Go Away From God

In this sermon the preacher examines the story of Abraham’s journey to Egypt as a warning about what it means to turn away from God. Beginning with Genesis 12:7‑13, he recounts how Abraham, after receiving promises of land and blessing, faced a famine and chose to seek physical provision in Egypt rather than trusting God’s provision. The speaker argues that this “going down” represents a spiritual descent, illustrating a loss of faith, holiness, self‑lessness, honesty, and influence. He traces Abraham’s rationalizations and deceit, showing how fear and selfishness led him to lie about Sarah, inviting divine judgment and worldly rebuke. The message then broadens the lesson to the life of the church and the nation, warning that when believers or societies abandon trust in God and rely on their own resources, they become fearful, cowardly, and vulnerable to ridicule. The preacher urges listeners to live by faith, honesty, and self‑respect, emphasizing that true strength comes from dependence on God even amid trials. He concludes with a prayer for integrity, faithfulness, and a witness that points others to Christ rather than drawing them away.

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Houston's First Baptist Church is a relevant biblical community where we gather our hearts, grow our souls and give our lives as we seek to fulfill the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20). This podcast provides weekly messages from Pastor Gregg Matte and others. Visit us at HoustonsFirst.org to learn more about HFBC, and visit us in person the next time you're in Houston!

This morning I'm preaching on the subject, what it means to go away from God. Tonight's subject, what it means to come back to God. All of our choirs will be singing. A great Thanksgiving musical extravaganza has been planned. And if you enjoyed the music of the revival, especially the great music of the last night, you know what our choirs will mean to us. And you'll want to be here for that very wonderful service this evening. Now, if you have your Bibles this morning, I direct your attention to the book of Genesis, chapter 12, verse number 7. Genesis 12, verse number 7. And the Lord appeared unto Abram and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land. And there built he an altar unto the Lord who appeared unto him. And he removed from thence unto a mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west and Hai on the east. And there he built an altar unto the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord. And Abraham journeyed, going on still toward the south. 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 Sarah, his wife, Behold now, I know that thou art a fair woman to look upon. Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, This is his wife. And they will kill me, but they will save thee alive. Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister, that it may be well with me for thy sake, or because of thee. And my soul shall live because of thee. And it came to pass, that when Abram came, was come into Egypt, the Egyptians beheld the woman, that she was very fair. The princes also of Pharaoh saw her, and commended her before Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. And he entreated Abram well for her sake. And he had sheep, and oxen, and he asses, and men servants, and maid servants, and she asses, and camels. And the Lord plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarah, Abram's wife. And Pharaoh called Abram and said, What is this that thou hast done unto me? Why didst thou not tell me that she was thy wife? Why, saidst thou, she is my sister? So I might have taken her to be, to wife. Why, now therefore, behold thy wife, take her, and go thy way. And Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him, and they sent him away, and his wife, and all that he had. Every great patriarch in the Bible is known for something. Adam is known as the first man. Enoch is known for his walk with God. We remember Noah for the ark. When we think of Jeremiah, we remember him as the weeping prophet. Isaiah as the silver -tongued orator. David is remembered for his music. Samson for his strength. Abraham was remembered for his faith. He was indeed to be called the father of the faithful. And yet when Abraham faced his first test of faith, the Bible tells us that he failed miserably. And yet God, in his loving care and compassion, used his mistakes to make of him what he had intended to be. And it is important to note that he never made those same mistakes again. God had called Abraham to go into a country he had not seen, to possess a land of which he knew nothing. And he had promised him, I will bless those that bless thee. I will curse them that curse thee. I will make of thee a great nation. And I will give unto thee a great land, a great heritage, a great possession, a great future. All were the promises of God to Abraham. Abraham went in faith. Now as soon as he had possessed the land to where God had directed him, he built an altar at Bethel and acknowledged his dependence upon God. The Bible says immediately thereafter that the Lord allowed a famine to come in the land. Now perhaps it was to be some kind of curse upon Pharaoh. Perhaps it was merely a natural phenomenon. but we may be sure that there is probably a spiritual reason for the famine to come, because God's man is there. And where God's man and God's people are, circumstances seldom by accident happen. Usually one can see the hand of God in the total plan of God when God moves in connection with his people and his men. The famine caused Abraham to leave the land. I believe that it was the first test of his faith. God