Keys to A New Beginning (7)

But It's Not My Fault

Numbers 13:1-3, 25-28; Genesis 3:12, 13; Genesis 16:1-6

Jim Davis

Have you noticed how powerful the words "if" and "but" are? They convince us of the possibility of succeeding while bringing defeat. How often have the words "if" and "but" held us back from accomplishing something really big. We convince ourselves we could have accomplished something great "but" the timing was off. We convince ourselves that we could accomplish something great "if" things were different. The words "if" and "but" are the two most deceptive words Satan ever plants into our minds.

Num 13:1-2
"The LORD said to Moses, 'Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites. From each ancestral tribe send one of its leaders'" (NIV).

Numbers 13:25-29
"At the end of forty days they returned from exploring the land . . . They came back to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in the Desert of Paran. There they reported to them and to the whole assembly and showed them the fruit of the land. They gave Moses this account: "We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there" (NIV).

Notice how the word "but" robs Israel of the Promised Land. "But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there." It was the word "but" that defeated them. The word "but" convinced them that their problems were bigger than God's ability to handle them.

Israel’s vocabulary was full of "if" and "buts".

Exodus 16:3
The Israelites said to them, "If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death" (NIV).

We convince ourselves that God wants us to do a certain thing "but" we convince ourselves that even though it may be possible for others it is not possible for me. We say "if" things were different I would do what God is asking me to do.

"Ifs" and "Buts" Misplaces Our Responsibility

How many of us are hiding from God because we think that our problems are bigger than God's power and mercy to handle. This is one of the reasons we have difficulty facing the truth about ourselves. We are not sure that God can change us, so we hide behind our "ifs" and "buts" rather than face ourselves.

Genesis 3:8-13
"Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, 'Where are you?'

"He answered, 'I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.'

"And he said, 'Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?'

"The man said, 'The woman you put here with me--she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.'

"Then the LORD God said to the woman, 'What is this you have done?'

The woman said, 'The serpent deceived me, and I ate'" (NIV).

Do you see how easy it is to blame someone or some circumstance beyond our control for our failures? Adam was simply saying, "I wouldn't be hiding "if" you had not given me the woman." Eve was saying, "I know it was wrong, "but" the serpent deceived me, and I ate."

Adam and Eve were saying, "But it is not my fault." The words "if" and "but" not only promise us the possibility of victory while bringing defeat. They keep us where we are while robbing us of a new beginning.

Satan builds these strongholds in our minds to convince us that life is beyond our control and ultimately God’s control. If life is beyond God’s control, how can he expect us to handle it alone? When we are convinced that life is beyond God’s control, we do like Abraham and Sarah. We justify ourselves by taking matters into our own hands.

Genesis 16:1-8
"Now Sara, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abram, ‘The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.’

"Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.

"When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. Then Sarai said to Abram, ‘You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me.’

"’Your servant is in your hands,’ Abram said. ‘Do with her whatever you think best.’ Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.

"The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. And he said, ‘Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?’" (NIV).

Have you noticed, when we take life into our own hands and make a mess of it, we always blame someone else for the mess? Yes, Abraham consented, but oddly enough, even in this situation, I don’t think he had much a choice.

Genesis 21:6-13
"Sarah said, ‘God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.’ And she added, ‘Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.’

"The child grew and was weaned, and on the day Isaac was weaned Abraham held a great feast. But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking, and she said to Abraham, ‘Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.’

The matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son. But God said to him, ‘Do not be so distressed about the boy and your maidservant. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. I will make the son of the maidservant into a nation also, because he is your offspring" (NIV).

God didn’t even try to change Sarah’s mind, what hope did Abraham have. Well, so much for our modern day ideas about submission of women (1 Peter 3:5, 6). However, this situation is typical of what happens when a couple is not in submission to each other. I have seen a lot mates that didn’t give the other a choice. That is a great formula for trouble.

The amazing thing about God is that he gives us the freedom to totally make a mess of things, but his presence continues to work all things for good to those who love him. God’s compelling love forces him the clothe our nakedness while allowing us to suffer the consequences of our own behavior. He is present in Eden covering their shame and inadequacy. God is right there with Sarah and Abraham as they make a mess of things, but He is right there working his purpose for their lives and ours. We are still working with the problems of Ishmael’s descendants, but God is still available to help us straighten out the mess.

The amazing thing about God is that he desires to live among us. He wants to be right here with us as he works out his purposes with our lives. Somehow the church has lost the excitement of God’s presence. "Ifs" and "buts" have become our gods. "Ifs" and "buts" are causing many to make a mess of their lives because.

Do you know what the true definition of the Church is? It is a place in the heart of each and every believer. It is the place in your heart where God dwells. Many have leaned upon their "ifs" and "buts" so long that they have become bored with the church. Can you imagine Christians being bored? I don’t think that there could ever be anything boring about the church if we realized God’s desire to fill us with his fullness.

