, but not on the expectation of the fulfillment. So he goes down into Egypt, and the word there, sojourn, the word sojourn means to dwell.

[9:24] Okay, we know that. It also means to fear. It means to fear, to sojourn. Well, it has the idea, fear has the idea within it of being turned aside. Fear causes me to turn aside from where I was, the place of rest or what I was putting my faith in, or I go and hide because I've been turned aside by fear.

[9:43] If the bear chases you in the woods, all of a sudden you are very quickly turned aside because of fear to somewhere that you think is safe. And so the idea of sojourning, turning aside to dwell, also has tucked within it this idea of fear.

[9:59] And so out of fear, Abraham is turned aside to go and to dwell somewhere that God had never called him to. And because Abraham thought God did not deliver on his behalf, in his mind, he then turned to the world and expected the world to deliver what God did not.

[10:18] So Egypt always represents the world. Whenever you see in Scripture, Egypt, it's a type of the world. When you see Israel, or they go down into Egypt, or they're in Egypt, or Abraham turning to Egypt, it's turning to the things of the world, turning to a source of provision.

[10:36] It's interesting, Egypt's always there. Babylon, Assyria, Canaanites, they'll be wiped out. They'll come and go. Egypt's still there to this day.

[10:47] Egypt never goes away. It's always there. Egypt is there for us to turn to. It's always the temptation that, well, the world's there to do for me what I thought God was gonna, and he didn't.

[11:03] But Abraham goes down. And again, the typology here, we'll see as he goes down into Egypt, and eventually he'll come up out of Egypt. It's always a come down to go to the world.

[11:18] And it came to pass, in verse 11, when he was come near to enter into Egypt, that he said unto Sarai his wife, Behold, now I know that thou art a fair woman to look upon.

[11:29] Honey, you're 65 years old. But boy, are you gonna be trouble. You know, as we saw, the ages, the longevity of man is drastically changing in the last few centuries from the flood, and then from Peleg, when Babel happens, into Abraham's day.

[11:51] But Sarai's still smoking hot. Can you say that in church? At 65. And Abraham's quite worried about this. And so he begins to compromise.

[12:02] And compromise always leads to paranoia. What is compromise? Well, compromise is usually, it's a legal term. It's an amicable agreement between parties in controversy to settle their differences by mutual concessions.

[12:17] Okay? It just means two people or two parties that are in disagreement, having controversy, they come to a mutual middle ground by which to table their differences. Say, all right, I'm good with that.

[12:30] Are you good with that? Yeah, I'm good with that. Okay, I'll meet you halfway. It's compromise. Also has the idea of adjustment. I like that. It's an adjustment. The compromise is to adjust.

[12:42] I've got to adjust my position so that I can fit over here. The company I work for, they are based out of New York, upstate New York.

[12:54] And we now have a diversity and inclusion council. You know? I like it because they'll put out, like, if anyone would like to be, is interested in being on a diversity and inclusion council, please respond to this email.

[13:04] I'm always so tempted to be like, hey, I'm pretty diverse. I bet I have viewpoints that nobody else does on that council. Let me in. But you can see it slowly starting to ramp up.

[13:17] We don't have to do specifically training towards the transgender stuff. But they've sent through emails on how to word your, what is it, your title or whatever in your email, your signature, if you wanted to he, she, it, them, or whatever other pronouns.

[13:38] Here's the correct way to do it with our company logo. So you can see it coming. But they're saying, hey, you need to adjust. You need to adjust what we're doing. You need to adjust to that.

[13:49] Because we're not going to adjust to you. And if you don't adjust, we're not going to have a place for you. You can see that's coming eventually. But that's what compromise does. Compromise is a mutual agreement, but it causes someone to adjust.

[14:02] And here we see in verse 11 that it always leads to paranoia. So when our expectations aren't realized, we will compromise, we will compromise, because I have to figure out a way to make this fit in my world.