had promised him abundance and provision, but instead there was famine. Now, instead of trusting God, instead of depending on God, instead of staying there and allowing his faith to be tested by relying upon the promises of God, he made a physical provision for what was a spiritual need. The Bible says that Abraham left the land and went down into Egypt. Every time the Bible speaks of someone going down, the Bible says that Jonah caught a ship going down to Tarsus. The disciples went down to the Sea of Tiberias. They always go away from the Lord. David looked down from his rooftop. The expression down always means that one goes away from God. For when a man goes away from God, the only way that he can go is down. It is of significance to note, I think, that in tonight's message, the Bible says he went back up out of Egypt and back to Bethel. Now, Egypt in the Bible is always symbolic of the world. It pictures the love of the world and the love of sin. God had brought him to a high plane of spiritual relationship with himself, but now God would test his faith, would allow some difficulties to come into his life that he might have to totally depend upon God. The test of a good man is not how many problems he has in life, but how he reacts to those problems. The Lord wanted to give him a PhD in the University of Hard Knocks up there in Canaan. He was going to make something out of him. He was going to teach him to trust him. He was going to teach him to cast his burdens upon him. He was going to teach him to believe in God through the famine as well as through prosperity. But Abraham fails the first test, and he leaves the plains in which his spiritual relationship to God was to strengthen his life for a great life of faith, and immediately went down into sin, down into the world, down into Egypt to there find provision for his spiritual needs. There were well -watered plains in Egypt. Egypt was blessed with prosperity. Egypt had plenty. And so many of us today, rather than depending on God and trusting God when God brings adversity and allows difficulties to come into our life to test us and to try us to make us strong for our own good, to give us legs that will walk and faith that will survive and a constitution that will consist and exist and persist, go into the world and go away from God to make a physical provision for what God wanted to do in a spiritual need. What does it mean to go away from God? Well, it means several things. First of all, it means to lose your faith. He ran, he ran from God, he left the Lord, he lost faith and trusted sight. And when a church or a nation or a man begins to trust in himself rather than in God, that nation, that church, that man is going to be in great difficulty. It is most important that a church live on faith. It is most important that a man live on faith. Some years ago, our denomination had as its slogan in attempting to underwrite all of their institutions and schools financially, endow or die, endow or die. We must have money in the bank. We must underwrite our schools or we have no future. I personally took great exception with that. I believe evangelize or die, preach or die, win or die, believe or die, but certainly not endow or die. He merely lost his faith and began walking in sight. And God had to sorely try him and teach him some lessons from which he would never recover. And that was that God must be trusted. Ladies and gentlemen, it is impossible for you to have a happy life, to be satisfied with your Christian experience, to have peace of mind unless you trust God on an even keel when it's right or when it's wrong, when it's bright or when it's dark, when you are well as well as when you are sick. The Bible says without faith, without faith, it is totally impossible to please God. He must be honored in faith. And when problems come, when difficulties come, when trials come that cause us to not know where the next meal is coming from, where the next payment is coming from, where the next opportunity or the next job is coming from, I'm pleased. God is pleased. We must live on faith. Now for the first time in many years, the First Baptist Church has spent all of her reserve. We're broke. We're down to zero. I'm glad. I mean that with all of my heart. Now we're not going to go into a great program of deficit spending, but we must live in faith. And God is honored when his people believe him in faith. Secondly, it means when one goes away from God to lose his holiness. This man lost that vibrant, clean relationship with God because he sinned. He sinned. I want you to notice that he planned to sin. If you will look over again in chapter 12, verse 11, he says, therefore it shall come to pass when the Egyptians shall see, see thee, they shall say, this is thy wife and they will kill me. And so he plans and plots what he's going to do. Now, Abram did not casually fall into sin. He planned to sin. He made up his mind to sin. He connived to sin. And so step by step, first of all, he quit trusting God. He quit believing God with his physical provision. And then he, he blatantly opposed God and planned to sin. He got Sarah, his wife and he cooked up a scheme. He said, now this man, Pharaoh is a big, pompous, fleshly man. And when he sees you, you will be conscripted into his harem. And so let's make up a lie. Let's tell him that you're my sister. And then he will heap favor on me. He will court my favor and try to win you. But if he knows you're my wife, he'll slay me and take you. They planned to sin. Now it was to be sure a half truth. For while it was very common in those days, he was married literally to his half sister. And so she was his sister in a sense, but she was primarily his wife and the