Use God’s Resources, Not Our Own!

Genesis 15

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

I’d just ask you, do you want to know how to please God, your Creator? Do you want to know how to be
right with him? Do you want to know how to end up living with him forever? Well then — trust him;
trust him, that’s all. Count on him that he has taken all the difficulties that you will face in
your life and all the problems that are in you yourself and he has removed them all in his son
Jesus. Count on him for that. Relax in his arms knowing that he has done that and stop worrying
about those things. Relax in peace of heart and mind, and that will please him.

He wants, most of all, to have a personal relationship with you that he doesn’t have with any of the
rest of us, because he delights to look at the little things that you’re facing in your life that I
don’t face in mine and that the rest of us here don’t face in ours. He delights to make all those
right for you, personally and he wants, more than anything else, to have that kind of personal
relationship with you. Will you trust him like that?

In other words, he’s like any dear father; he has put billions of dollars in a bank for all the
financial needs and all the debts that you will ever incur during your lifetime. He has foreseen all
the sicknesses you will have, all the times of weakness, all the colds that you’ll get, and he has
put them into his son, Jesus. He has borne all those sicknesses and healed all those things in his
son. And then he has foreseen all the problems that you are going to meet in your life, all the
obstacles coming up in your domestic life, in your personal life, in your business life, and he has
solved all those.

Now he asks you to believe that he has done that, and he looks down on you now, as any father would,
to see his child believing him, believing that he’s done all these things. He looks in to see the
peace of your heart, and your piece of mind, and your quietness, and your confidence as you come
into all kinds of unexpected problems and unexpected situations. He looks to see you resting in him
and resting in his provision.

That’s how to be right with God, loved ones; to live like that day by day, trusting and resting in
him and relaxing in him. Now that’s what this dear man Abraham did. Because your faith is your
acceptance of his love and it’s the completion of reality; because he has, in fact, done all those
things. He has, in fact, foreseen every slip that you will make along the way. He has foreseen every
rock you are going to stumble against. He has foreseen every dark hole that you are going to fall
into. He has foreseen them all and he has already answers for all of them. He has arranged, and
wants you to complete that reality, by having faith in him. And as you walk in that, you do complete
the reality.

That is what Abraham did to please God when he was in his eighties — he was in his eighties and
still had no child of his own and yet God had given him a promise. You can see the promise if you
look at it in Genesis 15:4, “And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, ‘This man shall not be
your heir; your own son shall be your heir.’” Even though you are eighty years of age, your own son
shall be your heir. “And he brought him outside and said, ‘Look toward heaven, and number the
stars, if you are able to number them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’” And

even though Abraham was eighty, he believed that the problems that existed at that time in the
world, and there were many, were going to be solved somehow by the descendants that God was going to
give to him personally. He believed that was going to be fulfilled in his life. And he believed that
this was going to someway be connected up with the promise that he had been told had been given to
Adam, his great forefather, in the Garden of Eden. These old patriarchs grew up having the story of
the Garden of Eden passed on to them by their fathers and their grandfathers, so they knew it
thoroughly. It was passed forward by oral tradition, faithfully, generation after generation, and he
knew the promise that had been given back there.

It’s in Genesis 3:15 if you like to look at it, because it was what was in Abraham’s mind when God
said to him, “No, even though you are eighty, you are going to have descendants as the sand upon the
seashore.” “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he”
that is, her seed, “shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.” Abraham was like all the
others ever from the Garden of Eden days; he knew somehow or other a seed of man is going to bruise
that Satan that created the chaos that we experience in our world.

So when God spoke to him and said, “Even though you are eighty, you are going to have a descendant
by which I am going to bless the whole world” Abraham believed that because it was a promise that
God had given to him already in his lifetime in Genesis 12:2, “And I will make of you a great
nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.” So he knew
God had promised, “I will bless you through your descendants and I will bless the world. I will
bless those who bless you and him who curses you, I will curse. And by you all the families of the
earth shall bless themselves.” So Abraham knew, in some way, that “The seed that was promised to my
forefather Adam is going to come through me, and it’s going to be a seed that blesses the whole of
mankind.” And, of course, that was the faith that in Genesis 15:6 was regarded by God as
righteousness itself.

