Hope Alive: Applying God's Word to Your Daily Life

Genesis 21:22-34 Bible Study | Episode #286

November 14, 2022 Chad Harrison Episode 286
Hope Alive: Applying God's Word to Your Daily Life
Genesis 21:22-34 Bible Study | Episode #286
Show Notes Transcript

November 14, 2022

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

Genesis 21:22-34  Bible Study | Episode #286

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to Hope Alive, Applying God's Word to your daily life.

Hi, this is Chad Harrison and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up his word to.

And allow you to see him and to know him, and to know his will, that you might glorify him, and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today in Jesus' name. Good morning. Welcome to Lake Community Church's morning bible study. I'm coming to you live from the mountains of North Carolina.

Kathleen and I slipped off yesterday to come up here for a few days. We'll be back for Sunday we'll back Saturday, be back for church Sunday celebrating her 50th birthday Tomorrow we're gonna say it's the fifth for fun, but it'll be 50th. It's her 50th birthday. And we're excited about that.

Excited to be up here. We'll come up here, do a little hiking, little sight seeing as far as the waterfalls and mountains. And then we're gonna do a little shopping and and did that a little yesterday on the way up. And, We'll be finishing out and we'll be we'll be coming back Saturday.

I wanted to do Bible study this morning cuz I wanted to finish chapter 21. And Kathleen is resting why not get up and do a little Bible study? It's good to spend a little time in God's words. Good to have that fellowship. And and especially spend some time studying what God has to say.

It's we're going back to old and that's really why I wanted to do this is because I like aic. There's a couple of there's a couple of kings in the Bible that if you read commentaries about 'em they're. Talked about as being evil and being, being part of the enemy's work and just all manner evil is said about them A lot of times if you if you do some perusing online about them the other one that I really love, it's never caner.

You have Avi and Neer and you say why do you love these kings? I love them because they, first of all, they hear from. And second of all, God's dealings with them. E even though at times he deals with them somewhat harshly, is never judgemental. It's always a reclamation. It's my favorite movie at Christmas time is a Christmas Carol.

And the reason it is because the movie is not. Judging e Ezer scr as a miser, as a thief, as a liar. It's not about that. It's about the reclamation of Ebeneezer scr. It's about God bringing him these ghost of Christmas, past, present, future coming to change his life, come into alter.

How he's doing things coming to change, what's going on. And a reclamation is a good thing bringing somebody to a different place. And by the way, that's a picture of a New Testament believer. It's not a picture of a evil person. It's not, God doesn't God. Waste his time trying to change the antichrist heart in mind.

He just destroyed me. He didn't waste any time trying to fix Sodom, even in this book or fix the King of Sodom in this book. He just sent the angels to get To get those who are people of faith out and then he destroyed the whole valley. And so we know that God can be ju, can judge evil straight up but with a bi, with ne there's a few other in scriptures as you go along, he doesn't do that.

What does he do? He speaks to 'em. He actually sends them dreams or visions and then sends them somebody to interpret those dreams and visions, and then he instructs them what he wants them to do and when they don't do it, he punishes them. But the punishment's not death. The punishment's not permanent.

The punishments for them to have their life changed and for them to grow up. So you say what, who, what are they a picture of? They're a picture of a bachelor Christian, if you wanna know the truth, that's what they're a picture of. Number one, they're a king. If you're a king, that's a picture of royalty.

That's a picture of, that's a picture of being a part of the royal family, that's picture being a part of the kingdom of God. Number two, they don't know how to act. They don't know what to do. They don't know how to do. And. If you think at, if you think that you're not you know how to do right all the time.

You don't. And I don't. And we don't. And nobody does. The truth is we don't. And and God speaks to them in a way they hear him. In dreams, a lot of times more baby Christians, God speaks to us than other people, and he speaks to us. He speaks to us through maybe listening to the radio and a sermon or watching something on TV about God or that he speaks to us in a lot of ways that is not actually.

When you've walked with God a while, he'll speak to your heart just directly. You'll sense the presence of God and then you'll sense things and you'll see things that you've never seen before. That happened the other night. We had an elders meeting just we hadn't had one in a while.

And we just wanna talk about what God's doing in our church and preparing and getting ready for. And in that meeting, God just showed me something just as clear as day that he had already been working on. He just hadn't. And he'd been working on my heart with it. He'd been giving me given me some vision about that.

