Genesis 12:10-20 | Smitten by Sarai

If you have a Bible, go and grab it and turn it to the book of Genesis, to chapter 12, verses 10-20. If you don't have a Bible, use the Pew Bible in front of you. If you don't own a Bible and you'd like to have one, feel free to just take that Pew Bible home with you. That'd be our gift to you. We would love for you to be able to have a copy of God's word that you can read for yourself. We'll be in the very first book of the Bible, Genesis 12, looking at verses 10 through 20.

Let me go and read it for us:

There was a famine in the land, so Abram went down to Egypt to stay there for a while because the famine in the land was severe. When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife, Sarai, “Look, I know what a beautiful woman you are. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ They will kill me but let you live. Please say you’re my sister so it will go well for me because of you, and my life will be spared on your account.” When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. Pharaoh’s officials saw her and praised her to Pharaoh, so the woman was taken to Pharaoh’s household. He treated Abram well because of her, and Abram acquired flocks and herds, male and female donkeys, male and female slaves, and camels. But the Lord struck Pharaoh and his household with severe plagues because of Abram’s wife, Sarai. So Pharaoh sent for Abram and said, “What have you done to me? Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She’s my sister,’ so that I took her as my wife? Now, here is your wife. Take her and go!” Then Pharaoh gave his men orders about him, and they sent him away with his wife and all he had. — Genesis 12:10-20 (CSB)

Let's pray. Lord, even now as we listen to your words, it is so easy for our hearts to fail, just like Abram did in this story. So we ask, Lord, that as we hear from this event, that this father in the faith, that you would help us to bolster our spirit, to open our ears, to be soft in heart, to be ready to receive what your word says to us. We can only do this with your help. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

The Temptation to Compromise

What do you do after God speaks to you? Abram had an incredible moment of faith, an encounter with God in our previous section that we saw last week. God literally calls him from his father's land to go. He gives him an amazing promise. He promises him a place, a people, power, that he will be a blessing to all nations. And what we see in this story immediately following is Abram faceplanting on the ground in light of his sin.

We see a disgusting story of Abram essentially being willing to give up his wife as a prostitute to a pharaoh in exchange for worldly pleasures. Now, I don't think any of us are looking to our spouses and making economic decisions for the future. I'm sure all of us have experienced the pressure of the world after receiving astounding promises from God.

You have an amazing conversion experience. It feels like the world is in technicolor for the first time. You're excited and emboldened to go and chase after the Lord and tell others about Jesus. Then week after week goes by and suddenly the color starts to fade. You start to feel the pressures on your own heart. Worldliness begins to creep in.

You go to a church camp or a retreat, you feel like the Lord is encouraging you and bolstering you to follow after him. And you come back and it feels like things in your house haven't changed at all. It seems like you're reading your Bible in the mornings and it's like you're beating your head against a cement wall, nothing's happening. What do you do when you've heard astounding promises from the Lord, yet the world continues to pressure you into giving in?

What we see here is that even our father of faith was anything but a perfect man. By looking at his failure, God wants to teach us this morning to trust God's promises, not the world's power. To trust God's promises, not the world's power. And the story follows really four phases. If you think about God's promise that he makes to Abram, that he would bring him a place, a land, a people, a mighty nation, and power, that through him all the nations of the world would be blessed.

What you see in verses 10 through 20 is an anti-gospel. You are seeing the unraveling of Abram's promises with his own doubts in real time. He exchanges God's promises for the wrong place, with the wrong people, and with the wrong power. The wrong place, the wrong people, and with the wrong power. And then lastly, we'll see God's judgment in response to Abram's disobedience.

The Wrong Place: Egypt

To start with point number one, the wrong place. Look again at verse 10. It says that there was a famine in the land, so Abram went down to Egypt to stay there for a while because the famine in the land was severe. Last week, Abram received an astounding promise that he would receive land, a nation, that he would be a blessing to all nations. And Abram gets up and goes in faith, trusting that the Lord would accomplish his promises.

Except if you read verses 4-10 from last week, those promises haven't really come to fruition yet. Abram is traveling through the land in tents, not exactly the same thing as a house with a white picket fence. Not only that, he is traveling from Haran through Shechem, then down through Bethel, then down through the Negev, which is a desert in the southern part of Israel. So Abram doesn't really have a destination that's set for him.