[14:17] God, I expected you to, and you didn't. What happened? Am I in sin? Am I, do you not love me? Well, maybe God needs my help. Maybe there's something I didn't do.

[14:29] And so I'm going to now attempt to do that. Or I'll lower my expectation of who the Lord is. And so Abram compromises by turning to the world. And it results in paranoia.

[14:41] Therefore, in verse 12, he continues to talk to Sarai and says, it shall come to pass when the Egyptians shall see you, they shall say this is his wife. They will kill me, but they shall save the alive.

[14:52] Compromise leads to self-preservation. As soon as we begin to compromise, to adjust, because our expectation in God is not realized, it will lead to self-preservation.

[15:04] Well, I can't trust God to keep me. I've got to do this. He was supposed to keep me. And the famine was so bad, our whole family was going to die. So I came to Egypt. But now that I'm here, now I've stepped outside of where God wanted to keep me.

[15:17] And I've got to figure out how to do this on my own. I begin to look around and see what I can use. And compromise also, always, hurts those closest to us.

[15:28] Because we'll begin to use them in our lives for our own self-preservation. And so he says, Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister that may be well with me for thy sake, and my soul shall live because of thee.

[15:47] Now he's putting pressure on Sarai. Compromise is contagious. He's causing her to compromise now. He's pressuring her, saying, hey, you, we're going to go sojourn in the world, and that requires us to compromise.

[16:02] And it's going to affect you as well because I need you to be involved with me in this. I can't do this alone. And so there's this pressure that he puts upon her. It came to pass that when Abram was coming to Egypt, the Egyptians beheld the woman that she was very fair.

[16:21] So Abram was right, wasn't he? He was worried that they got into Egypt, that honey, they're going to look at you, and they're going to see you're beautiful. And the next logical step is, I'm going to be murdered.

[16:34] That's a little bit of a jump there. I don't know. I didn't have a chance to look it up. I've never heard of that being an Egyptian practice. Maybe it is.

[16:45] I don't know anywhere else where it actually happens to anybody in Scripture, where because of somebody else's, their beautiful spouse, they got killed. But that's his next leap here is that, well, they're going to want to kill me, obviously.

[17:02] But compromise gives the appearance of success. He goes like, well, this worked. It worked. I needed to give in. I needed to adjust. Oh, and it worked. The pressure's off. The moment's passed.

[17:14] Oh, it worked. Oh, wonderful. They did see she was fair. And in verse 15, the princes also of Pharaoh saw her and commended her before Pharaoh.

[17:26] And the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. Just like he thought. He's like, great. This worked. I'm so pleased. And now I'm alone. And now I got nobody.

[17:37] There goes his wife. He's like, yes, I'm still alive. But with what? Where was Abraham before he came down into Egypt? He was in fellowship with God. Communion with God at the altar.

[17:49] He had his family there. He had his wife. And then he compromises. And now he's alone. And Pharaoh, in verse 16, he treated Abram well for her sake. And he had sheep and oxen and he had donkeys and menservants and maidservants and she donkeys and camels.

[18:05] Wow. Look at all the blessing. What a cheap substitute. What a cheap substitute has been handed to this man. He had his wife and now he's got stuff because of compromise.

[18:18] Because his expectations were in how he thought God would act in his life and how that would play out instead of just knowing that, you know what, the God of the promise isn't going to break his promise.

[18:31] So if he said, all nations will be blessed of me and that I'll be the father of many nations, I've got to stay alive. I'm going to sit right down here in famine and say, Lord, this is all on you.

[18:42] You're going to have to keep me and I'm going to trust you to do that. Instead, he finds himself here in Egypt. His plan worked. He's got no wife and he's alive with a lot of stuff.

[18:54] Poor guy. Better a famine and fellowship and communion than riches and wealth in the isolation of compromise. Because compromise always isolates. When we compromise, we end up in isolation and we lose our fellowship and our communion.

[19:10] What else did it do? Who is Sarah to Abram? His wife, his bride. Compromise takes the bride and puts her in the world.

