The book of Genesis, chapter twelve, called attention to the references that have been placed on the board. Don't let it bother me if I've got different ones from yours. I tried to find places where these particular words are used that have to do with someone being out of touch with the Lord or being restored. Now there are many other occurrences for some of these, but these are the ones I have. The main thing is that you find something that would fit some way with it. I'm not going to embarrass you by asking again how many did you did not look them up, but I was encouraged that some said they did anyway. And I'm encouraged to see that you came back more. It shows that you either have a pretty tough hide or no conscience. I'm not sure which. some kinds of preachings don't bother some kinds of people. But some people are bothered by any kind of preaching. I've noticed that oftentimes the people who suffer the most from corrective type of ministry are people who seem to need it the least. That I can't figure out either. Either there's some observations that I've made as I've gone along. Now, this is the middle one of the seven abjectors. The schedule is as follows. Tonight we shall be seeking on restoration of a family next Sunday evening, departure in a local church. And that is in preparation for the meeting a week from tonight when we'll be taking up restoration of a local church. You see, restoration is not only individual matter and a family matter, but then it is an assembly matter, a church matter. And then finally, a week from next Sunday night, the last day of the month, how to avoid departure. I hope that they won't be as painful as the ones that we have already considered. Tonight we're going to look, first of all, at a representative family, the family of Abraham. Now there are many representative families. Abraham, by the way, is the one listed there in Genesis thirteen, Abraham's family, where they were strife in the family. And the word family includes more than just the immediate family, father, mother, and children. In this case, it included Lot's wife and Lot's wife and children, likely two, because they were all there together. Finally, Lot's family moved out, went down into Sodom. But they were relatives. He was a nephew to Abraham. It also included two wives where they should have only been ones. My God was dealing with Abraham and with Sarah and with Hagar and with Hagar's child. So there were at least two children in the family mentioned in this section. In fact, this family is pretty well outlined for us in chapters twelve through twenty-three. When you read Genesis, you ought to kind of read, think of them in sections. That is, you have the first twelve chapters, the first eleven chapters, gives you the history of about twenty-five hundred years from the creation until the time of Abraham, as near as we can think of. And then you have Abraham's family from Genesis twelve to twenty-three. And then after that, the emphasis is on Jacob's family, the end of the book. Now in the twelfth chapter of Genesis, you have this family brought to God. I'm not going to read a great deal, but let me just point out here three things. Verse one of chapter twelve, now the Lord had said unto Abram, notice he still spelled his name Abram here, which means a great father. Later on he was called the father of many nations, because God had given him a wider sphere than he had before. Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, and to the land that I will show thee. And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing. And I will bless them that blessed thee, and curse him that cursed thee, and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. So Abraham departed, as the Lord had spoken unto him, and Lot went with him. And Abram was seventy-five years old, when he departed out of Herod. Now, in the preceding chapter, he tells a little about his stop at Heron. Incidentally, Heron means halfway. And this is the problem of most of it. When we start to follow the Lord, we just get to Heron. We just get halfway. We're not willing to follow the Lord all the way. We're not willing to stick our necks out, as we say today. We're not willing to take risks. We're not willing to see our bridges burn behind us. And so he got as far as Heron, and there he held up. until finally the Lord took his father away from him, and then he got him on into the land. Notice that he listened to God's promises. The I-wills, many of these in Genesis and in Exodus, and the I-wills of the Lord were fulfilled, carried out to the very latter. Even though Abraham was very low to trust the Lord fully, later on you find him in at least two relapses. He got away from the Lord. And his faith failed, so he was a man of great faith. He's considered the father of the believers, father of the faithful. Now in verse six, it says, Abram passed through the land, that's the land of Canaan, under the place of Psychum, through the plain of Morah. And the Canaanite was then in the land. And the Lord appeared unto Abram and said, unto thy seed will I give this land? And there builded he an altar under the Lord, Jehovah, who appeared under him. And he removed from tents into a mountain in the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent. And notice these two nouns, an altar and a tent. These were characteristic of Abraham. Isaac was characterized by well. Jacob was characterized mostly by his distance from God and his failure. But the things we associate usually with him are flocks. While Joseph is associated with dreams. If these little handles will help you to remember the location and remember certain things about these people. And then an altar, of course, is for worship. And a tent is for a pilgrim. And