This whole region here would be considered the land of Canaan, the promised land. He's already there. And rather than having someone greet him with a land deed and crowning him and giving him this great prestigious kingdom, he's just kind of wandering around. He doesn't really have a destination. He's already there. And rather than finding land to settle in, he's just wandering through this wilderness, through this desert of the Negev.

Abram's faithful trek through the land of Canaan has left him in a low, tired desert. Have you ever felt like that, where you're following the Lord, but you have no idea where you're going? Blinders come off. You see the promise of eternal life, see the heavenly city set before you and start running. Next thing you know, you can't see the city anymore. You don't really know what you're doing.

You go to church, try to hang out with other Christians, you try to encourage them. And yet, when you look at your week-to-week life, it's just hard to know exactly what God is at work doing. So you go and you keep going and you keep going and then suddenly famine hits: an unexpected diagnosis, sudden unemployment, tumultuous family drama. I'm sure all of us had stress-less Thanksgivings. We know in our heart that God intends good, and we can look out and it just doesn't feel like it.

Abram finds himself wandering in a literal desert. And on top of that, there is a famine. Not just a famine, a severe famine. Wandering through a land that he doesn't call home, not having any access to food. What would you do? Abram does what seems reasonable, maybe even necessary to do. He keeps going down. He goes through the desert of the Negev until he reaches the land of Egypt off here in the corner, the great superpower of the region, to stay there until the famine in Canaan seems to tide over.

Now, on one level, I want to give Abram a pass here. There are plenty of times when the Lord in his providence sends us away from what we know due to unforeseen circumstances. If you can't feed your family, the Bible says that you are worse than an infidel. Abram doesn't want to do that. He wants to make sure his family is taken care of. I don't think it's inherently sinful for you and I to move out of Southern California or even go to a different church. Sometimes the Lord does different things to different people in different seasons of life. That is not the lesson to take away from Abram here.

And I don't think Abram going to Egypt necessarily guarantees that there's something wrong going on in Abram's heart. He could be earnestly desiring to care for his family, trying to avoid calamity. All that being said, watch out for the accumulation of choices built on convenience. I'll say that again. Watch out for the accumulation of choices built on convenience: optimizing for making the most money, seeking the most comfort, making the obvious easiest choice, giving up on things when things get hard.

You see, the way that Satan loves to grip at our souls, the way that this pressure tends to get at us, isn't through striking right at our heart and having us turn 180 degrees. It often happens through erosion, chipping away, this constant pressure, tackling our resolve to remain faithful to the Lord. All of us are on this treadmill of comfort that lulls us into security, and before you know it, moves us miles away from our target. If you don't pay attention, you will even slide all the way down to Egypt.

Abram already made some compromises by taking Lot with him. Now he compromises on the land, at least for now, by going to Egypt. And he finds himself in the wrong place. And like a row of dominoes, once he flicks the first one down, once he makes one compromise, others quickly follow.

The Wrong People: Sarai and the Lie

This brings us to point number two: the wrong people. Look at verse 11. When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, "Look, I know what a beautiful woman you are. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, 'This is his wife.' They will kill me, but let you live. Please say you're my sister so it will go well for me because of you, and my life will be spared on your account." Sarai is 65 at this point in the story, and for whatever reason, Abram looks at his wife and says, "You are so beautiful, I am done for. They will literally strike me dead."

Let's just say it: this is really bad. Not only that, it's despicable. Abram's convenient compromises have now led him to compromise on his marriage. And I bet if you asked him in the moment, "What are you thinking?" he would give you a bunch of different reasons. He's being realistic. He's being practical. For one, Sarai is gorgeous. Now, I don't know how to draw a line between a woman's beauty and the death of her husband. I don't know how you connect those dots. But in any case, Sarai is beautiful enough that Abram is expecting the Egyptians to be willing to pull out their spears.

He sees his wife and he sees the power of the Egyptians. The Egyptians are powerful. He goes to their land because they have things that he lacks. They have food and they have power, and he knows that if that power turns on him, he will be killed. We all know what it's like to interact with people where they hold all the cards. Abram sees his wife, he sees the Egyptians, and it's a simple equation: the Egyptians will be smitten by Sarai, and the Egyptians in turn will smite him dead. What other choice does he have? It's either do this or die.