And then he showed me see, he look over here, Chad. I, I've already set this up, It's already a done deal. All you gotta do is figure out how to walk in it. And so that's speaking to my heart. That's just, God just speaking to me. He's just showing me things. He's just talking to me.

He's telling me what's going on. And by the way, God's speaking to you all the time. God's speaking through his creation, God's speaking through you. He's speaking through his word. He's speaking by the Holy Spirit. He. Throwing you stuff all the time, and the Holy Spirit is sent to be our prayer lead, our counselor.

And so he's always at work and and he's always revealing things to us. The question is, are we listening? And have we learned how to listen to God? Have we learned his voice? Have we learned to hear what he has to say? A lot of times there are things that we do in life as far as Football for me it's been football and military and things like that.

The reason drill sergeants yell at you and yell and bark commands is when you're on the battlefield, you need to be able to hear your command and officer. You need to be in tune with that. And immediately when the order's given, you need to be able to act so that everyone is acting in concert with each other on the battlefield.

It's not good to. Quarterback on a football team who who doesn't have a voice, a strong voice, a stern voice is not a leader. Why? Because the team is acting in concert with him. And if he's not leading, it's hard to do that. I knew that from in high school. I was the captain of the defense.

I I called the defensive place and it was important to be loud. It was important to be direct. It's important to be quick. Why? Because. It was necessary that they knew my voice and when I spoke that they moved quickly to do it so that we would be ready for, we would be ready for the play as it came down.

You've gotta be able to listen and you gotta be able to listen to God's voice. And here's how you do it. You listen to God's voice, He speaks to you. You act upon it, you do it. Then your ears tune into it. Now, when God speaks to you and you don't, Upon it when God speaks to you and you don't listen to his voice well your heart and your mind become callous to him and you become less able to hear him.

And then he usually has to take you through something like he does with or neer because you're a believer. And quite clearly both of these men are believers. They believe in God. You're gonna see that and you're a believer, but you're not listening to. And God's gotta, god's gotta deal with you pretty abruptly because you're doing things that shouldn't be done.

Avik was just going and getting women and taking them as his wife and in order to have, in order to in order to cement relationships with their family rather than coming and asking and working through the process of actually taking a wife. He just, cuz he's king, he just can win. Got one. And that's not the way to do business.

That's not the way to do. So he came and he took he took Sarah because Abraham always presented to her as his sister, and she was actually his half sister. And he says and the Bilac took her. And then God came in a dream to me and said, I'm gonna kill you cause of it. And and the goes don't want that to happen.

And what should I. And they, he says, Go to Abraham and fix it and get it right and pray. He'll pray for you and you'll be okay. And isn't that what new believers do? God does something bad happen? I go, Oh. And they come. Why? And then all of a sudden they hear from God and God gives them direction as to how to get their life right.

 If you're saying, if you're saying to me, Do I like those people? Both of the people are pastor. That's life. That's God's people. Yeah. I need to like God's people. If I don't like God's people, I can't love God's people. And I'm one of 'em too. I do that myself.

If I can't like myself, who can I like? I'm just glad Al liked me. So anyway, it said, and it came to pass. At the time that a Bilac and Paco noticed his, his the commander of his army spoke with Abraham saying, Notice, remember when he did all that mess? And he messed it all up? He told him, Abraham, you can graze all the land that's in my territory.

You can have it all, You can graze it all. That was gonna cause a problem, God, to give up, to give Abraham grazing rights all over his land. He told him to set it right with Abraham, and he did by giving Abraham. Gifts and by sending Sarah back and by apologizing, by fixing it. We go, Oh, we always go too far.

Once we hear from God, we, we don't we wanna do more than what God says, or we don't wanna do exactly what God says. And in that the way Christians are all the time we just don't, we, it's just who we are. He. Now there. Therefore, swear to me by God that you will not deal fault suited me with my offspring and with my posterity.

That, but that according to your kindness that I have done to you, you will do to me and to the land in which you have dwell. What he's saying is, I want you to swear to me that we're gonna be friends that we're gonna get along. And what he's doing is he's making a covenant with Abraham. He wants a relationship with Abraham.

He sees Abraham as someone who is a spiritual leader as a strong, he sees Abraham as someone who walks with God, and he's wanting to get that fixed. He's wanting to, he's wanting to figure that out and get that fixed. And he's. He's trying to build a relationship with someone who who can he's afraid that Mike could take could become the king of his area or, and also he just wants a relationship with Abraham and that's why he brings his commander so that it's all on the.

