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Transcript

Well, good afternoon, brethren. It’s good to see everyone today. Today we’re going to start in the Bible. We’re going to go straight to a scripture. Let’s go to Genesis chapter twelve. Normally we don’t start this way, but we’re going to tell a story, look at a couple stories to introduce the subject for today. Genesis chapter twelve, and we’ll start in verse one. This is the call of Abraham.

It says, “Now the Lord had said unto Abram, ‘Get thee out of your country, and from your kindred, and from your father’s house, into a land that I will show you: And I will make of you a great nation, and will bless you, and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless you, and curse him that curse you: and in you shall all families of the earth be blessed.’” So that sets the stage. This is what happens first.

Now, drop down to verse ten. “And there was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine was grievous in the land. And it came to pass, when he was come near to enter into Egypt, that he said unto Sarai” or Sarah, “his wife, ‘Behold now, I know that you are a beautiful woman to look upon: Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see you, that they will say this is his wife: and they will kill me, but they will save you alive. So, say, I pray you, you are my sister: that it may be well with me for your sake; and my soul shall live because of you.’”

Now, that was interesting. So, Abraham convened with Sarai to tell a little fib, to lie to protect himself. Now, he would’ve been okay, but she would not have been okay. And I don’t know if he was thinking about that when he did this. So, did he learn his lesson? Did he do this again? Let’s go to chapter twenty, chapter twenty verse one. “And Abraham journeyed from thence toward the south country, and dwell between Kadesh and Shur, and sojourned in Gerar. And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, ‘She is my sister.’” Uh-oh, so right away, he does the same thing.

This time, he doesn’t even bother to get into the story, “Hey, I’m going to tell you, I’m going to...” No, no, no, no, no. She’s on board. So yes, she’s got it. So, he just, right away, just, “This is my sister.” And as a result, “Abimelech king of Gerar sent, and took Sarah and took Sarah.” Now, what I didn’t say in the first example was he was in Egypt when he did that, and it caused all sorts of problems. All sorts of problems. And eventually, the Pharaoh said, “Here, take your wife back. I don’t know why you told me that was your sister. Get out of here.”

And then he does that here. And Abimelech takes her, which is predictable. This is exactly what they did in Egypt. Now, obviously, there was an issue with this back then. There was an issue with women being taken and men being killed. So, I don’t think that this is all in his head. He knows that this is what happens. So, this is how I’m going to handle this. But then God, on verse three, God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him, “You’re a dead man, for the woman which you’ve taken; she’s a man’s wife.” So basically, God intervenes on his behalf.

But he intervened on his behalf in the first example as well. He plagued Pharaoh’s house, and now he’s threatening Abimelech, saying, “Look, this is a man’s wife. You need to leave her alone.” And Abimelech eventually confronts Abraham and says, “Look, I don’t know why you did that. There’s no reason. You shouldn’t do that type of thing to someone.” So, he allowed him to stay there. He gave him provisions, and then Abraham moved on. So, Abraham made the mistake, and then he repeated the mistake. He didn’t learn, and he didn’t learn even after God intervened for him after he told a lie the first time.

We can all be pressured, we know that. He was pressured, he told a lie. He wanted to be saved. God intervened on his behalf. So really there was no reason to do it again, but he did it again. So now, let’s go over to chapter twenty-six. Now we’re looking at Isaac, which is his son. In verse one, “And there was a famine in the land, beside the first famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went unto Abimelech king of the Philistines, to Gerar.” Drop down to verse six, “And Isaac dwelt in Gerar. And the man of the place asked him of his wife; and he said, ‘She is my sister.’”

Again? Now, you have to ask, did he know that that was said by Abraham the first time? Or is it just a coincidence that he gave the exact same excuse? I don’t know. Or reasoning? So, his son did the same thing. So, what we’re seeing here is an example of just not learning from mistakes. Say Abraham made the same mistake twice and then Isaac came right behind and made that exact same mistake even though his father made it. So of course, what we’re going to talk about today is learning from mistakes. How can we learn from mistakes, more specifically.

Now, the interesting thing is, I didn’t read more but if I did, you would see that Abimelech, which it looks like this is the same man that Abraham deceived, this same man, it seemed like he kind of learned his lesson because he didn’t go and take Rebecca, he just kind of looked up the window and did his research first, and kind of saw them, you know, frolicking and playing together and he said, “You know, I don’t think you play with your sister like that. Not at all.” And then he probably got closer. He called him and he thought, number one, this situation seems familiar, and number two, you look familiar.