Genesis 15:6, “And he believed the Lord; and he,” God, “reckoned to him righteousness.” You remember
I mentioned the Hebrew word is “regard”, a kind of a substitute of “righteousness.” Many of us
think real righteousness is absolute obedience to every jot and tittle of the law, so faith is a
kind of substitute righteousness — no. Faith is the original righteousness; faith is the opposite
of sin, and if you are not sure of that, you will find it in Romans 14:23, “But he who has doubts is
condemned, if he eats, because he does not act from faith; for whatever does not proceed from faith
is sin.” Now faith and trust in God is the opposite of sin. Some of us think, “No, no, obedience is
the opposite of sin” — no. Obedience is the opposite of disobedience; but faith is the opposite of
sin because sin is a heart condition. Sin is not just failing to read your Bible. Sin is not just
failing to pray each day. Sin is not just committing fornication; sin is lack of deep heart trust
and faith in your dear Father. That’s why on past occasions, we’ve said sin is worry. Worry is one
of the worst of sins because it’s utter lack of trust; it’s utter dependence on yourself and your
own resources.

Faith is faith in God and trust in his provision; obedience is only valuable when it springs from
faith. Do you see that legalistic obedience can be just as sinful as disobedience; because you can
have some person obeying a set of laws just as independent of God as a person who disobeys the same
set of laws. Obedience is a blessing to God when it springs from faith; disobedience is a curse
against God because it springs from distrust and lack of faith in him.

That’s why James said what he did in James 2:18-24. “But some will say, ‘You have faith and I have
works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. You

believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe — and shudder. Do you want to be
shown, you shallow man, that faith apart from works is barren? Was not Abraham our father justified
by works, when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar? You see that faith was active along with his
works, and faith was completed by works, and the scripture was fulfilled which says, ‘Abraham
believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’; and he was called the friend of God.
You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.”

You see; its works that express your trust and confidence in God. Some of us get an idea that the
faith God regards as righteousness is this little mental ascent to John 3:16. Or it’s some kind of
evangelical belief that Jesus died for my sins, therefore I’m saved, so we get caught in a kind of
mental ascent to a concept. That’s not faith. Faith is a deep trust in your dear personal Father
that is present in your life, day by day and moment by moment and shows itself in works like no
tranquilizers, no wrinkled foreheads, no worry, no anxiety, no defending yourself, no trying to get
all the money you possibly can from everybody else. That’s the way works complete your faith;
they’re faith works. That’s so different, you can see, from what so many of us believe. We believe,
“Oh, faith is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, that I am saved. So I have that faith, and now I leave
that faith over there and I go over here and I have to do some good work. I have to bring other
people to Jesus, I have to save the world, I have to pray everyday and read the Bible.” It’s
terrible — I mean it’s a mockery.

God is not concerned with that kind of playing games. He says, “I am your dear Father; I have you in
my arms. Believe me, I can see further than your own father ever could see. Believe me that I have
seen everything that will happen to you in this life. Believe me that I have put it all in my son;
it’s all finished, it’s all dealt with. Now rest and relax in me. I will tell you what to do as you
go along through life, but trust me. Put your trust in me.” Genesis 15 is such an important chapter
because it is God completing the covenant of faith with Abraham, the covenant that Adam broke apart
in the Garden of Eden when he said, “I’m going to put my faith in the resources of this world, and
my own resources to manipulate the resources of this world, to meet my needs.” And of course that
brought a complete disruption between us and God.

That’s where we find strain, loved ones. That’s why we have strain. That’s why we have tension
headaches and that’s why we’re doing all kinds of things to try to meet our needs. That’s why our
lives are filled often with fuss and with embarrassment and with rushing and with all kinds of
resourceful acts; because we’re not lying in our Father’s arms and trusting him. Now you know fine
well that this does not mean you do nothing, but it does mean you act constantly out of a heart of
peace. It does mean you go to work, not because you need the money, because you know your Father is
going to supply that, but you go to work to glorify your Father in heaven. It means you do
everything out of a deep trust and confidence that your Father has already met all your needs. Now
that’s what makes you right with God. That’s what brings a deep peace in your heart.

