Return: When Failure Leads Us Back Home
July 9, 2023
Preached by David McHale
Scripture Reading
Genesis 13:1-4
1 So Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the Negeb. 2 Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold. 3 And he journeyed on from the Negeb as far as Bethel to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, 4 to the place where he had made an altar at the first. And there Abram called upon the name of the Lord.
In 2021, the global self-help industry was valued at more than 40 billion dollars.[1] Tony Robbins is an age-old self-help guru. A VIP ticket to his event in 2 weeks in Birmingham, entitled “Unleash the Power Within”, is valued at $2,300. We have a lot of voices in our culture telling us what we should do to succeed. But we have few voices telling us what we should do when we fail – not when we fail to reach our full potential or arrive at our self-made goals, but when we fail to love others well – and ultimately, when we fail to love and submit to the good God who made us and adopted us into his family in Jesus Christ.
What do you do when you sin? If we are honest, we have a natural inclination to run away from God when we fail him. We often want to escape the consequences of sinning against our spouses, children, friends. We justify ourselves – whether internally or externally. When we see the ugliness of our hearts, we can wonder, if I face the music of my sin and return to the Lord, will I be welcomed– or cast out like I deserve? Is there a way back to God?
In Jesus Christ, there is always a way back to God – no matter the severity of our sin. It is what the Bible calls repentance. What does this way back look like? Abram, with his whole family, takes this trip in Genesis 13:1-4.
If you would like to draw a picture while we spend time in Genesis 13, draw a picture of your family moving across the country…without cars, trucks, trains, or planes. Consider all of the different things you would need to carry.
In Genesis 13:1-4, we see what this journey of repentance looks like – what Abram does and what we are called to do. On our journey back to God, we (1) grieve the wrong, (2) bear the baggage, (3) and call upon the mercy of God.
We Grieve the Wrong
In Genesis 13, we pick up the story of Abram, the father of God’s people. Abram had encountered God and received his grace. God had been good to him and vowed to be good to him in the future. He promised to bless the whole world through his family. He promised to protect him from harm. Then a famine hits in Canaan. Doubt creeps in and he runs away to Egypt with his family. Last week, we witnessed Abram’s unbelief, cowardice, and wrong.
We saw that Abram’s failure was not just a slip up or a momentary lapse in judgment. It was a royal failure. He essentially gave his wife up to slavery. He traded her life for his. He maintained his safety, while she married another man and slept in his house.
Imagine a Christian leader who moved to Harrisburg – and he sent his wife to live in the Governor’s mansion as his wife for some indefinite amount of time while he lived here in Progress he would be safe. That would be appalling, ludicrous.
Abram gave Sarai up to the wolves. She wasn’t going to be loved but used – either as a pretty face or something worse. How long was the arrangement going to last? Would Pharaoh really part with one of his wives?
Abram almost lost his marriage entirely, which was going to be the union through which God would bring Abram offspring. Abram jeopardized the covenant. He took the future of God’s people into his own hands. It was a slap in God’s face. But before we look down on Abram, let’s consider: Have we ever spurned God’s grace in our lives? In our life choices, in our relationships, in our inner thoughts toward those around us?
Eventually, God had enough of Abram’s sin and put an end to it.
12:17 But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife. 18 So Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? 19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife; take her, and go.” 20 And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had.
Abram was kicked to the curb – all because of his own foolishness. Abram didn’t even confess but was caught. It wasn’t just Pharaoh who found him out, it was God. God exposed him. God plucked him out of his deceit and sent him out in the desert – from luxury to homelessness. He did so for a reason. God was committed to Abram and his good promises. Abram was standing in the way. So, through Pharaoh, God goaded Abram. He disciplined Abram in love. God pained Abram that he might wake up, grieve his wrong, and return the One who loved him.
The road of repentance starts there – grieving our wrong. But not all grief is the same. In Paul’s second letter to the church in Corinth, he says that there are two kinds of sorrow that we can experience as we look at our sin and failure. In 2 Corinthians 7:10, Paul says,
10 …godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.
We can grieve as the world does, where we grieve the consequences of our sin, the inconvenience our sin causes, the bad feelings we feel, the shame of being caught, the lost opportunities, our failed potential. Or we can actually face our sin for what it is – a rejection of God’s perfect standard of love. We can reckon with and grieve the fact that, like Abram, we have turned our back on One who has been so good to us.
