This Is Only A Test – Week 2 (4-14-24)

This is Only A Test
Do You Trust Me?
April 14, 2024

Have you ever failed a test?

Abraham’s 4 Tests:
Will Abram pass the test that Adam & Eve failed?

Test 1:  Will you trust God enough to follow his voice?
Genesis 12:1-5
The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.
² “I will make you into a great nation,
    and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
    and you will be a blessing.
³ I will bless those who bless you,
    and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
    will be blessed through you.”
⁴ So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. ⁵ He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.

Test 2:  Will you trust that God will take care of you wherever you are?
Genesis 12:6-7
Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. ⁷ The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

Genesis 12:10
Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe.

Famine = God doesn’t want me here…

God will take you to places you have not chosen to go in order to produce in you what you are incapable of producing on your own.

Genesis 12:11-20
As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what a beautiful woman you are. ¹² When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. ¹³ Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.”
¹⁴ When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarai was a very beautiful woman. ¹⁵ And when Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. ¹⁶ He treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels. ¹⁷ But the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram’s wife Sarai. ¹⁸ So Pharaoh summoned Abram. “What have you done to me?” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? ¹⁹ Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!” ²⁰ Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had.

Gen. 3 & Gen. 12 —> Shared Language

• • • See it/she was beautiful
    • Take
    • Life/Die
    • What have you done

Problem: Life & faith are not pass or fail tests.

Test 3:  Will you trust God will do what he has promised?
Genesis 16:1-5

Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; ² so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.”

Abram agreed to what Sarai said. ³ So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. ⁴ He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.

When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. ⁵ Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me.”

Ultimately the story is about trust or a lack of trust in God’s plan, purpose & timing.

Test 4:  Do you trust God will always provide exactly what you need when you need it?

Genesis 22:1-7
Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied.
² Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.” ³ Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. ⁴ On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. ⁵ He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” ⁶ Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, ⁷ Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?” “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied. “The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

Tests are not pass or fail, as much as measurements of faith.