However, Abraham was the same as you and me; he had been trained the other way. We’re no fools — we
have been brought up in a kind of work ethic, and so was I in Ireland. We have been brought up by
parents who, in good faith say “If you don’t work for your living and you don’t earn your money by
the sweat of your brow, and you don’t get out there and do something and look after yourself,
there’s nobody else that will look after you” so we went at it with that kind of attitude and there
was nothing actually wrong in that direction. But we fell into the same pattern as all the other
people in the world; we became enslaved to the money that we got from our job, and we began to be
enslaved to the employer who gave us our job, and we began to be enslaved by the company that owned
the employer. So we gradually got enmeshed in all kinds of self trust and dependencies that come

ahead of God and we need to be undeceived from all those things as did Abraham.

He needed to be educated into faith and so do we. We need to grow in faith — we need to grow and
develop in our faith. Now without a willingness to depend upon God, of course, the education won’t
do you any good, but even if you have that willingness, if you don’t have the education, you will
never be delivered from all the seductive deceptions that Satan has brought you into in the way of
all kinds of unconscious dependencies. That’s the story of our lives and if you want to know what
God is trying to do with your life, that’s what he is trying to do; he is trying to wean you away,
during this lifetime, from dependence on the world and on it’s people and on it’s circumstances and
its things and he’s trying to bring you into complete dependence on himself. So that when this life
ends — because that’s the last part of our probation; there’s no opportunity to learn to trust God
after this life ends, but when this life ends, you will be at a place where you are lying in the
Father’s arms.

So Abraham had to be educated and you remember the first step in his education was in Genesis 12:1.
That was the first thing God tried to do to separate him from the people that he had been brought up
among them and there was a reason for that. Genesis 12:1, “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your
country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.’” God told him to
leave his relatives for a reason, and you find that in Joshua 24:2, because his relatives had
certain attitudes that were absolutely contrary to trust in God himself as their Father. “And Joshua
said to all the people, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Your fathers lived of old beyond
the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods.’” That was
why: Abraham’s parents served other gods — they depended on other things, and that’s why God had to
separate Abraham from his people and his parents.

And the first step is that with us; he has to separate us, in some way, from the world — he has to
separate us from dependency on the world. God is probably continuing to do that with many of us
here and that’s why he gradually divides us from the things that we think we can’t do without. Then
the second step was in Genesis 13:10-13, “And Lot lifted up his eyes, and saw that the Jordan valley
was well watered, everywhere like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, in the direction
of Zoar; this was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. So Lot chose for himself all the
Jordan valley, and Lot journeyed east; thus they separated from each other. Abram dwelt in the land
of Canaan.” God had to separate Abraham from Lot and from the whole attitude that Lot had which
was God plus the world; “I take God, I depend on God, but I would also like to grab the best bits of
the world for myself too.”

And God normally has to go onto that with us; he separates us from the world then he separates us
from the kind of bluff dualism that enters our life after we’re born of God, when he has to try and
separate us from getting a little of the world as an insurance policy. I don’t know how much of that
works in your mind, but it is subtle. We feel, yes, we will give everything to Jesus, but we do have
this little thing in our back pocket that we can pull out just in case things get rougher for us
than we envision. And God, if he’s going to do anything with a man or woman has to separate them
from that kind of compromise. So God had to educate Abraham and by that time, he had brought him to
the place where he could complete the covenant of faith with him.

That meant that Abraham was back in the position that Adam had been before the fall in the Garden of
Eden — that’s where God had brought Abraham to; he had brought him back to that position. The only
reason he was able to do that was because he had put all of Abraham and all the wrong developments
in his personality into his son, Jesus, and had slain him in the lamb before the foundation of the

world. That’s why God was able to bring Abraham right back to that spot that Adam was in before the
fall, so it was very appropriate that the promise that God gave to Abraham was then tied up with the
manifestation of that lamb of God. Do you see that; the lamb was slain before the foundation of the
world, and Abraham and all his perverted personality was slain with him, so God now had to manifest
that lamb in the world here and the only way he was going to do that was through Abraham’s seed.

So it’s interesting that the promise that was given to Abraham was tied up with the very person who
enabled him to be forgiven and brought back to the place where Adam was before the fall. And that’s
why the promise of a seed is so important in Abraham’s life. Do you realize that? It’s not just the
number of the seed — it’s not a joke of “sand on the seashore of children.” It’s not just a joke
that you can have all kinds of strong people who will become a mighty nation, but it is that “you’re
going to have a people whom I will be able to educate to know why my son is being born on earth
among them.” That’s why the promise of seed was so vital to God and why it was such a big thing in
Abraham’s life.