What do you do when you face your own sin and failure? When you face your failure to love your spouse, your child, your neighbor – when you face your lust and anger – do you deny it, cover it up, run from it? Godly grief looks our sin in the face with a confidence that the end of the road of repentance is a redemption that leads to, as Paul puts it, life without regret.
We get a window into the kind of grief that Abram had when we look at the whole of Genesis 13:1-4. In verse 1, we read,
13:1 So Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the Negeb (‘the dry’).
Whether Abram waffled between worldly and godly grief, we know that his grief led to a journey out of Egypt, into the desert, and ultimately, back home. But that journey wouldn’t be easy, and he had a lot to carry.
We Bear the Baggage
Over the past 3 years, we have moved four times. I don’t know the last time you moved homes, but moving can be rough. You have a couple months prior to moving that is occupied with just thinking about moving. Then a few weeks before you might start to pack – and as moving day approaches you quickly realize how much more stuff you need to pack. You end up giving up and sticking random things in random places. You may move in a day or two, but then you have to unpack – which somehow ends up taking months. Nevertheless, the whole process of moving over the past few years has invited me to take stock of what we have – literally, all that we possess. It reminds us of the people and relationships in our lives, the places we’ve been, the things we’ve done. Moving has invited us to not just reflect on what we have, but on what we will do with it.
Genesis 13:1 is moving day for Abram. There wasn’t any lead time, no perusing of Zillow, no investigating school districts, or waiting until interest rates go down. Even more, he has a journey through the desert that would have most likely taken 3-4 weeks. No moving trucks going 60 down the interstate, but donkeys, sheep and cows strutting at a screaming 1 mph – on a good day.
He’s got a long way to go with a whole lot of baggage to bear – some of it pleasant and some of it painful. Abram took “his wife, all that he had, and Lot with him.” He leaves Egypt with a family that has had to pay for his cowardice, deceit and compromise. He has a vulnerable and broken marriage. Was Sarai bitter and angry at Abram or so broken by the ordeal, that she couldn’t look him in the eye. We can imagine he has a complicated relationship with his nephew, Lot, evidenced by their coming conflict. He also has to walk with the guilt and shame of his folly.
I remember sinning against a long-time friend and roommate of mine. He was wounded by my wrong. I had a decision to make after there was the initial exposure of my sin. Do I stick around? Do I stick it out – endure the tension and his justified frustration and hurt? Do I practice steadfast love – not to atone for my sin, but to pursue reconciliation?
Sometimes we can hardly bear the baggage we carry from our sin. Sometimes we bear baggage from another person’s sin – whether abuse done to us or foolish decisions by a family member that leave us impoverished in some way. Maybe you are enduring consequences for sins you have done in the distant past, this past month, or yesterday. We don’t repent because of sin’s consequences, we do have to bear them, but we do so trusting that God bears them with us and can make all things new.
Abram bore the painful baggage. Every step in the desert was a choice to bear the painful consequences of his actions in love for his wife, his family, and his God.
But the baggage Abram carried wasn’t just painful. In chapter 12, we read that Abram “he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and (of course, the latest tech) camels” (v. 16). In verse 2 of chapter 13, it says,
2 Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold.
The word used for “very” here in verse 2 is the same word that is used to describe the severity of the famine that prompted Abram and Sarai to go down to Egypt in the first place. Abram was loaded. But his wealth was tainted. He had essentially plundered Pharaoh through his deceit. But not only does Pharaoh spare Abram’s life, Pharaoh doesn’t take back Abram’s wealth.
We might look at Abram’s wealth and think – well, that’s unfair. Maybe there are wealthy people of whom you think the same thing.
We often look at wealth, or blessing, purely through a moral lens. If God blesses someone, then they must be doing what they should be doing. And the inverse is also true. If someone is suffering with little, then they must have done something wrong and God must be angry. This thinking the outworking of the prosperity gospel which says, “If I obey, then God will make me prosper.” This scene in Abram’s story comes against the false gospel of prosperity – which is actually no gospel at all.
Here Abram is given wealth despite his sin. Even more, as he journeys through the desert his wealth is just as much a reminder of his folly as it is of God’s favor. Abram walks away with his life, not because of his holiness, but because of the grace of God. The blessing and protection Abram receives really has nothing to do with his obedience or lack thereof but is grounded in God’s goodness and commitment to his promises.