 "If" and "Buts" Make Life Boring

"Ifs" and "buts" fill us with doubt and uncertainty as they rob us of our enthusiasm and excitement. They deceive us of our potential while robbing us of our possibilities. We have people in the church bored stiff. They blame their lack of activity on boredom. If those classes weren’t so boring, I would attend. If the sermons weren’t so boring I would wake up and listen.

Many think the Christian life is prosaic, dull, and uneventful. It is anything but that! If it appears that way, it is almost certainly a life out of focus with true spirituality; in other words, a carnal Christian life. (Citation: Martin E. Marty in Context (Sept. 15,1992). Christianity Today, Vol. 37, no. 3).

Today we are gearing everything to short attention spans of the listeners. We use television to gage our attention span. I do not think we should use television as the measure of all attention spans. I have heard people of all ages listen for hours as a speaker or two gives them stories, harangues, and gives them marching orders for their various causes. And they would listen for every word.

Could it be that the attention span problem for sermons is that the setting is too much like a television-viewing setting that calls for passivity? If the church became a movement again, and if we felt a life-and-death urgency about getting the message out and getting it right, we would probably not be discussing how long we should go on. (Martin E. Marty in Context (Sept. 15,1992). Christianity Today, Vol. 37, no. 3).

A man said his young son asked what the highest number I had ever counted to was. I didn't know, but I asked about his highest number. It was 5,372. "Oh," I said. "Why did you stop there?" "Church was over."

John Rosemond, a funny nationally syndicated columnist—and also a family psychologist—likes to take unusual informal polls of parents. Whenever he's in a foreign culture, he'll ask parents, "Do your kids complain about boredom?" Without exception he's always been told no outside of this country. In fact, parents in other cultures look at him with incredulity, as if to say: Boredom and kids just don't go together!

Rosemond also likes to question parents who raised their kids in the forties and fifties. He asks: "When you were raising your kids back then, did you hear them complain about boredom?" The typical response: "Rarely."

In another of his little surveys, Rosemond asks middle-aged parents, "How many toys did you have growing up?" The answers range from zero to ten, but mostly these folks respond with something like, "Toys? We took a cardboard box, and we made something out of it." In contrast, Rosemond says the typical American child of five years of age has accumulated 250 toys! Now, since five-year-olds have only lived for 260 weeks, they're apparently accumulating almost one toy per week. They're bored.

Today, it is not only the children that are bored. The parents share in that boredom. It is difficult for the church to fill the boredom, because it a problem of the heart that only God can fix. But we must be willing to allow him to fix. God is present. He wants to do more than cover our shame that results from our looking for something to do while we are bored. His powerful presence is available, but are we available?

Enthusiasm and excitement come from within. It's an internal disposition, and we know it. We just don't live as if we know it.

Psalms 51:1-6
"For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.

Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.
Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are proved right when you speak
and justified when you judge.
Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.

Surely you desire truth in the inner parts;
you teach me wisdom in the inmost place" (NIV).

This psalm speaks of wisdom and truth that rules the heart. David was facing the truth about himself in these words. If we want to receive God’s blessings, we must be honest with him about ourselves and our sins.

"Ifs" and "buts" are used to hide our sins. If we say we have no sin we make God out to be a liar. We are like Adam and Eve; we have all kinds of "ifs" and "buts" to cover our own sinful behavior.

"If I hadn’t been abused as a child, I wouldn’t have a bad temper."

Past mistreatment and hardship that was difficult to bear may have caused you to have a bad attitude, but you don’t have to use it as an excuse to stay that way.

Many are sexually, verbally and emotionally abused, but this doesn’t mean that we have to choose a self-destructive lifestyle. It is odd that we may admit that a certain thing we do is terribly wrong, but we turn right around and say "but" this is why I am the way I am.

"If my children would help me more, I would act better."

"If my husband didn’t play so much golf on Saturdays, I wouldn’t get so upset with him."

"If my husband would talk to me more, I wouldn’t be so lonely."

"If my husband gave me more presents, I wouldn’t be so negative."

"If I didn’t have to work, I wouldn’t be so tired and cranky."

When you quit work you begin saying, "If I could just get out of the house more, I wouldn’t be so bored."

"If only we had more money. . ."

"If we owned our own home…"after you get a home you say, "If we just didn’t have so many bills…"

"If we had better neighbors or different friends…"

Conclusion:

We may not be living in the Sinai Dessert, but many of us have developed a wilderness mentality as we seek to deal with our circumstances. There are many things we can learn from Israel's wilderness mentality.

"Ifs" and "buts" turned an eleven day trip to the Promised Land into a 40 year journey.

If you can force yourself to look back on Israel’s wilderness journey, as your mind stands atop the ruins of Jericho, you understand how foolish all their "ifs" and "buts were. They are just as foolish today.

To admit that our lives are not right and then use our past difficulties an excuse for our failures is not God’s way of facing the truth. "Ifs" and "buts" cannot bring justification. We can only be made right by the blood of Jesus—not by excuses.

Truth is the only thing that will set us free from the enslavement of our "ifs" and "buts". Satan wants to keep us in the dark. God wants to bring us to the light.