Abraham was both a pilgrim and a worshiper. Now, a pilgrim without being a worshiper would just be another name for a trance, wasn't it? The difference between a tramp and a pilgrim is that the pilgrim is going some way. Somebody asked a tramp how he decided where to go when he got up in the morning. He said, well, I always start out with the wind in my back. You know, no sweat, no lather, no hard work. Just take it easy. That's the difference between a pilgrim and a tramp. You and I are pilgrims and we're going some way. Also, the difference between a pilgrim and a tramp is that a pilgrim is a worshiper. He has his eyes on the Lord. So you have this repeated in the thirteenth chapter in verse four. He comes back after he's been away from the Lord. He comes back to the altar. And then again in the last verse of chapter thirteen, he came to Hebron and built there an altar under the Lord. So Abraham was characterized by his pants and by his altar. And Abraham journeyed, going on still toward the south. Now verse ten marks the chain. What we've read so far tells us that here was a sinner, and he was a sinner. Abraham lived in Ur of the Chaldees, and the city of Ur had a huge temple erected to the moon goddess, and they worshipped the moon. And it was an immoral city, highly immoral city. There's nothing to suppose that Abraham was any different from the rest of the people that lived there. He was a sinner. He was called by grace. He was blessed by grace. No question in my mind, but that he was a sinner and an idolater. What the Lord called him. And he exercised faith in God and in his word. And the result is that he now establishes a home, a God-fearing home, with these two basic things established, an altar and a camp. Now, every Christian home, and I use the word advisedly, I don't believe that it's a Christian home because it's in a Christian country, because I don't believe there's any such thing as a Christian country. Certainly not the United States. We're listed with the United Nations. as a pagan country by our own decision, by our own choice. And I think that's shameful. But in any case, a Christian family is a family where the Lord is honored. Now, it may be a Christian family without both the parents and without any of the children being saved. We know this from the Sabbath chapter of First Corinthians, where he tells us that the believing, that the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife, and vice versa. And that means set apart to God. And if you happen to be the only Christian in your home, it can still be a Christian home, as far as you're concerned, you can do a great deal to establish a Christian home in dependence upon the Lord. While you may not influence the whole action of the family, you can wield a great influence, and I hope that you do. In talking about a family tonight, I want to keep this in mind, that we are talking about some families where all are not Christians. We're talking about other families where... It's not really a full family. One member of the family may be deceased. Or there may be an artificial family. It's a family. In any case, you know, Lydia, like you have no husband, I don't see any reason why she'd be down in Philippi running a business because she had a husband and a family at home, but she had a household. And the word household, as is used in the Bible, is used for all the people who are employed. as well as for all those who are related. So God looks at a family as embracing all of the people who live under a roof. Sometimes this could be a group of people who are living together. Sometimes it could be relatives. There may be a grandmother. And there may be a mother. There may be some children. There may be more than one set of siblings in that family. But it still can be looked on as a family. If you live together under one roof, you ought to be... If you believe as you ought to be living as a Christian family. Now the second stage of Abraham's life begins with verse ten. There was a famine in the land. Innocence is not holiness until it is tested. God put the man in the garden in innocence. When he was tested, he proved to be unholy and not holy. When you trust the Lord, you can be sure of one thing. Your faith is going to be tested. Your devotion to the Lord is going to be tested. You simply cannot live in this world without testing. It isn't that the devil is going to see that you get it alone. He will do that. But it's that God will see that you get it. Now God does not tempt men with evil, but he does test all of it. Later on God tested Abraham very severely by asking him to sacrifice his only son, his beloved son. And God is going to call on you with testing. You just as well expect this. Anybody can go on well as long as the winds in the south. But what are you going to do when the stormy north wind blows? That's the thing. Some people who made professions, the Lord Jesus said in telling the story of the sowing of the seed, he said that some of these, they fell on stony ground, they fell on thorny ground, and they fell on hard ground, unswowed ground, the wayside. And he tells about the springing up, but they bore no fruit because they had no root. You wouldn't know. I wouldn't know whether there's any reality about you or not until you're tested. And Abraham was tested. He was tested by a family. This is getting right down to the breadbasket. It's getting right down to where we live. The Lord's testing a lot of Christians right now with famines. And they're not all material famines either. Spiritual famines. What do you do when a spiritual famine hits? If you consider yourself a part of this assembly, what do you do when difficulty hits? You ask God, you cop out, what do you do? Do you stay and try to be of help to other