Is your dad named Abraham? But that’s what we’re going to look today at how we can learn from mistakes because we don’t want to repeat mistakes. So, the first step, please turn to Proverbs twenty-eight. For the first step we’re Proverbs twenty-eight. Proverbs twenty-eight and verse thirteen. Proverbs twenty-eight, thirteen says, “He that covers his sin shall not prosper.” So, the first thing that we want to do is: we want to acknowledge that we made a mistake. And that seems very basic. This is going to be very basic. Everything we cover today is very basic.

It’s basic and it’s simple to understand yet it’s difficult to do. Now, why is it difficult to do? It could be any number of reasons why acknowledging mistakes is difficult. It could be pride, it could be shame, embarrassment. Sometimes for some people, it can be pain. Because it hurts some people, it really hurts to realize that you made a mistake that possibly is causing harm to other people. No matter what the reason is though, it needs to be overcome. And none of anything else that we discussed today matters if we don’t acknowledge that we’ve made a mistake.

It’s almost like denying or avoiding the mistake, it’s almost like it didn’t happen. It’s more comfortable. It didn’t happen. Not going to worry about... I’m not going into that. But denying a mistake or avoiding a mistake can actually make it infinitely worse. So, let’s go over to Second Chronicles chapter sixteen. We’re going to look at some stories here in the Bible to help us with these points. Second Chronicles chapter sixteen. Now this story is actually about... This is the account of King Asa. We know King Asa too had been a good king. He was a righteous king, got rid of idols, cleaned up a lot.

However, we’re going to start in verse one. “In the thirty-sixth year of the reign of Asa, Baasha king of Israel, came up against Judah, and built Ramah, to the intent that he might let none go out or come in to Asa, king of Judah. Then Asa brought out silver and gold out of the treasures of the house of the Lord and of the king’s house, and sent to Benhadad king of Syria, that dwelt in Damascus, and said, ‘There is a league between me and you,’” or at least there is now, “‘as there was between my father and your father: behold, I’ve sent you silver and gold; go, break your league with Baasha, king of Israel, that he may depart from me.’”

And this worked. It caused Benhadad to switch and Asa was able to go to certain cities where Baasha was building cities and he stole the timber and went somewhere else, and he built other cities. However, drop down to verse seven. “And at that time, Hanani the seer came to Asa king of Judah, and said unto him, ‘Because you have relied on the king of Syria, and have not relied on the Lord your God, therefore is the host of the king of Syria escaped out of your hand. Were not the Ethiopians and the Lubims a huge host, with very many chariots and horsemen?

Yet because you did rely on the Lord, he delivered them into your hand. For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect towards him. Hearing you have done foolishly: therefore from henceforth, you shall have wars.’” So, he was confronted basically by God with something that he did, with a mistake that he made. And what was his response? Was his response, “Yes, I messed up. I shouldn’t have done that”? Well, his response, verse ten, “Then Asa was wroth with the seer, and put him in the prison house; for he was in a rage with him because of this thing. And Asa oppressed some of the people at the same time.”

So, he took God’s prophet and he put him in jail, and then he began oppressing people. So, okay, for 36 years, you were a good king. Everything was going great. And then someone came out and God came out and said, “Look, you did this,” and your response was to get angry. That was one way of avoiding the fact that he messed up. But you made it infinitely worse by now taking God’s prophet, who’s basically a messenger, and throwing him in the prison. That’s not what you want to want to do at all.

Because the question would be, okay, well, that’s God’s messenger. If God was there and you had the power, would you throw him in jail? I digress. And he got even worse. You go to verse twelve, “And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease, he sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians.” It’s like he made a mistake, then he got angry because he got confronted with the mistake. So, he compounded that by throwing God’s prophet in the prison and then he began to oppress the people, and then that changed into bitterness and anger.

He became angry, and that turned into bitterness, and he didn’t reconcile with God. Doing those type of things, not acknowledging mistakes can actually damage relationships with God, with other people. And that’s exactly what happened with Asa. He wouldn’t go to God. No. It was like he was angry at God. Say, wait a minute, you did this. But he was upset with God. And what happened? And Asa slept with his fathers. He died. He never recovered. So that’s something that we want to be careful of. We want to make sure that we’re acknowledging mistakes, because we can’t change what we don’t acknowledge.