It’s interesting; if you go through his life, you don’t know much about his life, in a sense, but
you constantly have this hammered in — the promise that God gave him that he would have seed; that
he would have children, that he would have offspring and the purpose of that was so that those
offspring would bring about Jesus into the world as a human being. So that was the whole center of
Abraham’s life. That’s why you get in Genesis 15:5 “And he brought him outside and said ‘Look toward
heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your
descendants be.’” And that was the confirmation of Genesis 13:16 where he said “I will make your
descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your
descendants also can be counted.” And it was confirmation again of Genesis 12:2, “And I will make of
you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”
That was a promise that God had given to Abraham and that Abraham had believed God for and God,
therefore, regarded as righteous.

Now here we come to the problem in Genesis 16:1, “Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, bore him no children.”
And that was the problem; the promise was Genesis 15:5, “He brought him outside and said ‘Look
toward heaven and number the stars if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, ‘So should
your descendants be.’” Then you go to verse 1 of Chapter 16, “Now Sarai, Abraham’s wife bore him no
children.” The physical facts were just against it, so Abraham struggled with that; God had
promised him his own son, but he looked at Sarai and he knew she was actually seventy-six — she was
ten years younger than him, and she was seventy-six at this time and she bore no children. So the
visible fact of this seemed to contradict the promise of God.

Actually, do you see — Sarah was still alive and so they didn’t actually contradict the promise of
God. What did contradict the promise of God was the way we normally expect the natural world to
operate — isn’t that right? That is what contradicted the promise of God. It wasn’t actually a
simple fact; the mum was still there and she was still able, by a miracle, to have children, but
Abraham was put off by the normal way things work in this world, and I think we need to see that.
When God gives you a promise, don’t be discouraged from believing that promise because you are
looking at the industry averages, and the industry averages for women is certainly not a child at
seventy-six. Every time you look at the industry averages, or every time you look at what is the
norm in this fallen world, you are looking at a world outside Jesus. God’s promises are given to you
inside Jesus. God’s promises are all based on the fact that he has reconciled the world to himself
in Jesus. God’s promises are all based on the fact that he has crucified the world in Jesus and
remade it, so God is giving you a promise in this Christ world over here, and you are looking at

this fallen world over here and saying, “Well, it’s not the kind of thing that happens.” And God is
trying to say, “Yes, of course not; my promise can’t be made real over there — that world is
finished. That’s why I destroyed it in Jesus. But over here, in him, I have a world that will work
exactly as I intended it too originally. And it’s in that world that my promise is going to be made
real to you.”

So, loved ones, it is good to see that Abraham had really no need to doubt just because the visible
facts, and normally, in your own situation and my own situation, we say it’s the visible facts that
contradict, but it is not. Really, the visible fact, in fact, in many situations we come into like
financial problems and difficulties, we know that many of those have worked themselves out just by
the right timing on other occasions. Many of the situations we’ve gotten into with jobs and job
applications, we know that other people have actually had those work out quite apart from God
because the whole thing has fallen together in the right place. So normally it’s not the visible
facts themselves that discourage us from believing God; it’s because we allow Satan to get hold of
our minds and say, “But this doesn’t normally happen this way. It might, on an odd occasion, by
chance, work out this way, but it doesn’t normally.” And God is of saying, “Of course it doesn’t —
that’s why I have given you this promise; because I have put this all into my son and I have
rearranged it. That’s why it’s going to work this way. So don’t look at the fallen world and think
it’s going to work the way my risen world works.” But, of course, Abraham didn’t do that and you
know that. The rest of the verse goes, “She had an Egyptian maid whose name was Hagar; and Sarai
said to Abram, ‘Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my maid; it
may be that I shall obtain children by her.’ And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai.”