believers? Do you weather it through and learn more about God? Well, these are tests. And you and I will face them. We will face them repeatedly. There was a famine in the land. And Abram went down into Egypt. Now, that's not only down because it's south. It's not only down because it's Lord. But it's down because it's down morally. He was going down in the Legion. He remembers that Samson went down. All these lifetimes, Samson went down. I think seven times in the story of Samson, he tells about he's going down. He was always going down. The only time he went up is when he died and they went down and carried his body back up. All the rest of the time he went down. The course of some Christians is down, away from God. And if you find that you're on a downward course, you need to get restored to the Lord, come back to him with honest confession and self-judgment, and then start back up. Abraham did that later. Now he went down into Egypt to sojourn there for the famine was grievous in the land. Now what happened when he went down into Egypt? Well, you read the whole story when you have time. First thing is he got caught in a real vine. He was afraid that somebody was going to kill him and get his beautiful wife. And she was a beautiful woman. He was afraid. Didn't he believe God? Sure, he believed God. Well, then how does it come that he's troubled with unbelief? That's because there are lots of unbelieving believers. And you're one of them. So am I. We are unbelieving believers. We believe God about our eternal salvation, but we don't believe God about our job. Many a young fellow has believed God about his salvation, but he couldn't believe God about life. So he went, I've got one from one of the Philistines. You see, it's so easy to get away from complete dependence upon God. A lot of people talk about preachers and missionaries living by faith. This is Ardegnaut and St. A missionary is no different from anybody else. Because the Lord has given the man the gift of preaching, it doesn't mean that he doesn't have the same difficulties, the same problems, the same temptations that everybody else has. This is what it says in the book of James about Elijah. He was a man of like passions as we are. Neither does men. Human beings are nothing more than human beings. And we all have the same problem. So you can't say, well, he's in full-time, quote, unquote, Christian work, therefore he should live by faith. I don't have to live by faith because I have a job. No, I'm saying. If you're living by faith just as much as anybody else, you could lose your job tomorrow. You could lose your health tomorrow. You can lose anything else you've got tomorrow. And when you lose things, that's when you have to know that you can lean back on God. And that's why he lets us lose them sometimes. So this man failed in trusting God, and he denied his wife. He lied, and then encouraged his wife to lie also. You see, you never sin alone. No man liveth to himself. No man dies to himself. When you do something wrong, almost invariably, you will mislead somebody else. And so, both of them were guilty of lying. And then finally, a heathen king, Pharaoh. had to admonish him, had to call him down. Think of this. A man who doesn't know God at all has to call down a believer because he doesn't trust his own God. Most of us would have been embarrassed by that more times than once. But another thing happened while he's down in Egypt. He acquired a slave girl. Now that in itself would not have been anything very strange because Abraham had a lot of servants. Some of them were bond servants at his place. Some of them were hired servants. He had enough servants that he could muster an army of over three hundred men from a money servant. Well, you know that he was a wealthy man, and he was a man of many servants. But he acquired one servant. He's been better off. He never had. He acquired a slave girl named Hager. She was an Egyptian. And later on, he married that woman at his wife's suggestion, and all kinds of difficulties ensued. In fact, this is what's happening today because the Arabs are descendants of Hagar. And what you have today going on in the land of Palestine and the animosity that has endured all these centuries began way back here when this man got away from God. If you and I just knew how much damage we're going to do by being away from the Lord for even a day or a week or a month, I think we'd think twice, wouldn't we? I think we'd get back to the Lord and say, Lord, Keep me from that. Don't let me go. Don't let me do what I would do naturally, because whenever I have my own way, I just spoil everything. So you have the famine in Egypt, but you have a return to the altar. And this is very wonderful. Verse thirteen, chapter thirteen, verse one. Abram went up out of Egypt. I don't know whether you marked your Bible or not. I use railroads. I marked two things and tied them together with a line. So I've got down in verse ten of the twelve chapter, and I've got up in verse one of the thirteen chapters tied together. That's a little dangerous when I marked my Bible like this. A young fellow was reading Bible through for the first time. He was a young fellow in one of the colleges. And when he read the page, he took a pencil and marked an X on it. The public said, what are we going to do that for? He said, John Walton always does that, but that's how he knows that you've already read that page. So I said, well, the straight man fell out, will you? I read that page every year now. I said, I've had the book. And sometimes more. So, explain to people if you happen to use railroad. That's what I have down here. So that I can connect it in my own mind. I see now he did go down, but thank God he went back up. Don't dwell on