I mean that’s pretty obvious. It’s obvious but it’s not that simple. It’s hard. Like I said, and we talked about the different reasons for why it can be difficult. But like I said, it seems pretty obvious, but it’s a difficult thing to do. Pain, embarrassment, shame, all of that can keep us from acknowledging mistakes and it could cause us to destroy relationships, possibly not provide a way for reconciliation, and on and on and on. That’s the first step. The second step, if we go back to Proverbs twenty-eight, it actually tells us in Proverbs twenty-eight.

Proverbs twenty-eight and verse thirteen. The second part of that verse is, “Whoso confesses and forsakes them shall have mercy.” And I would add, and this is just me, and I would add that’s with God and with men. Confessing mistakes and forsaking the mistake, you’re more likely to get mercy, you’re more likely to reconcile with people. And God is all about reconciliation. He does not want divisions. He doesn’t want people fighting or anything like that. But we have to change the behavior, and to do that we basically have to repent. That’s what repentance is all about.

The first thing that we can do is, you say I’m sorry, when we make a mistake and we hurt someone else, or anybody is affected by whatever it is that we’ve done. The first thing that we can do is say I’m sorry. Go to Luke chapter seventeen. Luke chapter seventeen in verse three. Luke seventeen, three says, “Take heed to yourselves: If your brother trespass against you, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to you saying, ‘I repent;’ you shall forgive him.”

Now what’s interesting is we know repent means to change. But in this situation, I don’t know if anyone comes to you and says, I change. I think they say, I’m sorry. Unless any of you in here say, I change. And then we’ll talk about it because that’s awkward. But that’s the number one thing that we can do. I’m sorry, those two words. Or you can say three words, but those words, they mitigate so much, and they soften so much. I’m sorry. People who can be extremely angry and seemingly unforgiving, if you say I’m sorry and mean it, and actually mean it.

I mean, it softens a lot. And we also need to say that we’re sorry, even to God. Turn to First John chapter one. First John chapter one verse nine. It kind of reiterates something that Proverbs says, but verse nine says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Once again, that goes back to the first thing we have to do is acknowledge it, but then after that, God will help us to cleanse this mistake. He will help us fix it. And there’s no one who exemplifies that better than King David.

So, we’re going to look at what happened with King David in regards to step number two. So, let’s go back to Second Samuel chapter twelve. Second Samuel chapter twelve, and we’re going to start in verse one. Now, of course, this is after what happened with David and Bathsheba, and Uriah the Hittite, and how he took Uriah’s wife and then committed adultery with her and then had her husband killed. So now, God is sending Nathan to David. “And the Lord sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto him, and said unto him...” This is verse one.

“...and he said unto him, ‘There were two men in one city: the one rich, and the other poor. The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds: but the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had brought and nourished up: and it grew up together with him, and with his children; It did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his own bosom, and was unto him as a daughter. And there came a traveler unto the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him; but took the poor man’s lamb, and dressed it for the man that was come to him.’

And David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said unto Nathan, as the Lord lives, the man that has done this thing should surely die.’” And before he dies, “‘...he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.’” And then there comes the kicker in the very next verse, then “Nathan said to David, You’re the man.” So now, God is beginning to confront David through Nathan. “‘Thus says the Lord God of Israel, I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul.’” Skip verse eight, go to nine.

“Why have you despised the commandment of the Lord, to do evil in his sight? You have killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon.’” And then he goes on to tell him a bunch of punishment that’s going to happen as a result of what he did. Now, what was David’s response? Now, if there’s ever a time, I was just thinking about this, if there’s ever a time that you would want to avoid dealing with a mistake and not have to deal with it, this would probably... something like this would be it.

This would be exceedingly painful. To not know you did this, not realize that you did this, and then someone comes to you, and they tell you, this is what you did. The realization that comes to your mind with this would hurt. It would be extremely painful. But David, all he said to Nathan, in verse thirteen, “I have sinned against the Lord.” He didn’t get upset. He didn’t get angry. He didn’t rage back at Nathan. He said, “Pah, l messed up.” And sometimes that’s what we need to do, that’s the first thing that we need to do is he said, “I messed up.”