And let me tell you something that's actually a picture of a, a new Christian too. Don't they come and wanna build a relationship with spiritual leaders? They do. And. And what do they wanna do? They wanna come under them. They wanna be, they want, they wanna have a relationship. They want to grow together.

They want everything to work out. I, how many times do people come to me like that? Pastor, I, I just wanna talk to you about before I become part of the church. And, always, I always, that always give me. A little bit of a little bit of trepidation because it makes me wonder, are you trying to work things out with me?

Are you trying to work things out with God? And, sometimes that's important. The truth is the only thing you do to be a part of our church is show up. If you show up and listen to God, you're in the church. I just pastor the sheep that show up to the field that I'm in and they're my sheep.

They're my sheep. And I'm the under shepherd and I'm not, I'm not perfect at it in any way but those are the ones God's given me. And I try to teach and guide and lead and give some vision to those. Pastor Terry has joined me, and we're out there doing that. And that's what we do. And I don't really have any covenants to be made, that's a lot of times people wanna make sure that, the preacher's okay with them.

I'm okay with you if you show up. I'm just okay with you. I don't really, I, I don't really need, I don't have any rules other than We show up. I want you to seek after God and when he tells you to do something, I want you to do it. That's pretty much what I want. That's the end of it.

But, people do come and they wanna lay the framework of this relationship out. And here's the framework of the relationship. You were lost in your sins. You were dead in your trespasses. Jesus Christ saw that you were dead in your trespasses. And that he had, he was the only. For you to ever get to God, never have a relationship with him.

And he came and took off his glory and disrobed himself of his majesty. He came as man, he died on the cross for your sins. And he came familiar with your sufferings and he rose again and. And the new life that he that he has in, in, in the resurrection he's given to you. And he has asked you to come and walk with him just like you did every disciple.

Come follow me. And that's the pretext of the relationship. And you follow him with everybody else. And there's some in the crowd who are leaders. There's some in the crowd who are encouragers, and there's some in the crowd who are doers that get there. The people would get things done and they're some in the crowd.

Who are. Features, and there's some in the crowd who who have the gift of compassion. And there's some in the crowd who have a multitude of gifts, have gifts of knowledge and gifts of miracles and all that kind of stuff. And we all use our gifts chasing after.

Jesus. That's what we do. We use our gift chasing after Jesus and building his kingdom. But, Billick wants to make a deal, and so he does. And Abraham said, I will swear. Why? Because Abraham says, why not? Why wouldn't I wanna have a relationship with you? I'm not mad at you, and you're not mad at me.

And we've been living by side. And I love you and you love me. Quite evident. You do cause you wanna build a relationship. But Abraham said, but I do have this problem with, because of the wells of water, which a Bilac servants had seized, what he's seen is we dug all these wells out there, out here in this country so that we can have water for our sheep.

And y'all have seized our wells. And a Mick said, I do not know who has done this thing. You did not tell me, nor had I heard of it until today. So Abraham took the sheep in oxen and gave them to Mick. Mick says, I didn't know that was going on. I get it fixed. And so Abraham took the sheep in oxen and gave them to a lik and is two.

And and the two of them made a covenant notice. Now Abraham's giving him a gift and it's a gift rather than him just having the right to grace cattle. They're going to be, they're going to be, they're gonna be in a covenant relationship with each other. They're not just out there working together.

They're out there working together for a purpose. And so he says, And Abraham set seven u lambs of the flock by themselves. And notice bik says what is the meaning of this seven rumor set is the number of completion. That means this relationship is complete. The female lamb or a picture of the church really, if you wanna know the truth they're a picture of the church.

And What he's saying is we're gonna have a more intimate relationship. You've got people in the world and how are we supposed to deal with people in the world? Love your neighbor as yourself. Then you've got people that are believers and how are we supposed to love believers?

Self sacrificially. But then you've got believers that you are walking with in life. And you're doing life with them. And how are we supposed to treat them? We're supposed to take care of each other. We're supposed to, we're supposed to meet each other's needs in our times. Now you say we're not supposed to meet other believers' needs.

Yeah. But you most of the time don't know those needs. You're not close enough them, you're not intimate enough with them for them to really ever let you in to know those things. But with people in in, in a local congregation There's an intimacy there, there's a relationship there, and there's a need to encourage, to build up, to strengthen, to to at times like Abraham does in this passage, to rebuke, tell 'em, Look, you're doing this the wrong way.