this mistake. Don't live on your past mistakes. Forgetting those things which are behind goes for failures as well as for successes. This is the new page. And don't dwell on the mistakes that you've made in the past. Don't say, well, I really must have back there. I get that. It's all over with now. The Lord never used me anymore. Well, of course he will. But he won't use you until he cleans you up. And if you're willing to confess that sin and judge yourself for it and forsake that sin, he'll take you up and he'll use you more mightily than he ever used you before. I'm sure of that. Now, it says that Lot was with him. He was just a hanger-on. And they went into the south of the country. And Abram was very rich in cattle and silver and gold. He went on his journeys from the south even to Bethel, which means the house of God, under the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Hei, under the place of the altar, which he had made there at the first. And there Abram called on the name of the Lord. So restoration is getting back to where you were at the first. That doesn't mean you have to stay there, but it means that when you're restored to the Lord, then you're ready to start out from there. Zero Jack Charles, who was preaching when I got saved, and then spent ten years away from the Lord, came back to the Lord, was used mightily of the Lord for a number of years, passed away when he was visiting us here, and his body was buried out here in Evergreen Cemetery, and the Christian known for children on the plot. man that we appreciated very, very much, and a very humble man because of his ten years of being away from the Lord. He never was able to forget that. He always remembered his own failure. He said that when he got away from the Lord, there was a common expression that was used quite a bit around Kansas City where he lived, and he said half a dozen people said the same thing to him. They said, well, Jack, if you get off the track, you got to go back and get on where you got off. He said, I didn't have this last idea where I got off. You don't know where you've got away from the Lord. Getting away from the Lord is not just one act, one snap judgment, one particular word, one particular act. It's never that. It's a series of things. You get away so gradually. It's so insidious. You're a little farther away today than you were yesterday, and a little farther away tomorrow than you are today. And then all of a sudden, some catastrophe overtakes you and says, I've had it. I'm away from the Lord. Now, how are you going to go back and get on where you got off? Well, you can't. Whoever gave him that advice didn't give him good advice at all. After ten years, somebody had the good sense to say to him, well, Jack, the Bible says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. And the cleanse of small and righteousness. And Jack said, I never told him that. I knew that sin. And I had a whole sack out in my mind. And I got along with the Lord and cried my heart out to him, told him these things that I've done. And when I confessed the sins, he did exactly what he promised to do. So it's not a matter of getting back on the track. It's a matter of confessing your sins. And then you will find yourself back where you were at the beginning, in fellowship with the Lord. And from there you can move on. Now, Lot disappears for a while in this chapter. He gets into trouble. And that's because he lifted up his eyes in verse ten and beheld all the plain of Jordan. And look what he liked about that. The end of verse ten says, Even as the Garden of the Lord... like the land of Egypt. You see, he had been down in Egypt, and he liked Egypt. And this looked like Egypt, and he said, I'll take some more of Egypt. Egypt is a picture of the world. Now, here is a man who gets away from the Lord so far that he never gets back. I wouldn't have known that Watt was a righteous man if I didn't have any history. He passed some scriptures, telling me so. But he was. The Bible says he was. So you've got two in this family now, one who gets restored, and one who just dressed and dressed and dressed until finally... He dies in disgrace and left a progeny that also causes so many of Israel all sorts of difficulties. The Moabites and the Ammonites were his descendants. And all kinds of harm came from this. Well, now, this section that we're reading in now, chapters twelve, the beginning of verse ten, and through chapter fourteen, tells us about getting away from God, what we would call... departure and restoration, the subject that we're talking about in this series. Departure and restoration are well covered in this section. Now when you get to the end of chapter fourteen, you have Abraham meeting with the high priest, Melchizedek, and being blessed richly by the Lord. This is one of the happy things about restoration, brothers and sisters, when you get back in touch with the Lord. you know the joy of the presence of our great high priest. For you know our high priest is the Lord Jesus. And when he was restored to the Lord and happy in the Lord, the high priest was able to reveal to him God in a new way. For he never had known God as the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth before. He was never mentioned to that name before. But now he's learned about him in a new way. And he's been fed and strengthened, fed with bread and wine by the high priest, and strengthened. And... He has been able to overcome temptation. He had a stronger temptation here at the end of chapter fourteen than he had in chapter twelve. But the difference is that he met this temptation in touch with the Lord. And you and I could meet every temptation in touch with the Lord. We can meet our high priest every morning before we