But then, he continued on but just not here. Let’s go over to Psalm chapter fifty-one, because we’re going to see more of how David responded to this situation. Psalm chapter fifty-one. And it says, “this is the Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came into him, after he’d gone into Bathsheba.” Verse one, “Have mercy upon me, o God, according to your lovingkindness: according to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquities, and cleanse me from my sin,” for step number one, “I acknowledge my transgression: and my sin is ever before me.”

He said, “Against you, you only, have I sinned, and done this evil in your sight: that you might be justified when you speak, and be clear when you judge. Behold I’ll...” and I’m going to drop to verse number seven. It says, “Purge me with hyssop, and I should be clean: wash me, and I should be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which you have broken may rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.” And verse number ten is the is the key verse. “Create in me a clean heart, o God; and renew a right spirit within me.”

So, David knew and understood, I need to change. I’m pretty sure he probably thought to himself at some point, I didn’t know that I was capable of that. I mean, David was doing great. He was doing wonderful, and then that one incident happened, and he’s probably thinking, what happened? How did I get to this point? But he said, “Create in me a clean heart.” I need, I need a clean heart. I need to change. I need to think differently. And when we make mistakes, that right there is what we need to do. We need to address the mistake because nothing gets fixed if we don’t address what we’ve done.

Now it’s easy to say, okay, I get it. You say address the mistake. And like, you know, you say repent, and I understand it means to change. Well, how do we do that? How do we do that? But I think David has showed us how we do that. We go to God, and we ask God to help us. Help us to face this issue. Help us to face our mistakes. Help us to deal with it. Help us to understand that we’re human and that we mess up sometimes. It just happens and that human beings make mistakes and it’s not the end of the world. May seem like it in that moment, especially if we have pride.

Because like I said, it’s hard to acknowledge that we make mistakes. But in this situation, David basically cried out to God and said, I need help. I can’t do this on my own. I need you to create in me a clean heart, something different than what just showed its ugly head and what just got me into this situation. So that’s step number two. Step number two is change the behavior. Step number three is an interesting step. Step number three is learn from the mistakes of others, and more importantly, don’t repeat their mistakes. Winston Churchill did say, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

And that’s true. Let’s turn to First Corinthians chapter ten. First Corinthians chapter ten. I’m going to start in verse five. “But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things were examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted.” One example. Don’t lust. “Neither be you idolaters, as were some of them; as it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day twenty-three thousand.

Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of serpents. Neither complain, you, as some of them also complain, and were destroyed of the destroyer. Now all these things happen unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.” This is basically telling us we can learn a lot from the example of people in the Bible. Here in this specific instance, it’s talking about Israel. But we can learn from the mistakes of anyone else, any other mistake that we know that people have made. It’s interesting, when I was growing up, my sister was the nice one, and she would be considered the good child. And that doesn’t mean that I was a bad child.

But my father always said, “You know, your sister, she did really well because she had your brother and you to see what exactly not to do,” and it was true. Well, except in one instance. Ask her about it. But most of the time, that was the case. That exactly was the case. So, we can learn from the mistakes of other people in any situation, mainly in the scriptures. We’re going to look at one example of that in Genesis. So go to Genesis chapter twenty-five. Genesis twenty-five in verse... want to begin in verse twenty-eight. Now, this is the story of the account of Jacob and Esau, and Isaac and Rebekah.

So, Isaac and Rebekah ended up twins, Jacob and Esau. In verse twenty-eight tells us that a little situation occurred in the household that was not the best. It wasn’t the best. And twenty-eight says, “And Isaac loved Esau, because he did eat of his venison: but Rebekah loved Jacob.” So, they had his and hers kids, which is never a good thing and never a good situation to have favorites like that. And it caused serious problems in the house. So now go over to chapter twenty-seven and verse forty-one. Now, Rebekah, because she cared so much about Jacob, wanted Jacob to have basically everything and she encouraged him to steal the birthright blessing from Esau.

To the extent that she had him dress up like Esau, put on wool and all that so he felt hairy. And he did it. He got the blessing. He did exactly what she encouraged him to do, which would she have encouraged him to do that had she now had favorites? And Esau comes in, and he’s like, “Well, I would like my blessing.” And Isaac’s like, “There is no blessing. I gave it to your brother. I mean, I don’t know what to tell you.” And in verse forty-one it says, “And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him: and Esau said in his heart, ‘The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then will I kill my brother, Jacob.’”