progression of sin unfolds. They connived together purposely to sin. Now I cannot imagine that having come from this beautiful experience with God, that he sat down the first day and said, I think I'll sin. No, there was an intermediary step between the right relationship to God and overt sin against God. That was the step of faithlessness. When he quit believing God, when he quit trusting God, the devil had taken him a step away from God. And the next step was open defiance of the will of God. He planned to lie. You say, preacher, are there degrees of sin? The Bible says some shall be beaten with few stripes, some with many. Speaking of perhaps symbolically of retribution in the next life. But I believe the Bible teaches degrees of punishment. That would suggest to me that there are degrees of sin. Now first degree murder simply means that one premeditates to murder. This was a first degree sin. The Bible says if we sin willfully, if we plan to sin, if we connive to sin, there remaineth no more transgression for sin. I don't know what that means, but I know it would be a dangerous thing for a man to find out. The Bible tells us that when men sin, if you see your brother overtaken in a sin, pray for him, restore him, suggesting that there are willful sins that people blatantly go into in which they are to be left alone. It may lead to the sin and to death. He was on dangerous ground because he was, as they say, not snuck up on. He planned to sin. He didn't yield gradually. He connived for his own selfish hide how he could save his life. Now the third word is this. To go away from God means to lose your selflessness. He became interested only in himself and pride entered in. There was loss of faith, loss of holiness, and loss of concern for others. Listen to what he says in the 13th verse. Say, I pray thee, when you get down into Egypt, Sarah, that thou art my sister, that it may be well with me for thy sake, and my soul shall live because of thee. Well, poo -poo. What about poor Sarah? Just let her go on in the harem. Let Sarah hang. But it will be well with me because of thee. Oh, how far this man went. And when we leave God out, when we sin against God, when we disbelieve God, when we make physical provision for spiritual need, when we lose our faith, we become very, very selfish. Abraham, the patriarch. Abraham, the conqueror. Abraham, man of God. Abraham, soldier and conqueror and hero. Saying, you just get what's coming to you, but you'll protect me, and I shall live, and it shall be well with me. What a shame for a man to get so selfish that he will sacrifice others for himself. You let selfishness come into a marriage, and you kill a marriage. Let selfishness come into a church, and you kill a church. Let selfishness come into a home, and you kill a home. He became selfish. And then the Bible tells us that to become, to go away from God is to lose your heart. He became afraid. He became afraid. He was heartless. Now, why should he be afraid? He had seen God do marvelous things, but he was afraid. He was cowing before this man, and I can believe that this was probably the lowest point of his life when, shivering and alone and afraid, this poor man lost his nerve. He should have walked in there hand in hand with God in the midst of the problem and never worried, but he was afraid. And the world mocks at a cowed Christian. I think of the apostle Paul when he said, I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. And I am more than conqueror through him. There is a red -blooded Christian patriotism through all of the word of God of men who trusted and believed the Lord. But this man, now without faith, now without self -respect, now without holiness, became a coward and cowed before his wife and his family and the world and Pharaoh. Let's go back. What was the second thing that happened? Faithlessness led to sin and sin led to selfishness and selfishness led to cowardice. Sin, it's always there. When this nation of ours was first founded, she was a brave, courageous country. We were also a very godly country. I think of men like Washington kneeling in the snow and praying to God and with hearts filled with courage defying the British Empire and declaring war and declaring their independence. Then, as this nation builded, as she went from discovery and development to cultivation and colonization, as she went to leisure and luxury and now approaches destruction and annihilation, as she went away in sin, as she forgot God to that degree, this great country has become afraid. In the First World War, the Second World War, we haven't gone as far away as we are from God and it didn't take us long to stand up and be counted and declare war on our enemies. I remember a few years ago when they went down in there into Cuba and they rattled a few missiles at us. It took us days to finally get up the courage that, well, we guess we'd put up a blockade and hope as we stood cowering in our boots and shaking in our socks that we could get away with it. And less than two years ago, a little third -rate country like the Republic of North Korea walks in and takes the Pueblo, and we did absolutely nothing about it. What's happened? Why is America afraid? We should have walked in there and said, we'll take that back, thank you, but we didn't. Why are we afraid? Because America is no longer afraid of God. She doesn't trust God. Consequently, she is afraid of man. Oh, I'd like to see young men and young women on high school and college campuses, right with God, pure at heart, standing against the mob, against the crowd, against the tide of popular opinion and businessmen, against the tide of business associates, of the liquor industry, of a cocktail