[19:26] Compromise always puts the bride in the world. The bride in the world is no good for anyone as we're going to see here. And when the church compromises, they think, well, I have to lower my expectations or I have to adjust or I have to do something here because God didn't come through for me.

[19:44] Because God didn't do what I expected him to. I wanted God to do this and he didn't. So we've got to figure it out on our own. The church isn't growing like it used to. The church is dead in America. What are we going to do?

[19:55] Well, we're going to come up with programs and practices and policies. We're going to figure out a way that we can make this work and we're going to bring in so many people and it's going to be great. And what do they got?

[20:05] They got a cheap substitute. They have wealth and they have riches. They got a bunch of donkeys. Right? Cheap substitute because they've taken the bride and they've compromised with the bride and they've taken the bride into the world.

[20:21] And now the bride is in the world's hands. Compromise puts the bride not just in the world but under the world's power. And the Lord plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife.

[20:34] That verse just was blowing my mind. What? It should say and the Lord plagued Abram because of his lack of faith. The Lord plagued Pharaoh because God's promise is at work in Abram's life.

[20:47] God had promised to Abram and Sarai that I will bless those that bless you and I will curse those that curse you. Abram, Pharaoh's got your bride. That ought not to be. You are a man under promise.

[20:59] You are a man under blessing. Wherever you go, you represent my promise and my blessing. That can't fail. God's promise cannot fail in my life even when I do. But look what it does.

[21:10] It kills his witness. Compromise. Absolutely murdered Abram's witness. And Pharaoh called Abram and said, What is this that thou hast done unto me?

[21:22] Why did thou not tell me that she was thy wife? wife? So when we're in compromise, even the world will recognize what we ought to do. Say, Dude, I thought, I mean, okay, I live with my girlfriend, but you say you're a Christian.

[21:40] You say you follow Jesus. You say you have standards. I mean, come on, dude. What's that? You're doing worse than me. Why didn't you tell me she was your wife?

[21:53] Why saidest thou she is my sister? So Abraham told a half-truth, right? Because we said before that Terah had Sarai. It was his. So it was Abram's half-sister.

[22:04] So Abram thought that, well, you know what? I'm going to still maintain my integrity. And so compromise gives us a false sense of integrity because we will hold to a small part of the truth and still feel good about ourselves.

[22:19] And as Abraham is adjusting here, adjusting to what he thinks is the fact that God didn't uphold his promise in his life, all of these things are the result. Well, Abraham's faith is totally failing.

[22:31] Did it? What would Abraham's faith failing look like? Does he ever turn his back on the Lord? Does he ever curse God and die like Job's wife says to him?

[22:42] No, he doesn't. Faith never fails through all of his ups and downs, right? Through all these trials, when we get to Ishmael and he has to send him out into the wilderness, when we get to Isaac and he's got to sacrifice him so he thinks, his faith survives.

[23:01] You can turn to Luke 17 if you'd like. We're going to look at this section. So in Luke 17, Jesus, he's talking to his disciples and he's talking about how offenses shall come.

[23:21] In verse 1, it is impossible but that offenses will come, but woe unto him through whom they come. It were better for him to have a millstone hanged about his neck.

[23:31] He had just finished speaking to the Pharisees, the story of rich man and Lazarus. So he's saying, look guys, there's going to be offenses, there's going to be compromise, but woe to him through whom it comes.

[23:44] He says, take heed to yourselves. He says, if your brother trespass against you, rebuke him, and if you repent, forgive him. And if you trespass against me seven times a day and seven times turn again unto you and say, I repent, you shall forgive him.

[23:57] And they're like, this is impossible. How are we going to do this? This, this, I, I can't do that. My expectation in him as a brother is not that he would treat me that way.

[24:10] And when he does, I can't, I can't handle that. And so, I'm, I'm kind of done with him. In our relationships with one another, spouses, friends, brothers, siblings, we put expectations on each other, don't we?