Except, of course, those aren't the only two options. It's not either lie about your wife or face death. Abram is being an idiot. And that's exactly what sin does to us. It makes us dumb. It tricks us. And this is exactly how sin works: it presents itself by giving you two irreconcilable options and making you feel like you have to choose between the lesser of two evils. "Do I lie on my taxes or do I let my family starve? Do I hide my sexual immorality or do I ruin my marriage? Do I prostitute my wife or do I lose my life?"

Sin makes us dumb, but it makes us dumb by triggering our fight-or-flight, our survival instincts. It convinces us that there's no other way. There's no other option. "You either sin or you die." But friends, if you sin, you will certainly die. That's the truth. There is no explanation that could justify or make right sin. Sin is sin is sin. And while context can help explain why you made your choices, it can never excuse them. Sin is inexcusable.

Abram's assessment of his wife's beauty was accurate. We see that later. The Egyptians react pretty much exactly the way Abram thought that they would. The reaction of the Egyptians, while not confirmable, is plausible given their might and strength. The issue with Abram wasn't what he saw in his wife or what he saw in the Egyptians. It's what Abram didn't see. He didn't remember God's promises.

There is always a third party involved in your choices. God sees every choice that you and I make. And God promised Abram to make him a great nation, to make his name great. Why would God promise Abram a great name only to wipe his name off the face of the earth under an Egyptian sword? Sin doesn't begin with the attraction of evil. It begins with the forgetting of God's promises, or the forgetting of God's blessings.

Remember what Satan says in the garden? He asks Eve, "Did God really say that you must not eat from any tree in the garden?" (Genesis 3). He gets Eve to tunnel vision in on one rule. He also gets her to question God's goodness, whether or not God actually desires Eve's good. As Eve tunnel visions, as she feels restricted, she chooses between whether or not she sins and eats the fruit or whether or not she has an empty life where she's missing out. And friends, that choice was a false choice. God gave her every blessing she could possibly ask for.

And Abram here, after receiving an incredible promise from an almighty God, throws it all away for the sake of his wife's beauty and his own life. Actually, it wasn't really about her beauty. His concern doesn't really seem to be about his wife at all. In fact, he's happy to have his wife lie for his sake. "Say that you're my sister." He's asking Sarai to stick her neck out for him. This is a complete reversal of gender responsibilities happening here in real time. Abram is the coward. He's asking Sarai to exhibit some courage.

We believe what the Bible teaches in what we would call complementarianism: that God has designed men and women equal in dignity and distinct in responsibility; that in marriage the wife is called to submit, to nurture and support her husband, and the husband is called to lead, protect, and provide for his wife. And Abram is doing the exact opposite of what a husband is supposed to do. He has Sarai speak and take the initiative. He has Sarai risk herself for the sake of protecting himself, that his life will be spared on her account.

And not only that, he is seeking to provide not for Sarai and others under his care, but to take care of himself. He's saying, "I want my life. I'm good. I need to survive." So, he doesn't just ask Sarai to lie so that he survives. He tells her, "Lie so that it would go well for me." He isn't just drawn to his own survival. He perceives Sarai's lie as a means of his own success. "They see you and they want you, and they know that I'm your brother. That means I'm about to make some bank." So he's willing to trade Sarai's purity for the sake of his own account, for his own convenience.

If you want to see a wimp, it doesn't matter what your muscle mass is, it doesn't matter what your testosterone levels are, your interest in monster trucks. If you want to see a coward, look at a man who hides behind a woman, expecting her to make sacrifices for the sake of his own convenience. Shame on him.

And to be clear, for all the sisters here, if any man ever calls you to absolve them of their own responsibilities, they call you to sin for the sake of their own worldly success, you have the biblical right and the biblical responsibility to reject that kind of leadership. Ephesians 5:22 tells wives to submit to your husbands as to the Lord, which means submission is never a blank check. Godly trust is to be expected and it's supposed to be earned. If you find yourself having to choose between Abram's cowardice and the Lord's command not to bear false witness, go with Jesus every time.

Abram should be willing to risk his life for the sake of his wife's protection. He should be willing to say, "Even if it goes poorly for me, even if they kill me, I will give myself if it means that you live." Because good authority doesn't domineer from the top down. It serves from the bottom up. It protects. It preserves. It lets things under its care flourish and thrive. But Abram doesn't do that. Instead, he gives up his wife for the sake of his own life.