party, of whatever it takes, to say, I don't care about my job. I don't care about what you think. I don't care about a promotion. I don't care about a sale. I'm not afraid. I trust God. I'm a Christian first. But to the degree a man goes away from God, to that degree he becomes afraid. And the world laughs. And the world scoffs. And the world mocks at a Christian that's afraid. It means to lose your heart. The fifth word is this. To go away from God means to lose your honesty. He lied. And he lied sorely, the word of God says. Now the last thought is this. It means to lose your influence. He lost the respect that the world had for him. The Bible tells us that the plagues came. And in the 17th and 18th verses, Pharaoh, I wonder how he knew. I wonder how Pharaoh understood that the curses, the plagues of God upon his life, were because he had the wife of this Christian man. Who told him? Could it be that the worldly man, the lost man, was now closer to God, than the Christian man? Oh, what a shame. When the world has to rebuke the Christian. When the world has to rebuke the church. What a pity. Listen as he calls Abraham in. And says, What is this that thou hast done? Why have you lied? Why did you not tell me she was thy wife? I am honest. I would not have taken her. I would not have done that. I think that this is one of the low points in the Bible. When the world rebukes the church. When the Christian is rebuked by the lost man. When Abraham is rebuked by a lost, evil, wicked Pharaoh. And when you go from God in faith. Through sin. Through dishonesty. Through loss of self -respect. Through lying. Down to the very bottom of the ladder. Where the world is mocking you. Where the world laughs at you. As they did of Samson as he ground and ground. And there in the grinding, blinding, end time experience of his life. When they laughed at him. As they did of David. As they did of Abraham. Believe you me. The world loves to dig the Christian. They love to find the flaw in our life. And point it out. And rebuke us. And I think that there is no more humbling, awesome, awful experience for a Christian. Than that the world would chastise us. And rebuke us for our dishonesty. And our lack of courage. And our lack of doing what's right. The church, unfortunately, thank God for this one. The church at large has been the last bastion against integration. We have been the last area to integrate. Politics, schools, the army, the world did it before we did it. And what should be the most beautiful, perfect melting pot of all races and all backgrounds and all climes and all kinds of people has been the object and the church's influence has been hurt because we have been the object of ridicule and pressure. We should have been pressuring the world to integrate. But the world had to pressure the church to integrate. For shame. For shame. 1968, I think it was, Senator McClellan was investigating in one of those subcommittees in Congress the Black Rangers in Chicago. He was interviewing the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church who had harbored them. And I'm not hunting Presbyterians this morning. I've got enough trouble with the Baptists. If I ever get them straightened out, I'll spend my next life working on the Presbyterians. But he said, Sir, did you take these people in and harbor them against the law? He said, We did. Did you tell them how to get guns? And the pastor said, We did, sir. And Mr. McClellan said, And did you tell them about their rights? We did. Did you tell them how they could evade the draft? We did. Did you care for them in that way? Did you pit them against what the law said? We did. And did you feed them? We did. Did you give them clothes? We did. We did all of that. He said, Sir, did you ever pray with them? He said, No. Did you ever read the Bible to them? No. Did you ever have a prayer meeting? We never had a prayer meeting. Did it ever occur to you to have a prayer meeting? He said, No, it never did. That was a sad day in the history of Christianity. And it is a sad day in a man's life. And it can come to that when, first of all, remember, leaving God in faith, the pitfalls of Satan's snare lead us downward in the quagmire of sin until the Christian hits rock bottom and the world mocks at him and rebukes him. When you hit there, you hit the bottom. That's a little bit of what it means to go away from God. I encourage you that you will love the Lord. That you, in faith and integrity, will demonstrate your faith by your tithe and your faithfulness and your witness and your fidelity to our Christ and his church every day. May that it may never be said of the church, of you personally, that Christian, that church is wrong. May our lives with honesty, with dependability, with self -respect, with truthfulness, with consistency, and with faith. May our lives with faith honor our Lord and live lives that will not go away from God. Let us be a mirror, imaging, reflecting, and pointing men to Christ rather than a bad advertisement drawing men from him. Shall we stand and pray together? Our Father, none of us would ever want to be in that position where we are rebuked by the world. Where they point the accusing finger and say, so you're a Christian. Why do you sin? Why are you prejudiced? Why are you tight? Why are you drunk? Why do you live this way? Why do you lie? Oh, that would surely quicken our hearts. As when the prophet said of David, thou art the man, and crushed him with him. Dear Lord, there is no need for any of us to ever get in that condition. If we shall love thee in faith and stay close to thee, we can live lives that honor thee. Grant, oh God, that we may so do. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.