[24:26] And expectations are a burden that nobody can bear. Because if I live up to your expectation and it's not who I actually am, then I'm going to have to keep living up to that. There's going to be this expectancy from you, like so, doing the church, pastoring a church.

[24:41] If I try to live up to your expectation of what you think a pastor ought to be. Now, there's things the Bible tells us a pastor is and will be by the work of the Holy Spirit in their life. But if I live up to an expectation you have, okay, you should have a tie on and a suit every Sunday.

[24:57] That's going to get tiring and expensive to wash that thing. But I have to live up to that expectation. I have to continue to do that. That can become a burden that will crush a relationship, that will squash it.

[25:11] Because that now enters into a relationship and nobody can bear it. But if I have expectancy in you and if you have expectancy in me, you say, I know you, I know who you are and we're friends and you're the pastor of this church, I have a certain expectancy based on who you are and the Word of God that there will be characteristics in your life.

[25:30] Now, what they will play out as, you know, we're going to be different across the board. You know, we're all different. But the Spirit of God working in our lives is going to produce the fruit of the Spirit. But I can't have an expectation in you that, well, the fruit of the Spirit in you should always produce a super outgoing, in-your-face, bold witness for Jesus.

[25:49] Get out there and get in their face. I can't expect that. But I can expect that the Holy Spirit will produce in you boldness and a witness for Jesus. How that works out in your life will be different for each of us.

[26:04] And so, for the disciples here, they're like, ah, this is way beyond what we can expect to do. And so, they naturally turn to Jesus and say, Lord, increase our faith.

[26:17] Lord, make our faith grow. We want big faith that will never fail. And in the face of all opposition, any famine, any compromise, I won't fail because my faith is big.

[26:28] You can trust me, Jesus. And the Lord kind of rebukes them. You see, the disciples wanted quantity, but Jesus is about to emphasize quality. And the Lord said, if you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you might say unto this sycamine tree, be thou plucked up by the roots, and be thou planted in the sea, and it should obey you.

[26:50] It says, Lord, increase our faith. You don't need a lot of faith. That big. Faith the size of a mustard seed because of who your faith is in. Because the object of your faith can move mountains and sycamine trees.

[27:03] And I don't know what the Lord has against sycamine trees, but he must be sycamine. Sorry. That was bad. But we think that we need a big faith.

[27:16] And God just says, you just need to have faith in me. Just trust me to be faithful to my word, to my promise. So Abraham's in the world. The world is rebuking him. So why did you not tell me she was your sister?

[27:30] Or that she was your wife? Why said she was my sister? Because of a lack of faith. I thought, wait, you just said we can have big faith. It's just a small faith. He lacked trusting God at that moment.

[27:44] He lacked the expectation or the expectancy that God would come through. So when God tries our faith, right, we're not going to turn there. I'll read this one to you. 1 Peter 1, verses 6-8 says, Wearing you greatly rejoice, though now for a season if need be, you are in heaviness through manifold temptation.

[28:02] Hey, we greatly rejoice because of the hope that we have. What is hope? Do you know what the word hope means? An expectation of coming good. An expectancy of coming good. When I hope in God, I have an expectation.

[28:15] I mixed those words up. An expectancy that good will come from God. But, right now, we're in heaviness through manifold temptations.

[28:25] Right now, there's trials, there's famine, and there's struggles. Why? Verse 7 of 1 Peter 1, That the trial of your faith being much more precious than of gold that perishes, though it will be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love, and whom, though now you see him not, yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.

[28:54] So Peter says, the point of these trials is to try our faith, not so it'll be crushed, not so it'll fail, but so that on the other side of that trial, we'll see that God was faithful.

[29:07] My faith endured like gold going through the fire. Abraham's faith is going to endure. He's going to go through a bunch of these little testings. Long before he gets to Isaac, before God can give him the son of promise, before he's prepared to go up to the mountain to sacrifice him, he's got to have a lot of this weeded out of his life.