Why don't you try doing this way? Why don't you try doing it this way? It'll work better for you. And there's, there, there is. There's a responsibility that comes with that, and that's part of this covenant relationship. There's a responsibility of taking care of each other and meeting each other's needs, and then walking with each other and seeing each other through the good times and the hard times.

And that's what Abraham's doing. He's giving them, he's saying, Look, we're not just, we're not just now gonna, This relationship where I'm grazing on your land, and you gave me a gift because you messed up. Our relationship now is going to be an intimate relationship. I'm giving you the seven U land, I'm digging wells in your land.

And that's a picture of of bringing about the Holy Spirit and the teaching of the Holy Spirit. He's, they're. They're actually coming together and they're, his land and Abraham's work are coming together to do something special. And so he says, I'm giving you these Sioux these seven you lambs from my land, that they may be my witness, that I have dug this well.

Therefore, he called this place Bear Sheba because the two of them swore and oath there and Bear Shebas gonna be an important place from now on throughout the. A lot of things, important things are gonna happen. I'll point those things out to you as we go through scripture, but but the main point this morning, cuz we're getting late the main point this morning is that they're, they begin to work together.

They begin to work hand in hand. Abraham is, Abraham knows God and he's got a relationship with God and he's digging wells in a Bex Area of the world that he rules over. Abraham's bringing water. He's bringing the word, he's bringing life to that area, and he wants a bi to say, Yeah.

You've you've dug these wells. Yeah. This came from you. Yeah. We're going to grow and do things together as what back then would've been a covenant relationship today. It's just the body of Christ in a local congregation. And really the truth is, until you have buy in from a lot of people like this, and when I mean buy in, people come in and say, I'm willing to work with you.

I'm willing to go and do together. I'm willing to to let my pride aside and allow. Other people, maybe even to get some credit for things that are going on. I'm willing to, I'm willing to do whatever it takes to see the kingdom advanced in this group of people. And what how that works out.

I don't really care. I just wanna see the kingdom advanced. I wanna see God's word. I wanna be see. Wells, Doug. I wanna see lives change. I wanna see gifts given, I wanna see power moving in our relationship until you have a large group of gi people who are sold out to do that.

And they can trust each other to use their gifts and use their talents unashamedly, un bashed without worrying about without worrying about. What they're getting out of it. Until that happens, you can't really build a strong congregation. By the way, we've got a large group of people who are doing that and got it.

Adding to our numbers each and every day. The number of people who are buying in and saying, I'm willing to use my giftedness and who I am to build the kingdom. And leaders, real true leaders are coming in, leaders on different levels. Leaders who lead in different things, who were able.

Different things. Real, true strength. He's adding to our numbers daily so that we might have a leadership base, a large leadership base of people who can handle the the new believers who who are gonna come in. And the people who were like a bik who don't really.

And need to be discipled, need to be taught, need to be equipped to do the work God has for him. In verse 32, it says, Thus they made a covenant at VE Sheba. So a bi arose with Pi Pico Pisco anyway, you can read his name there. The commander of the Army and they returned to.

Land of the Philistines and Abraham planted a TAs tree in Bear, Sheba, and they're called on the name of the Lord. The everlasting God noticing he's calling on God to show up and show out for them. He's planning a tree, which is a picture of a new. Picture of a new birth. It's it's trees are always pictures of people.

It's gonna be a strong tree. It can also be a picture of a New Testament church, by the way. It's a strong tree. It's a powerful tree. It's gonna be a tree that stands there for generations. And it's going to be an everlasting tree that that shows a covenant. That they've made with each other.

And that's what we need to be in the business of doing is building this strong tree that God has given us to build a tree that can do mystery and do great things in the kingdom of God for generations to come. Not just in, in our time, but in times to come in the future. And it says in Abraham stayed in the land of the Philistines many days.

Notice he dwelled there he dwelled among them and they had each other's back and they took care of each other. And ultimately, the reason I really love this story is cuz I love aic. I love a king who, who's trying to figure out how to do right with God. That's a picture of a new believer who's trying to figure out how to walk with God.

I love this story because it's a covenant relationship between people where they come together and they resolve their issues and. And they plan together to do big things so that God might be glorified. And I love this story. It because it ultimately ends in God doing big things for people and because when God's people come together, there's nothing that can stop.

Its church. The gates of hell shall not prevail against us. We're going to attack those gates, and those gates are gonna fall.

As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus' name.