Now the promise had not been given to Sarai so the wee soul doesn’t deserve our condemnation. The
promise was given to Abram; it was him that had received the promise. God had told him, “No, it
won’t be that slave — it will be your own son” so Abraham knew that. And really, he had no excuse,
loved ones — you have to walk by the promises that God gives you personally; that’s what God is
after. He’s after a personal relationship between you and himself, and there’s no point in you
coming to me or coming to somebody else and saying, “Well, can you confirm this promise that God has
given to me?” We probably won’t be able to. You have to walk by the promise that God has given to
you. I don’t know how many husbands or wives are in this situation. It could be with close friends
and even with people who live in houses together or even with elders, as elders that work together.
I think it’s very easy for us to almost want to listen to the other person because it takes us off
the tricky situation. I don’t know how many husbands find themselves in that position or how many
wives, but you see that there was something of Sarai in Abram; that’s why he went with her. He
really was anxious, in a way, to go that route that seemed more definite and more tied to the
natural functions and the natural laws that he had observed taking place in this world.

And so, loved ones, it’s very important that you stay with the promises that God has given you and
that you don’t shake from them. If you said to me, “Well, brother, what if God does not fulfill
them?” Well then you learn. You will be educated by God — he will tell you where you have
misunderstood or where you have gone wrong, but at least you will grow further in your relationship
with him. But if he gives you a promise, and then you speak to even one, “I dare not trust the
sweetest frame, only lean on Jesus’ name.” Even if you trust the sweetest friend, even if you go to
the dearest person, the most spiritual person you know and you try to find from them what they
think, immediately you do that, you are diluting the word of God to you and you are prostituting
God’s promise to you, and you are falling into the same trap as Abram who listened to Sarai. Now in
fairness to Sarai, the promise was not given to her. She was never called out to look at the stars;
she had never had that glorious vision of the stars and the word of God in her heart.

So it is with you and me, you see, often in quiet moments in our bedrooms, we do have quiet
assurances from God and those are precious. Now when you go to somebody else who has not had that
quiet assurance, you are only going to get one answer from them and actually your act of unbelief is
not even in the listening to them and it’s not in the following their advice, your act of unbelief
is the very going to this other person and saying, “What do you think?” Because they didn’t hear the
voice, and Jesus said, “My sheep know my voice.” You will know Jesus’ voice and it doesn’t matter
how you describe it to somebody else, they won’t know it just because you have described it to them,
you alone know it, and that’s a single lonely road you have to walk with your God. Now Abraham, of
course, didn’t. And the reason he didn’t was he had developed a problem, in the old days. It was
back in Genesis 12:11. And, of course, it was a problem of self-management and manipulation and
controlling things himself by the strength of his own right arm.

Genesis 12:11, “When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, ‘I know you are a woman
beautiful to behold; and when the Egyptians see you, they will say ‘This is his wife’; then they
will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because
of you, and that my life may be spared on your account.” It was that old human ingenuity to save
himself and defend himself. Now, in fairness to him, he had got rid of the saving himself — the
motive of that — in Genesis 13:9 when Lot and his own herdsman were fighting. Genesis 13:9, “Is
not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me. If you take the left hand then I will go
to the right; or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left.” So he had lost the selfish
motive; he was no longer trying to save his own skin even if he had to sacrifice his wife to the
Egyptians. So he had lost that selfish motive. He said to Lot, “Good, you take that land, I’ll take
this. I don’t care; I’m trusting God. He gave me the right land.” See, he had lost that selfish
motive, but the life, the energy, the soulishness, the strength of the right arm, the strength of
the flesh was still in him. He was still filled with that natural strength, that soulish strength
that would enable him to achieve God’s purposes by his own power, and that’s why he fell into this
trap. He thought, “Well, now God is going to give me a son. It’s vital he give me a son. I know, in
some way it’s connected up with the promise made to Adam, and he has promised me. Three times he’s
promised me a son, and this seems quite a good idea of Sarai’s — it’s my own wife telling me. I
mean, last time it was me telling her, getting her into trouble, but now its Sarai ready to make the
sacrifice, so it seems to me this is very reasonable to do.”

And, loved ones, it’s always that; it’s the natural strength, it’s the human ingenuity, it’s the
strength of the flesh, it’s the knowledge of good and evil, it’s using our own ideas of how we can
bring this about. And it’s no way to fulfill God’s will in your life. No way can you fulfill God’s
will by your own ingenuity and your own strength. You need to wait upon him and wait for his
promise.