start out. And we ought to. It's just rank and seat, not to. But when we meet the Lord and when we're in touch with him and he reveals to us what we're going to need of the person and work of God that day, then We can meet the temptation and it will just fall flat on the face as it did here. Now in chapter fifteen through eighteen you have some other things happening here. Look at chapter fifteen in verse one. After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision saying, Fear not, Abram. I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward. And Abram said, And he didn't call him Jehovah. The King James Version, I like it for this, is for no other reason. They always print Jehovah with caps, all capital letters. In this case, the word is Adonai, which means master. If he had only remembered that God was Jehovah, the great covenant-keeping God, it might have saved him more trouble than simply thinking of him as master. Now, we ought to remember that God is Lord. And we ought to call him master. The Lord said to the disciples, You call me Master and Lord. You say, Well, that's all I am. If I, therefore, you are Lord and Master, and wash your feet, you ought to wash one another's feet. And so he said, Now, Master, God, what will thou give me? Seeing I go childless, and the steward in my house is this Eleazar of Damascus. What's he suggesting? He's suggesting, since he doesn't have a son, it's perfectly legitimate to take his servants and make him his son. In other words, Abraham is thought of a way to help God out. Now, if he told him Jehovah, he would have known he didn't need to help God out. He'd known that God was well in control of the situation. It's when we get out of touch with the Lord and we fail to appreciate who he is, that we begin to try to help him out. Now, the second thing that he did to help God out was when Sarah, in the sixteenth chapter, took her handmaid, now Sarah, Abram's life, bearing no children, verse one of sixteen. She had a name made, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar. And Sarah said unto Abram, Behold now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing. I pray thee go into my maid. It may be that I may obtain children by her. This would be legitimate, too. She was enslaved, therefore her children would be Sarah's children. And Abram harkened to the voice of Sarah. And Sarah Abram's wife took Hagar her maid, the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife. Now this was not God's order from the beginning. The Lord's order is monogamy. That's not monotony. That's monogamy. Monogamy is the opposite of polygamy. God never intended that there be two lives or more for one husband. The Lord never intended that this order of things which were so prevalent in the Old Testament and even godly men like David and Solomon to begin with was a godly man and most of the kings of Judah, even those who were godly. tell him to the same thing. It was never God's order. Now, while the Lord didn't give a specific commandment against it until later, still they should have known that this was God's order and they should have abided in the order that he had given. One of the mistakes that we make is that we don't find thou shalt or thou shalt not in the Bible, then we assume it's all right to go ahead and do it. This is one of the surest ways of getting out of touch with the Lord. assuming because it isn't openly condemned. Some years ago there was a man in Kansas City and he had a kind of a bad habit. And so he said to one of the preachers we had at the Kansas City Conference, he said, is there anything in the Bible against this particular habit that he had? And the man saw you pretty belligerent. He was spoiling for a bite. So he said to him, well, I can't think of any scripture against it. That's right. No scripture against it, huh? Nothing says I can't do it. He said, I can't think of anything right. In fact, the only scripture I can think of that seems to indicate that it's all right. He said, give me that scripture. He said, well, it's the one in Revelation that says, we'll have him with a selfie. He'd be selfie still. And the fellow just turned on his heel and walked away. And a week or two later, he came to this man. He lived that game. He said, he came to this man. He said, you sure as far left for me. He said, I just couldn't go ahead with that habit after you told me that scripture. Now, of course, that scripture had nothing to do with that habit, but it was I think it was a well-placed arrow, and it got to him. All right, now, he's made the second mistake in this section here, and this is self-assertion. Now, what's going to happen as a result of all this? Well, this section, I said, goes over to the eighteenth chapter. But I want you to look in chapter seventeen. When Abram was ninety years old and nine, now notice he was seventy when he came into the land. The Lord told him that he was going to give him his son. Now, twenty-nine years later, And the old man is ninety-nine years old. And his wife is ninety. And he says, What's the matter? The Lord hasn't done his job. The Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, I am the almighty God. If I haven't done what I said, it wasn't because I couldn't. And if God hasn't done what you expected him to do, it wasn't because it couldn't. It's because it wasn't his time. Or it's because you didn't allow him. You know, the Lord would do a great deal more for us if we would allow him to. And I use that term respectfully. If you and I are not willing for God to do for us, he can wait. The trouble is we can't. Time is getting away from us. We're losing time because we do not allow God to do. I am the Almighty God. Walk before me and be thou perfect. This means... Be a whole