[29:26] And so God sends him through these trials to test his faith, to prove, not to crush it, not even to strengthen it, but to prove that it's already strong. He says, in Peter there, that the proving that you may, the trial of your faith being much more precious, would prove that it might be tried with fire, but found under the praise and honor and glory of Jesus Christ.

[29:49] And so that's the purpose. Abraham's faith at this time, it was lacking. He lacked faith in who the Lord was in his life.

[30:01] He did not stop believing in God, but he did not believe in who God was going to be in his life. He did not trust the God of the promise. And so the world ends up being more honorable in the midst of compromise and that will always be the case.

[30:15] We think compromise is going to endear us to the world and it causes the world to despise us. The world hates compromise just as much, especially in the bride. Now therefore, behold your wife, take her, and go your way.

[30:32] So again, the bride in the world is no good for anyone. Did it do any good for Pharaoh? Pharaoh's like, ooh, the bride. Yes. All right, come into my house. All right. She's beautiful.

[30:42] I'll take it. And God plagues the world because they have the bride. And so how silly of us to think that we can go and compromise and be in the world and somehow we're going to affect the world through that.

[30:55] What all we're going to do is put the world in a place of compromise because we're taking the truth from them. It's devoid of the truth when we're in compromise. And so they just continue to fall under God's judgment instead of his blessing.

[31:10] He says, take your wife, go your way. And so what do we see with compromise? Compromise leads to paranoia. It's contagious.

[31:20] It always affects those closest to us. It gives the appearance of success. It isolates. It kills our witness. And compromise takes the bride and puts her in the hands of the world.

[31:37] And Abraham, or Abram, what did that result in his personal walk? When you're in Egypt, you walk like the Egyptians. So Abraham goes to the world and he's walking like the world. It ends up with a horizontal perspective instead of a vertical.

[31:53] Abram was worshiping God at the altar. He goes down into Egypt and all he sees is the horizontal. The God of the promise is far outside his thought process right now, his view.

[32:06] He's just looking at the horizontal. Walking like an Egyptian results in self-preservation instead of self-sacrifice. The man turns to his wife and says, Honey, I would die for you.

[32:16] No, why don't you go so I don't die. You die for me. I'm going to stick you in this guy's harem so that I can be okay. So instead of self-sacrifice, instead of dying for his wife, he puts her in a place of compromise.

[32:31] Men, when we compromise, when we compromise who we expect God to be in our lives, not our expectations of how that works out in our lives, but when we compromise our expectancy in God, man, it puts our wife in a hard place, in a very hard place, or our children in a hard place as well.

[32:50] Instead of self-sacrificing, we're asking of them to sacrifice in an area we should. We should be the one. But now we're telling them, Honey, don't do that.

[33:03] You sacrifice. Because that makes, I don't want to have to deal with that. And what we end up causing them to sacrifice is the things of the Lord. When I'm not walking in the Spirit, I end up causing my children or my wife to sacrifice the things of the Spirit.

[33:17] It's like, Oh no, I don't really want to do that. Go to Bible study? Let's watch some TV. Sit and pray? Read the Word? Come on, let's go play mini golf. So I'm depriving them of spiritual nourishment when I compromise.

[33:31] When I compromise. Walking like an Egyptian leads to worry instead of worship. Abraham came from a place of worship at the altar, and he ends up in this place of worry. Lying, it leads to lying instead of leading.

[33:44] Telling half-truths. And a half-truth is a full lie. Ends up in fear instead of faith. You know, Hebrews will tell us that Abraham, that his faith, he went out not knowing whither.

[34:01] He looked for a city whose builder and maker was God. We're going to find out. Romans tells us that he counted him faithful who promised to fulfill his promise. That's on the other side of the cross.

[34:13] You always need to look at these things through the cross, right? But in the moment as Abraham's faith is being sanctified, as he's going through this process, right now, all he can see is fear, and he's acting in fear instead of faith.

[34:28] And walking like an Egyptian in his personal walk, it led to isolation instead of intimacy. Here he had his wife there, and that intimacy was taken from him, and now he's completely isolated, isolated from those closest to him.

