6/5/22 - God’s Grace and Our Mistakes - Genesis 20 - Pastor Jason Fritz

Once again we find our man Abraham sliding into his old ways. Familiar sins die hardest. We’ve said several times throughout our study that the Bible portrays its heroes as real people. They have moments of great success and moments of great failure. Makes them relatable. Shows us that in spite of our failures God doesn’t abandon us and his love is not conditioned on our performance. It also reminds us that faith is a journey from immaturity to maturity as we grow in our understanding of who God is. There’s an incredibly honest statement made by the apostle Paul in Romans 7:15, "For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”  This is the man who encountered the resurrected Jesus, planted many churches, faced countless dangers, and gave us much of the New Testament. Yet he has an inner struggle between the desires of his flesh and the desires of God working in him. When we sin, our sinful nature crawls back into the driver's seat and steers us away from God. We know what this is like. We have new life in Christ and we want to serve God well and know him more. We want to spend time in the Word and attend church every Sunday morning. We also have an old nature that dies hard and wants to sleep in. It’s a war between the flesh and the Spirit. This war will never come to an end until we die and enter heaven.  So what is the answer? Where do we find help? Paul spends a great deal of time in Romans talking about God’s grace. Simply explained, grace is God's unmerited favor towards you and me. In spite of all the wrongs we do, God does not give up on us. Therefore, only God’s grace can transform and redeem a stubborn, rebellious heart, and only Jesus can conquer sin in one’s life. This is why Paul concludes the chapter by writing this in Romans 7:25,  “Who will set me free from the body of this death?” The answer: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” The good news is that we will no longer see Abraham faltering like this again. He presses on to maturity. He is learning he can trust God in all things. Finally, his fear of God is stronger than his fear of man and this brings him to new heights in his faith.