He is so upset and so angry with what had happened that he was willing to kill his brother. Now Rebekah finds out about this, and under the guise of, you know what? He needs to go find a wife. We don’t want him to find anyone in the land of Canaan. I’m going to send him to my brother to keep him safe. And she basically told Jacob, stay there until your brother is no longer angry. Don’t come back.” And he said, “I’ll call for you. Just don’t come back.” And he’s like, okay. Well, that lasted like between twenty, twenty-two years, something like that.

That situation caused Jacob and Isaac and Rebekah to not be able to have a relationship with their son for over twenty years. I mean, it caused a lot of damage. Now, the question is, did Jacob learn from that experience? Because he actually experienced that. It wasn’t like he was just watching. It wasn’t him that caused it. It was more his parents. But he was in it, and he was watching what happened. He knew he was favored, and he knew that his brother was favored by his dad. He was aware of what was going on. But the question is, did he learn anything from that situation?

So, let’s fast forward. Let’s go over to Genesis, chapter thirty-seven. Now, Jacob has his own children. We’re going to start in verse two. “These are the generations of Jacob.” Genesis thirty-seven, two, “Joseph, being seventeen years old was feeding the flock with his brother, brothers and the lad was with the sons of Bilhah, and with the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives: and Joseph brought unto his father their evil report.” So, he’s the favorite, and it says that in the next verse, but he’s the favorite. And so, he’s able to come to his father and say, “Look, this is what they were doing. This is what they were doing in the field.”

Now, I know all of us love that, right? You have siblings. Look at what he’s doing. So, verse three. “Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colors. And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him.” So, we’re making the same mistake. Favoritism caused serious issues in the house with Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob, and Esau. And now it’s being repeated now in Jacob’s house with his wife and his children because he favors Joseph.

And as a result, the other kids hate him because of it. So, he couldn’t see that. Well, as a result, we know what happened. They were going to kill him, but then they made the decision, we’ll just sell him into slavery. And he went off into Egypt. But did Jacob kind of learn anything even from that? Now, he didn’t know that his children, at that point, he didn’t know that his children had caused Joseph’s situation. He didn’t know that. But it’s almost like he still wasn’t aware of how he was treating his children. Go to Genesis chapter forty-two, over a few pages.

Verse thirty-six. Now the children went into Egypt because they needed food, because there was a famine. And of course, they met Joseph and he said, well, you can only come back if you bring your brother because I think you’re spies, something’s not right about this. So, they went to Jacob to let him know and Jacob’s response, “And Jacob, their father, said unto them, ‘Me have you bereaved of my children.’” Now, that’s an interesting statement considering you believe that your son, Joseph, was killed and torn to pieces by wild animals. So how do we have anything to do with that?

“Joseph is not, and Simeon is not,” because he had to stay back in Egypt, “and you will take Benjamin away: and all these things are against me. And Reuben spake and he said, you know, slay my two children, if I don’t bring them back. And he said, ‘My son shall not go down with you; for his brother is dead, and he is left alone.’” I’m your son and we’re his brother. What do you mean? “‘If mischief befall him by the way in which you should go, then shall you bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.’” So, if anything happens to him, then I’m just going to die. It’s like, wow. So eventually, we know how the story ends, but Jacob never...

He didn’t learn in this instance, his lesson from looking at his parents and how that situation went. He didn’t learn. So, something that we need to do is there are situations where we can learn from other people’s example. We can see other people make mistakes, and we can learn not to make those same mistakes at all. There are situations when parents will tell children things that normally you may not want to tell children, but you do it in hopes that they will learn from the mistakes you made and not make those same mistakes. Oh yes. You know, I had a lot of money, and I blew a thousand dollars on this, and it didn’t work out, and it was horrible.

You want to manage your money; you want to do this. You tell them things and you’re hoping that they learn from your example of what not to do. And basically, what we’ve been doing this whole time is we’ve been learning from the examples of other people in the Bible. So now, in conclusion, I’m just going to conclude now, but God encourages us to overcome our mistakes. He encourages us to first acknowledge our mistakes, address the mistakes by repenting and changing, and not repeating the mistakes of others or learning from the mistakes of others so that we can learn, and we can grow from these same experiences.