Oh, there’s a great verse, I don’t know how many of the English poets you know — they are dear to
me because they have such truth in them — but John Milton is a very famous one, and he has a sonnet
on his blindness — he went blind, actually, and wrote his greatest works after he was blind. And
this one begins “When I consider how my light is spent, ere half my days in this dark world and
wide.” And then he goes on and says, “God doth not need either man’s work or his own gifts. Who best
bear his mild yolk, they serve him best. His state is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed, and
post o’er land and ocean without rest; they also serve who only stand and wait.” We all know that
last line, but the early lines are so good; “God doth not need either man’s work or his own gifts.”
God doesn’t need Abraham and Sarah to devise some system with Hagar to bring about the birth of the
noble human being who was going to eventually produce the son of God on earth. God does not need

that. God doth not need either man’s work or his own gifts. “They who best bear his mild yolk, they
serve him best. His state is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed, and post o’re land and ocean
without rest.”

Loved ones, God doesn’t need our silly little efforts to bring about his will. He needs us to trust
him and believe him and not to resort to things that are obviously wrong. And, of course, you can
bet that Abraham knew in his conscience that it was wrong — he knew he had behaved despicably
towards Sarah and handing her over to the Egyptian king. He knew that this was not right, whether
there was a law against fornication or adultery or not, he had the law written in his conscience. He
had that law that was given to that noble primeval religion in the early days in the Garden of Eden
and he knew it was wrong and his conscience pricked him, and yet he went on and did it.

So you see it there in Genesis 16:2, “And Sarai said to Abram, ‘Behold now, the Lord has prevented
from bearing children; go in to my maid; and may be I shall obtain children by her.’ And Abram
hearkened to the voice of Sarai. So, after Abraham had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai,
Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her maid, and gave her to Abram, her husband as a wife. And
he went in to Hagar and she conceived.” It’s, of course, the same with every soulish act; everything
that comes by our own strength and our own resourcefulness and our own ingenuity and our own strong
right arm and our own arm of the flesh — it always brings disruption and chaos; it never brings
peace and rest. Every time you get into what God wants you to do and you try to bring it about
yourself instead of waiting upon him in faith and doing what he tells you to do, disruption and
chaos and strife results in it. Of course you see it there, “And he went in to Hagar, and she
conceived; and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. And
Sarai said to Abram, ‘May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my maid to your embrace, and when
she saw she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!
But Abram said to Sarai, ‘Behold, the maid is in your power; do to her as you please.’ Then Sarai
dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her.” So Abraham was off track again; trying to bring
about God’s will, but not by faith in God’s power.

I think it’s very important in the whole realms of your own finances and your marriage, with your
marriage plans, or your marriage hopes, or your present marriage situation, or in the realm of your
jobs, or your profession or your career, or your education, or in the realm of your family, or in
the realm of evangelism in the neighborhood or on campus; it’s very important that we wait long
enough to get God’s mind on those things and that we go by his power and his strength. His power
will achieve in a moment what all our clever resourcefulness will only mess up and confuse. So it is
vital, loved ones — God’s will by God’s power, not God’s will by your power: God’s will by God’s
power. That’s his plan.

Now God was gracious, of course, and he is gracious to us; “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of
the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive
together with Christ (by grace we have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with
him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” “even when we were dead through our trespasses” “that
in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in
Christ Jesus.” [Ephesians 2:5-7] So God did all that. And in Psalm 103, he says, “He does not deal
with us according to our sins, or reward us according to our iniquities.” So he graciously keeps on
keeping on, saying, “I’m trustworthy, I’m trustworthy, I’m trustworthy. You haven’t messed it up
finally; I can still be trusted. Trust me, trust me.” And he says that right up to the edge of the
grave for each one of us, you see. That’s why no man should ever doubt that he has forgiven his
sins; because the Father is saying that, whispering that to him right up to the edge of the grave.

Once you are into the grave, then that’s it; then comes death and then comes the judgment. But right
up to that moment, whatever you do, whatever things you mess up, however you miss God’s way, he is
still coming towards you saying, “Trust me, trust me.” So the Father was still doing that; he kept
on working; he took this disaster that had taken place and he started to work it into the council of
his will, and that’s what he does with you. He’s so gracious; I don’t know how many of you think you
have messed it up, but God immediately is working it into the council of his will. He’s immediately
trying to work it into his plan for your life and he’s coming at you again; “Now trust me, trust me.
Because it’s the trusting that is precious. It’s not actually the flawless life that is precious.
It’s not actually the life that goes perfectly so that it’s precious, it’s the heart. God can get a
heart in you that wholly, fully trusts him so that at the end of this life, you go straight into his
arms. That’s his purpose achieved in your life, so that’s what he always did.