And the real irony is that by trying to preserve his own life, trying to keep his own heart beating, he cuts himself off from the one source of continued life for his descendants. Because you know who you need in order to have kids? You need a wife. That's what you need. In an effort to preserve his own life, he tosses away the only thing that he could have that would ensure life for generations to come. He takes God's promises of a people, a great name, and gives it all up for the sake of some life insurance.

The Wrong Power: Worldly Gain

But Abram's compromise doesn't stop there. He goes to the wrong place, fears the wrong people, and he invokes the wrong power. Number three, wrong power. Look at verse 14. When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. Pharaoh's officials saw her and praised her to Pharaoh so that the woman was taken to Pharaoh's household. He treated Abram well because of her, and Abram acquired flocks and herds, male and female donkeys, male and female slaves, and camels.

Abram may have been wrong about what was right, but he was right about Sarai's beauty. The Egyptians see that she was very beautiful. They take her to Pharaoh, and this completes the deconstruction of God's promises to Abram. He has failed this test through the famine wilderness at every single step. And it culminates with this wrong power. Abram is promised to be a blessing and that all the peoples on the earth would be blessed through him. And now the Egyptians aren't being blessed by Abram. The Egyptians are the ones that are blessing him.

Because of Abram's lie, he acquires flocks, donkeys, slaves, camels—every worldly luxury Abram could ask for. He receives a false promise of prosperity, a self-made man built on a lie. The draw of worldly prosperity, the draw of worldly stuff, is an ever-present sin and temptation. It doesn't fade, doesn't come and go with the seasons. It is always there. It doesn't matter what era of life you're in. It will always be there. It doesn't matter if it's Black Friday or 30 pieces of silver. The world will always dangle its treasures in front of you, trying to lure you into giving up God's promises in exchange for worldly prosperity.

It's no wonder that Jesus says:

“No one can serve two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” — Matthew 6:24 (CSB)

Satan is crafty, but he is consistent. His tricks are very consistent. They're often the same. In fact, even to Jesus in Luke 4, he takes Jesus up, shows him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.

So he took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. The devil said to him, “I will give you their splendor and all this authority, because it has been given over to me, and I can give it to anyone I want. If you, then, will worship me, all will be yours.” — Luke 4:5-7 (CSB)

And what Satan offers, Jesus warns you and I against. And what Satan offers, Abram accepts. He worships it. He chooses prosperity. He chooses worldly prosperity. What would you do if you're staring down the barrel of the rifle of this world? Would you do the same? If people saw your spending this last week, would they say that your treasure is on earth or in heaven? If people looked at your yearly budget, would they be encouraged by your generosity and kingdom-mindedness? Or would they see a man that's marked with worldly concerns, just like everyone else in this city? Would you be marked by spiritual promises or by worldly prosperity?

Abram's stock portfolio just keeps going up. He receives blessing after blessing from a worldly king because that's who his heart is pledging to. This is the exact opposite of what Abram was called to do. He wasn't supposed to be blessed by the Egyptians. He should be blessing them. All the peoples who are supposed to be blessed by Abram, not the other way around. Instead, he uses them to prop himself up. In fact, he's even leading them towards sin.

They don't do this on purpose. Now, I'm happy to accept taking a woman and bringing her into Pharaoh's chamber, that's wrong, no matter who it is. But they are being led in particular to sin because of Abram. They see that she's beautiful and they take her. They see and they take. Does that remind you of anything in the book of Genesis? Sounds like the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, doesn't it? Eve saw that it was desirable. She took and she ate (Genesis 3).

Except this time there isn't a serpent to whisper to these men. Instead, you have the father of faith, Abram, leading them to their own destruction. Your commitments have an inevitable consequence on those around you. Are you professing to follow Christ while acting like Satan? Professing to follow Jesus while enticing other people to sin by your own worldliness?

We want to be a church that prioritizes holiness, godliness, that views Christ as supremely valuable. And that is communicated not just with the gospel that we profess with our lips, but the way that we orient our lives. The way that we prioritize the things in our life matters. The way we orient our priorities matters. It matters to those under our care, and it matters to those who know that we carry the name of Christ. It matters even more for us as a witness here in this church to one another as members and to our community. If we fail this kind of call, we risk leading others to sin rather than our Savior. Worse, we bear false witness against who God is and what he loves and desires.