person. Be a sincere, upright person. And I will make my covenant between me and thee. It will multiply thee exceedingly. And Abram fell on his face and God talked with him. And then he gives him the terms of the covenant. And here you have another set of I-wills beginning with verse six. And all of these I-wills are fulfilled and will be fulfilled in the future day when God gives the earth to Israel as their possession forever. Now in chapter eighteen the Lord appeared to him in the flames of memory. I should say that in the end of the seventeenth chapter Abraham and all of his men, his servants as well as his children, or his sons, accepted the rite of circumcision which was the seal of the covenant. It was given especially to the children of Abraham and the children of Israel as a sign of the covenant. That's why it is not enjoined upon Christians as a covenant sign. Now in chapter eighteen, the Lord appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre, and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day. He lifted up his eyes and looked, and lo, three men stood by him. When he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door and bowed himself toward the ground, and said, My Lord, and this is simply a general term, Master, it actually was Jehovah, one of them. If now I have found favor in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from my servant. And he offers them to bring something that they may eat. And Sarah prepares a meal. And then after they have eaten, they said to him, verse nine, where is Sarah thy wife? And he said, behold, in the tent. And he said, they said, where is thy wife? He said, that is, the Lord said, I will certainly return unto thee according to the time of life. and lo, Sarah, thy wife, shall have a son. And Sarah heard it in the tent door which was behind me. Now Abraham and Sarah were old and well-stricken in age, and it ceased to be with Sarah after the man or women. Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old, shall I have pleasure, my Lord, being old also? The Lord said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh? Notice this is the word Jehovah. Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I have surely bear a child with the moles? Is anything too hard for Jehovah? This is the one who said, I am the Almighty God. Oh, brothers and sisters, if you get hold of this tonight, it'll serve you all your life. It'll be a blessing to you in every circumstance that comes to you. We must get our eyes about things about us. We must get our eyes about our own ability. We must get our eyes about the ability of others. We must look up and see nothing is too hard for the Lord. Well, So his self-assertion now takes a lesser place, and there is renewal, and Eleazar is left aside, and Hagar is left aside. The covenant is entered into, and in this section you have a number of names. I've mentioned Jehovah, and I've mentioned the Almighty, and we get some other names here. Abraham is given a new name. In this section, that's in verse five of the seventeenth chapter, neither shall I name anymore be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham." And then he gave Sarah a new name that was really Sarah before, and he called her Sarah, which means a princess. And the new name has brought us into a position where we now understand that God is in control. In the twenty-fifth verse of chapter eighteen, Abraham said, "'Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?' So he recognizes that God is not only Almighty, He is not only the covenant keeping God, but he is the judge. Now once you put God in his right place, you put yourself in your right place. And so we have now a man in touch with the Lord and in a happy position. Now wouldn't it be nice if we could stop there? No, we can't. Because in the following chapters, eighteen through twenty-three, you have a relapse before they reach maturity. And the relapse came. In chapter nineteen, you have Lot down in Sodom, and judgment brought upon that place. And then in chapter twenty, it says, An Abraham journeyed from France toward the south country, and dwelt between Kadesh and Shur, and sojourned in Girar, which was adjoining the land. And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, she is my sister. The same old malarkey. Do we never learn anything? It seems that we don't. I should have graduated long, long ago. I had to go back and take kindergarten over. What's wrong with it? Well, there's just one thing, brothers and sisters, and that is that we are totally dependent upon God. When we forget this, we're as weak as life. Samson was the strongest man on earth. as long as he kept his hair. But when he sinned against God, lost his Masoretic ship, he was just like any other man. I don't like these pictures of Samson and Shogun with great, big, bulging muscles. Nobody would need to ask a man like that, where his great strength lie. You know, that's what they said. Where is that great strength lie? Samson didn't have any bigger muscles than anybody else. He had God. And when he didn't have God, he didn't have anything. And neither we. I say, don't have God. I don't mean that we lose our salvation. I don't mean that he isn't our father. I mean that we're not drawing any strings. We're out of touch with him. And so he sins against the Lord, exactly as he did down in Egypt. Now, I mentioned this before, and I want to say it again. It isn't enough to confess our sins. We are told to do that, but we are also told to judge ourselves. First Corinthians, if we would judge ourselves, you see, Abraham had to confess the sin of lying after he was down in Egypt. But if he had judged himself for the reason for that sin of lying, which was that he couldn't trust God, he