Week 2 | Flawed | Abraham and Sarah
SUMMARY
Walking by faith means being patient for God to fulfill his promises. Often times we want to take things into our own hands because we want control and we want things done on our own timeline. So we just “help God out a little bit”. The results are often disastrous.
We see this work out in the life of Abraham and Sarah. They are commended by God as being righteous because of their faith. Yet they were deeply flawed as people.
God had promised Abraham that he would have many offspring. And God even confirmed it through a pretty intense covenant in Genesis 15. Yet Sarah wouldn’t wait on the promises of God. She took things into her own hands by giving her servant Hagar to Abraham has a wife so that he could have an heir. This caused pain and heartache.
God ultimately renewed his promise to Abram and gave him a new identity – now calling him Abraham and Sarai became Sarah. In this story we learn to not cut corners. And that ultimately, when we fail, God is still faithful.
TALK IT OUT
•What are some ways you see people “helping God out a little bit” in areas of life? From the benign to the significant?
•Read Genesis 15: 1-6. What tensions do you think Abraham was experiencing? Imagine you were in their shoes- how would you have processed it?
•Read Genesis 16:1-15.
•In the previous chapter, God had twice promised Abraham that he’d become a mighty nation. What was their immediate response in Chapter 16?
•As humans, why do you think we are so quick to forget the promises of God?
•When Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham to conceive, she was just following the customs of the day. How can we know whether something is okay or not for a Christian? Should, “everyone else does it” be our standard of decision making? Why or why not? What are some common and acceptable practices of the world that should be avoided by believers?
•How was Abraham complicit in this account?
•Read Genesis 17:1-7. What was God’s response to the mess they had gotten themselves into?
•God often seems slow to keep his promises while we are waiting. Weak faith grows impatient and tries to make something happen, while strong faith waits. How can you develop your faith, making it truly strong? Consider James 1:2-14.
•Share an area in your life where you may be tempted to “help God out” or cut corners to see a result come to fruition.