If you're a member of this church, if you've been baptized, if you profess the name of Christ and you fall in love with this world, you are communicating to the world that Jesus is not worth loving. And God cares too much about you. He cares too much about Abram to leave him in his self-deluded sins. The story could just end here. Abram could live the rest of his days drowning in Egyptian medallions of gold. But God intervenes.

God's Intervention and Judgment

In our last point, God's judgment. Verse 17: "But the Lord struck Pharaoh and his household with severe plagues because of Abram's wife Sarai." So Pharaoh sent for Abram and said, "What have you done to me? Why didn't you tell me she was your wife? Why did you say she's my sister so that I took her as my wife? Now here is your wife. Take her and go." And Pharaoh sent his men orders about him, and they sent him away with his wife and all he had.

God judges Pharaoh. In fact, it says that Pharaoh is smitten, like smote, like God smited him not by Sarai but by God. Abram doesn't bring blessing to the nation of Egypt. He actually brings judgment to the nation of Egypt. And Pharaoh's upset. In fact, Pharaoh quotes God in Genesis 3. He asks, "What have you done in the face of this calamity?" It turns out that this new beginning has led to another fall, another fall into sin.

Pharaoh gives back Abram's wife. In fact, he throws Abram's wife back in his face. Did you notice all the times that he mentions "his wife"? "Why did you tell me she was your wife? I took her as my wife. Now, here is your wife." Wife, you guys are married. What were you thinking? So, Pharaoh gives back Abram's wife, sends him out with all he had. Abram leaves with wife still by his side and now even richer with the possessions of Egypt.

Now, don't think for one second that Abram got away with it. This is not a lesson on how to be just sinful enough to really make it or how to manipulate your life situation to obtain flocks and herds and camels. This is not a lesson in Abram's prosperity. This is a lesson in the Lord's providence. Pharaoh is not an idiot. He might be the only one who's not an idiot in this story. If he was struck with plagues because of Abram's wife, do you think he's going to touch Abram? Of course not. He knows better.

How much worse is that judgment going to be if he tries to enact revenge on Abram and his possessions? He knows better. Abram is not more prosperous. Abram is not more safe because he was clever, but because God cares for him, because God protected him, because God judged Pharaoh. And Pharaoh has a far greater fear of the Lord than Abram does. Which also means if God was caring for Abram in such a way that Pharaoh can't enact revenge on him, Abram never had anything to worry about in the beginning.

He should not have feared losing his life. He never had to make a choice between losing his wife or losing his life because God was with him. This is not in support of compromise. This story is a greater condemnation of compromise. Abram leaves not because of his belief in God's promises. He leaves because Pharaoh has a greater faith than Abram does.

Lessons from Abram's Failure

Now, why take so much time to highlight this kind of failure in Abram's faith? Why take the 11 verses right after this epic call of Abram to highlight this colossal compromise? For two reasons. First, so that none of us confuse our faith with faithfulness.

I'd imagine if I were to sit down with Abram just before he enters into Egypt, he would remember all of the promises that God gave him. He'd be able to tell you, probably by memory, exactly what he heard in verses 1 through 3. He knows it. He heard it with his own ears. Why would you forget such a precious promise? He knows him cognitively. It's not like he got amnesia or forgot that the Lord had spoken to him. The problem is not whether or not Abram knew God's promises. The problem with Abram is that those promises didn't matter to him. There are bigger issues at hand. He might have believed, but he didn't believe in a way that affected his faithfulness today.

You can imagine how important of a lesson this is for Moses, who's writing this book, as he's recounting the story, reminding the Israelites about their father of faith failing in the wilderness in the face of God's promises, as they're wandering through their wilderness before they enter into the promised land, having to rely on God for their daily bread, especially in light of all they're remembering the prosperity that existed in the kingdom of Egypt, as they're frequently complaining and wishing that they were back in Egypt in slavery. In fact, in the book of Numbers, you see Achan hiding plunder that he received from Canaanite conquest and it leads to the death of him and his entire family.

Don't think that you can chill on the treadmill of your own pleasure. It doesn't matter if you're the father of faith, an Israelite in the wilderness, or a member of this church. If Abram failed, so can you. You can know in your head all of God's promises and be completely resistant in your heart, not have any bearing on your own present obedience. And we should feel the same tragedy with our own obedience as we do as we read Abram's failure. We are saved by faith alone. But that faith is never alone. If we actually believe God's promises, then that needs to reflect in our holiness, in our faithfulness.