got his eyes off the Lord. See? If he had really understood this and had judged himself, he wouldn't have gone back to do the same sin over again. The reason you and I are living on an elevator up and down and up and down and up and down, we're not making any progress is because we don't get to the root of the matter. We don't get into the presence of God and confess the real cause for our sins. Abraham would say, I lied. But he should have said, I lied because I didn't trust God. I lied because I wanted to take things out of God's hand. Well, anyway, there is a relapse. But it's short-lived, and God even speaks for him. And God restores him even in the eyes of the man. Verse seven, now therefore restore. He said to Abimelech, Restore the man his wife, for he is a prophet. And he shall pray for thee. Now that shows that there's real restoration, doesn't it? When Job got restored to the Lord, what did God ask Job to do? Pray for a key friend. If you can't pray for your friends, you aren't restored. Do you hear me? If you can't pray for your friends, you aren't restored. If you look upon the Lord's people with criticism, if you're harsh in your judgment of others, there is not restoration. Because restoration leads to prayer and to intercession. Now, when he got straightened out with the Lord, Isaac was born. And Isaac means laughter. Not only did Sarah laugh because she didn't believe, but when he was born, they both laughed because now they did believe. There's unholy laughter and there's holy laughter, you know. The Lord will make you laugh. He'll give you something to really laugh about. He'll give you something to make you happy. And he does it by fulfilling the promises. And it took a long, long time to get Abraham and Sarah in conditions where God could do what he wanted to do for them. And so Isaac is brought in. And then Ishmael and the slave girl wife are cast out. Now this may seem harsh, do you? But under the law, not under the law, but they were not under the law in the sense of Moses' law. But under the Old Testament economy, there was no other way to do this. And actually she was pretty close to home. She came from Egypt. It was not very far for her to go on back down to Egypt anyway. And he gave her the provision that she needed. And then later on he gave to all of his sons some portion of his wealth, but the most of it to Isaac. So it was much better that they be put away. And in the New Testament there's an allegory made of this in the book of Galatians, and he tells us that Hagar is a picture of the law and of an attempt to salvation by the law, while Sarah is a picture of the New Jerusalem of the new family, the family of God. and of the church and of blessing by grace. Well, then, at the close of this, at the end of chapter twenty-three, you have a very peaceful story. Chapter twenty-three is the story of Sarah's reaching the age of one hundred and twenty-seven. So she lived to enjoy her son for twenty-seven years, and then she died, and Abraham found a place for a bearing place. Now, Sarah died in verse two of chapter twenty three in Hebron. Do you know what Hebron means? Anybody know the meaning of Hebron? Fellowship. Isn't that nice? These are little touches we ought to look for. Don't pass over hard words. I just said, no, no, no, don't try to say them even. Not only pronounce them, but look them up. Look up these hard words. They always have meaning. If you look up Hebron, you'll get a two-week study. All the fat time you can play is the next two weeks. I'll tell you that and you see if it isn't right. Look up heathen. All the places that occurs in the Bible. Remember that every time he thought about fellowship. Some people were born there. Some people died there. Some people died there. Some people just passed through there. This was the way the Christian. Here's a woman who died in fellowship with the Lord. Whatever her mistake, she died in fellowship with the Lord. Isn't that the way you want to go home to heaven? Whether it's by death or by the Lord's coming. Would you like to go home in fellowship with the Lord? Well, that's what the Lord wants. Now, I want to leave this. I was kind of mean Sunday night by telling you that I... I was just going to grab on and preach. You want to go home and go ahead and do it. I didn't mean to be disrespectful. But I can't quit in a short time. I never learned how. And you just have to bear with me. I want to just run over now because we've examined the family. We've learned all the things I think that we need to know about restoration in the family. And I want to correlate them now and leave them with you. The first thing I want to talk about for a few minutes is the cause of departure or causes of departure in the family. And I have four of them down with some subdivisions. and they all have to do with wrong attitudes. I think that most trouble starts in the heart. It doesn't start in the life. I believe the Bible teaches that departure from the Lord starts in the heart. And I believe that departure in the family, in Abraham's family, for instance, which we just read about, begins, first of all, with wrong attitude toward the Word of God. Now, if your attitude is not right toward God's Word, if you don't accept this as a sum of bones, If you don't accept this as the absolute authority, if you don't accept this as the only way to go, then you're in trouble. You're in trouble. But if you do, you can avoid all this. Now, one wrong attitude toward the Word of God is just a neglect of it. In the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, the Lord said to the fathers of the family, you see to it that your children get the Word of God. I'm ashamed to tell you this, but when we first got started with the children's home here