[34:44] And as we said, the trial of Abraham's faith was not to prove to Pharaoh that God was real. It wasn't even to prove to Abraham that you should have stayed in Canaan because God can provide in famine.

[34:57] It was to focus Abraham onto who God was and God's promise instead of what that would be in his life. Oswald Chambers says, we have to be true to God, not true only to our idea of God.

[35:13] We have to be true to God, not true only to our idea of God. Who do I think God is? Who do I expect him to be in my life? Do I expect that if I punch my clock, God responds?

[35:28] If I sit down, read my Bible, pray, and think holy thoughts, then God will result in some amazing growth in my life or some great spiritual move? Or do I just know that God is faithful, that I can trust him in every situation?

[35:42] And when I have not read my Bible, and when I have a terrible attitude, and when my mood feels anything but spiritual, I can turn and say, you are faithful, God. Your word is faithful. Your promise doesn't fail.

[35:53] And I'm a creep, but you are faithful, and he's going to keep me. That will strengthen your faith. That will prove to you that your faith can last the test quicker than, I hesitate to say this, not quicker, but quicker than any amount of self-effort in spiritual things.

[36:10] I was going to say quicker than reading your Bible, but when you go to the word, you don't feel like it. Oh, I don't expect to get anything out of this. I don't feel like reading, but when we go to it instead, with I expect God's word to speak because it's alive.

[36:25] I don't feel like reading, but I expect God to speak his word because of his promise that his word's alive. And I'm going to go and I'm going to read. And I'm going to expect God to do something.

[36:37] My expectancy is in the Lord. Abram's faith was greatly tested and was proved.

[36:50] It was proved to stand that test, that it came forth as gold. We're going to find out as we go into the next chapter that God was setting him up just as we learned last week that God prepares us for failures.

[37:01] When Abram was at the altar, he was worshiping the Lord, and the Lord appeared to him, and then he goes down into Egypt. Just like the Lord said to Peter, Peter, I prayed for you because Satan desires to sift you as wheat.

[37:12] God is also using this failure to prepare Abram for his next victory as we're going to see with Lot. Unfortunately, compromise, we're going to find out next week, because it affects those closest to us, compromise with Abram destroys Lot.

[37:31] Lot has a taste for the world. Lot has a taste for the things of the world. Lot goes with him out of Babel and into Canaan. And then he takes Lot down into Egypt.

[37:42] And they both come out filthy rich. Lot has this taste now for the things of the world. And when it comes time to choose where to go, Lot looks and says, I want to go back there. I want to go back to that place where I could have all of this stuff.

[37:56] But God will use that. Abram's faith was not in who God was, but in who he thought God was, like Oswald Chambers just said. Abram had an expectation of how he thought God's promise would play out in his actual circumstances.

[38:10] When those circumstances were not met, as we said, Abram's faith was shaken. And he lapsed into compromise in an attempt to shore up the areas where he felt God's promise has failed.

[38:24] But Abraham lapsed in his faith. It didn't fail because he believed God didn't fulfill his promise, and so he attempted to fulfill it instead. Romans 5, verse 1 says, Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

[38:50] And not only so, but we glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation works patience. And patience, experience. And experience, hope.

[39:01] And hope is the expectation of coming good. And hope makes us not ashamed because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given to us.

[39:13] So that expectation of coming good in God when our expectancy is in Him, when we are a people who let go of our expectations, instead, we are a people of expectancy in our God and His faithfulness, well, that makes not ashamed.

[39:28] That hope will never make us ashamed. It'll never fail. We never have to be ashamed because of our hope in God and our trust in Him. My closing verse was Hebrews chapter 10 verse 23.

[39:42] It says, Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering. For He is faithful to promise. And that just kind of encapsulates this whole section here.

[39:53] To hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering. to waver is to start to become loose, to swerve, to be adjusted away from your current place.