He always starts with the afflicted, the poor little ones. That’s the way he showed himself, you
remember, not to Mary, his mother, but he showed himself to Mary Magdalene after the resurrection.
So it is here that the angel of the Lord came to the poor little afflicted one whom they despised;
Hagar, who had been turned out. Verse 7, “The angel of Lord found her by a spring of water in the
wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. And he said, ‘Hagar, maid of Sarai, where have you come
from and where are you going?’ She said, ‘I am fleeing from my mistress, Sarai.’ The angel of the
Lord said to her, ‘Return to your mistress and submit to her.’”

That’s always right, you see; God is always saying that, “No, you submit. It doesn’t matter what the
other person does wrong, you do your submission, that’s your trust in me. Then verse 10, “The angel
of the Lord also said to her, ‘I will so greatly multiply your descendants that they cannot be
numbered for multitude.’ And the angel of the Lord said to her, ‘Behold, you are with child, and you
shall bear a son; you shall call his name Ishmael; because the Lord has given heed to your
affliction.’” And then of course God had to work it into the council of his will, so he did say
this; “He shall be a wild ass of a man, his hand against every man and every man’s hand against him;
and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.’” And you will see later in history how God used
that to highlight what he had done among the Israelites themselves for Jesus. “So she called the
name of the Lord who spoke to her, ‘Thou art a God of seeing’; for she said, ‘Have I really seen God
and remained alive after seeing him?’ Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; it lies between
Kadesh and Bered.”

It’s interesting; if you look in verse 10, “The angel of the Lord also said to her, ‘I will so
greatly multiply your descendants that they cannot be numbered for multitude.’” And that’s of course
the very word that God had used; “I will do that; I will multiply your descendants, Abram.” And then
you see in verse 13, “So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, ‘Thou art a God of
seeing’; for she said, ‘Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?’” Well, no, she
hasn’t; I mean, that’s impossible — anybody that looked on God would die, you remember and that is
the fact of life. So who had she seen; because she said, “Have I really seen God (with a capital
‘G’) and remained alive after seeing him?” Of course, there’s only one she could have seen. You can
see that in John 1:18, it’s that dear person himself, “No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who
is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” That’s who the angel of the Lord was. That’s
the only thing that makes sense of all that passage there; it was Jesus who came to her like he came
to Mary Magdalene on resurrection day, and as he comes to you, when you are afflicted. He comes to
you and speaks to you himself. Then in verse 15, “And Hagar bore Abram a son; and Abram called the
name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to
Abram.”

In your own life, trust the Father; you don’t need to use your own resources to help God out. Trust
what God has told you and wait upon him and wait for it. Do what he tells you and don’t try to help
him. Often he is saying, “Don’t help me — just trust me; I do not need your help. I can bring these
things about by my own power, but I do need you to do what I tell you to do. I need you to live in
deep trust and peace of heart with me in every situation that you come into this coming week, and
you will have many of them. You will have different situations this week at work and at home and at
school and God is looking to see a heart of peace. That’s what gives him joy. I pray that you will
give him that joy because he is a dear Father, he owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and he has no
intent of letting you down.

Let us pray.

Dear Father, you really know that deep down in our hearts, we have seen these dear men like Abraham
over years and centuries, constantly finding that you were truthful and that you kept your promises.
Father, we follow this man, Abram, he is now eighty-six years of age and you still are lovingly
working everything into the plan that you have for his life. And Father, we know what came about, so
Lord; we know that you knew that this was going to happen all the time. And then, Father, we realize
that you can read the book of our lives and you can see that you have already brought it all about.
That’s what Jesus meant when he said it’s finished; everything is done that needs to be done in our
lives. We have no need to live in fear of the future or apprehension of next week or worry about our
marriage or be in trouble about our insurance policies.

Father, you are our Father. You will direct us faithfully what to do and we can depend upon you for
guidance and for power to fulfill your guidance. Lord, we thank you for that.

Now may the grace of our Lord Jesus, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with
us now and throughout the coming week. Amen.