Our Greater Hope: Jesus Christ

Second reason why I think this story is here: because we aren't saved by our faith, but by who our faith is in. Be really careful with the way I word that. We're not saved by our faith, but who our faith is in. Sometimes we can measure our own salvation by the strength of the faith that we have. Now, I am not talking about the essence of faith, whether or not you do or do not have faith. You are saved by faith alone. You are saved by faith, right? By grace through faith, not by works so no one can boast (Ephesians 2). Absolutely true. If you do not have faith, you cannot be saved. But you are not saved by how strong that faith that exists in your heart is, but on the basis of the strength of the one that you're placing your faith in.

Sometimes we can measure our own salvation by the strength of the faith that we have. If I feel close to God, then I'm doing well this week. If I feel far from God, I'm doing poorly. And to be fair, I think the conscience that the Lord has given you and I is a gift, a helpful tool to help us alert to different areas in our life that we need to pay attention to. It's like a spiritual nervous system that triggers our pain receptors so that we can call attention to sins that we may be committing or danger that may threaten our souls. If you hear this sermon this morning and you are thinking about idols in your heart that need to die, that means the Spirit is at work in you. That is good.

But we are saved by faith alone. And the strength of our salvation isn't based on the strength of our emotions, but the strength of our Savior. We don't believe in our own believing. We're not Ted Lasso. Our spiritual standing with God is not based on our own feelings about how we're doing. If that's the case, Abram can't make it. God would abandon him, start new with someone else. But God's promises are greater than Abram's weakness.

Because where Abram fails, God does not. The good news of the gospel is not God tossing you a lifesaver while you're drowning in the ocean, and so long as you hang on to the lifesaver, he will pull you safely into his boat at the point of your death and bring you safely to shore. The good news of the gospel is that you and I are already dead in our trespasses and sins. We are drowned on the ocean floor. And because of our sin, none of us can do anything to be found good enough to be accepted by a holy God. He can give us all the promises of this world and we would fail just like Abram did over and over and over again.

The good news is that Jesus comes to us dead on the ocean floor and supernaturally takes our place, resurrects us from the dead, and brings us safely to shore. That on the cross, Jesus bears the wrath of God on his shoulders, paying the penalty of sin in full. He rises from the dead three days later, victorious over sin and death. The good news of the gospel is not that your faith needs to be strong enough to make it through the trials of this world, but that Jesus crossed through the greatest trial of this world and rose victorious.

Jesus is tempted by Satan and he resists every promise that this world offered. Abram doesn't receive a single dash of judgment on his body, even though he is just as wicked as Pharaoh. And the difference between Abram and Pharaoh has nothing to do with Abram's own character of heart. It has everything to do with God's grace on him. Because someone else was struck in Abram's place. And because Jesus endured the plagues of sin in his own body, experienced the full judgment of God on your behalf, you and I can be spared too.

Jesus is greater than Abram. Jesus doesn't sell his wife. Abram in fear says, "They will kill me, but let you live." And Jesus in faith says, "Let them kill me so that you can live." Abram says, "My life will be spared on your account." Jesus in faith says, "My life will be spent on your account." God is the reason why Pharaoh was struck with plagues. God is the reason why Abram will still receive a place, people, and power. And God is the reason why you and I can have everlasting hope in the face of all of our sin and failure.

And it's precisely because of that great hope, because of the riches of the kindness of his mercy, as Paul talks about in Romans 2, that we can see the promise of Christ before us, his path laid out in front of us, and we can eagerly follow him. Because if Jesus rose from the dead, your safety is guaranteed. There is nothing that this world can do to you that will threaten your eternal security with God. There's nothing else in this world to desire because everything in this world is fading away. Who can threaten you? Who can take from you what matters? Nobody. And because Christ rose from the dead, you and I have nothing to fear. And we have nothing else to desire. We can look at the cross and the crown before us and abandon the world. Throw it behind us. Even if the world's worst famine and persecution hits us, we are destined for that celestial city. We are headed somewhere greater. You can turn down the world's power because God has given you an everlasting unfading promise.

Let's pray. Lord, we pray that you would help us to resist these false gospels that the world tempts us with. Pray, Lord, that you would help us to see Christ as supremely valuable, that we would see the great reward before us in receiving Jesus, and that we would follow him eagerly. Help us, Lord, to fight sin, to repent of it, and to follow after you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.