On the road of repentance, we are forced to bear the consequences of our actions, the good, the bad, the ugly. As we bear the reality of our sin’s effects and see the scandal of God’s faithfulness to us despite our sin, we are strengthened to persevere on the road of repentance. We are strengthened to run toward the Lord, rather than away from him. This is what Abram did.
3 And he journeyed on from the Negeb as far as Bethel to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, 4 to the place where he had made an altar at the first. And there Abram called upon the name of the Lord.
We Call Upon the Mercy of God
Abram returns to the place where he had consecrated himself, his family, and all he had to the Lord. He returns to the very altar he had made before he fled to Egypt. In many ways, we see Abram play out what Jesus, in the book of Revelation, calls the church in Ephesus to do:
4 But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. 5 Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the works you did at first” (Revelation 2:4-5).
Abram returned to his first love. We may say he returned home. What does he do? He calls upon the name of the Lord. When I call my wife’s name from another room in our home because I need help, I’m calling for her, her attention, her presence. To call on the name of God is to call upon God, to ask for his attention and help, to invoke his steadfast love, his mercy, his forgiveness. Abram may well have prayed like David in Psalm 51:1-2:
1 Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin!
Maybe you need to pray these words with David this morning.
But by calling upon the name of the Lord, Abram was not just asking God for forgiveness. He was consecrating himself, his wealth, and his future to the Lord, saying, “All I have is yours.” In this way, he honors God with the baggage he brought to Bethel. The livestock that carried his gold and silver in verse 2 become a sacrifice on the altar in verse 4. Abram is submitting all that he is and all that he has to the Lord. He is resubmitting to the covenant that God had made with him.
As we look at the rest of Abram’s story, we know that God heard Abram’s call, welcomed his sacrifice, pardoned him, and very soon reaffirmed his promises to him.
We too have assurance that God will listen to us when we cry out for mercy. Jesus endured the plague of God’s wrath on our behalf. He was kicked to the curb, evicted, thrown out into the desert. He bore the baggage of our sin. He didn’t just surrender his wealth to God, but he climbed up on the altar and gave himself in love.
He can forgive your darkest sin, heal your deepest wound, and restore your wasted years. As you come to him, recognizing your need, he will bear you up as you carry the consequences of your sin and the sin of others. More than that, Jesus can transform the ugliness of your sin, the shame you can’t seem to shake, into a beautiful testimony of God’s grace in your life.
Repentance isn’t just about grief over our sin and enjoying God’s forgiveness. It is surrendering all we have to the Lord, our wealth, our wounds, and our failure, knowing that in his kindness, he will use it for his good purposes.
Abram did return home when he returned to Bethel. But Bethel and the altar there were less of a home and more like a pitstop, soon to be a memory, foreshadowing what was to come – a better home, a better land. Undoubtedly, He bore the grief of his past in Egypt and the consequences of his sin, but he bore them in a new way – with hope and humility, knowing that God can repurpose any past.
There isn’t just a way back from failure, there is a way forward. Your failure doesn’t have to remain a black spot on your story but can be transformed into a testimony of God’s redemptive story he is writing in your life – and through you in the lives of others. Abram’s story shows that God delights to use men and women with rocky pasts, fraught with sin and failure, turning our shame into an agent of grace.
We don’t walk alone on the roads of repentance that we walk. But we walk with one another in love, bearing one another’s burdens, anxieties, and scars on the way to the city where there will be no more tears, no more shame. On that road together, we join with the psalmist in Psalm 116,
116:1 I love the Lord, because he has heard
my voice and my pleas for mercy.
2 Because he inclined his ear to me,
therefore I will call on him as long as I live.
5 Gracious is the Lord, and righteous;
our God is merciful.
6 The Lord preserves the simple;
when I was brought low, he saved me.
7 Return, O my soul, to your rest;
for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.
12 What shall I render to the Lord
for all his benefits to me?
13 I will lift up the cup of salvation
and call on the name of the Lord,
[1] Grand View Research, Market Analysis Report. Personal Development Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Instrument (Books, e-Platforms, Personal Coaching/Training), By Focus Area, By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2022 – 2030.
Sermon Discussion Questions
How do you tend to respond when you fail at something?
What is the difference between worldly grief and godly grief? Why is it hard to grieve rightly over our sin?
What sort of consequences do we tend to carry from our sin?
How does God’s forgiveness change your life? How has God used your past failures for good?