[40:07] For He's faithful to promise. God's faithful to promise. What has He promised you? He's promised us an awful lot, guys. He's promised us that the Holy Spirit will be in us willing to do of His good pleasure.

[40:18] Do I believe that? Or am I trying to shore that up because I don't think God is working in my life like I expect Him to? Well, God, I thought the Holy Spirit in my life meant this.

[40:31] I don't know. I'm going to try and take care of that by compromise. Where the Lord would say, I see you're in famine. I know there's a famine. I know right now you're sitting there in your life thinking, I got nothing.

[40:44] This is all famine. The Lord's like, I see that. Stay there. That's where I brought you. I put you there. What do you have there if communion and fellowship? And so when God puts us in a place that He's called us to, don't ever leave.

[40:59] Don't ever leave that spot no matter what the opposition. And in your walk this week, don't compromise. Don't adjust because an expectation wasn't realized.

[41:12] It's always that. It's always that. My expectation isn't realized. Conflict in your marriage, conflict between relationships is very frequently because of expectations not realized.

[41:23] I didn't expect you to act that way. I expected dinner on the table when I got home. I expected you to be more considerate. Whatever it is. I expected you children to obey always and have my slippers waiting for me.

[41:35] What's wrong with you? But when we have expectancy, we should have expectancy. I should have expectancy in you. As brothers and sisters in Christ, as those filled with the Spirit, I have a great expectation of coming good in your lives and that our relationship with one another is going to bear fruit.

[41:52] But I'm not going to put on you expectations of what that's supposed to look like. I don't know. Only the Lord does. But we can know it's going to be good and according to the promise. So Father, as we close, Lord, I just thank you for just this beautiful picture of Abram, Lord, what looks like a terrible situation.

[42:12] He's in the world. He's dragging his wife into the world. He's lying. He's putting her in a compromised position. He's a terrible witness. And Lord, in the middle of that, there's that verse that said, and God plagued Pharaoh and his house because of Sarai, Abram's wife.

[42:28] It goes right back to Abram. It says, God plagued him because. And Lord, we could almost reword that and say, God plagued Pharaoh because of the promise that God made to Abram.

[42:41] Abram could fail over and over and over and over and over, but God, you never will fail and your promise will never fail. Abram's going to learn that. We're going to get to learn that with him, Lord. But Lord, there's two things, promise of God and the faith of Abram and of us.

[42:59] And Lord, our faith wavers. It is so small, but it will never fail because you will never fail. And Lord, I pray you'd remind us of that. Whatever we're going through in life, whether in work or in school, whatever opposition we have, when people come and say, your faith is stupid, it's small, it's ineffective, you can't expect God to do that.

[43:20] But Lord, we would remember the promise that was contained in your word, that you will never leave us, you will never forsake us, that Lord, you have gone to prepare a place for us.

[43:32] And that if you go and prepare a place for us, then surely I'll come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also. Lord, that is our hope. And we will not be ashamed of that because it will stand in the test.

[43:46] And Lord, I pray that whatever failure we may be coming out of, Lord, whatever stumble, wavering of our faith, Lord, when our faith lacked, when we turned from the vertical and we began to look around at circumstances and expectations, Lord, I pray that you would bring us out of that and that on the other side of that, we would see that our faith has come forth as gold, that you're still there, we still trust you, and you still love us.

[44:15] Lord, I pray for my brothers and sisters, Lord, that their hearts will be strong, Lord, to stand the test, not because they are strong, because you are strong in them.

[44:26] And Lord, as we worship now, I pray that you would fill us, Lord, with your Holy Spirit, Lord, for we are crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, we live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me.

[44:40] And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Lord, the life we now live is not ours, not our responsibility to maintain this.

[44:53] Thank you, Jesus, that we live by the faith of the Son of God. We don't even live by Abraham's faith. Thank you, Jesus, for the faith you give us. Thank you that it will stand the test of all trials and keep us from compromise, we pray.

[45:07]  In Jesus' name, Amen. Amen.