in Colorado Springs, we were working awfully hard. Couldn't get everything done, couldn't find enough help. And it was difficult to get, we had two small boys, it was difficult to get them all settled down and read the word, and I got discouraged trying, and I quit reading my friend. I was doing Christian work, see, everybody thought I was a fine spiritual fellow because I was doing Christian work. But I got very far away from the Lord in heart as a result of that. And just because I neglected the word of God, Finally one day my wife put my Bible in my hand and said, let's make the other start reading again together. I'm glad she did. Let me tell you why. You can do tremendous things towards being your husband or store. I know that the leadership in the home belongs in the home. See, everybody thought I was a fine spiritual fellow because I was doing Christian work. I got very far away from the Lord in hurt as a result of that. And just because I neglected the Word of God. Finally, one day my wife put my Bible in her hand and said, don't you think we ought to start reading again together? I'm glad she did. Let me tell you why, you can do tremendous things towards seeing your husband restore. I know that the leadership in the home belongs in the husband. But when the husband doesn't come across, then somebody else has to do it. And if the husband isn't reading the word, then the wife ought to. Somebody else speaks to it, but the word of God is not rejected any longer. The second thing is questioning the word of God. This is a wrong attitude toward God's word. You should never question anything to reason the Bible. Now, you ought to question everything if people say, I hope you don't go away believing anything just because John Walton said it. That's not reason enough to believe anything. But you ought to believe it if you see it in the word of God. You ought to test everything by the word of God. This is what they did, you know, in Korea. They were more noble than those of Thessalonica. So we ought not to question God's word. If God says it, let's do it. It takes a hide-off. The third thing is the rejecting of God's order for the family. I don't know how many times I talked to privately, they don't say this publicly, but I talked privately to families. And the husband said, well, you know, that used to work a long time ago. This doesn't mean man being the head of the family. The women won't stand for it anymore. The days of the women will live. And the woman speaks up and says, Well, why should one be the boss? Why not just be a partnership? There are great many people who will not accept God's order. There are great many wives who do not believe that they ought to be subject to their husband. And the Bible says in everything. And the word is not only subject, but submit. To be subject is to take a lower plate and let him be the head. Submit is to give in when your head is not in the direction. And both are asked of a wife. That's not asking too much of a wife unless the husband is doing his part, and that is that he loves her as Christ loves the church. Now, any woman would be glad to be subject to a man who loves her as Christ loves the church. On the other hand, any man would be glad to love a wife as Christ loves the church if she's subject to him. So, you see, you don't go around finding out what the other fellow ought to do. You find out what you ought to do, and you do it. Don't ever say that God's order won't work. There are a lot of people who believe Dr. Spock, in preference to the Word of God. They believe that it's wrong to ever chastise a child. Now, you listen to me, you kid. If you need a spanking, I hope your dad gives it to you. He doesn't help your mother does, and wouldn't do anything to any harm and suppose that you gave you a little treatment. Because that's God's order. And the reason God says for parents to thank their children is those they won't grow up and be no good. That's what could happen to you. That's exactly what could happen to you. And that's what's happening with a great many children today. Dr. Spock ruined the whole generation of people. He made a bunch of rebels out of them. And then when he got through ruining, he was thankful for one thing. He stayed with that same generation. Then he made some gas dodges out of the same fellows after they grew up. And he's been just a blot on the history of this nation. And a great many people have written to him to tell him so, too. You be careful about substituting other ways for God's way. I don't mean the that that the Lord wants you to teach your children. I don't mean the that that you're thanking for everything that they do. Oftentimes you can chastise a child or chastise a child, that word means child training. You can chastise a child by talking to them, by taking privileges away from them. There are many ways in which you can do it. But if he stands up on his hind legs and asks for it, give him the rest you got. So that he understands that from now on he's going to do what he's told. And you could explain why when he gets old enough. At first he won't be old enough to understand. And you don't owe him any explanation at all. You're responsible to God for it. You do what God's given him to do. When he gets a little older, you still see that he doesn't, but give an explanation of it. After a while all you need to do is give the explanation. Because he will have learned that you're doing it on a fair basis. And that you're doing what is the very best thing for him. And don't be very worried. It's all about damaging him. Because the Lord put a spank in place there for that very purpose. Now, the second thing that causes departure in the family is wrong attitudes toward the world. Many a family has just simply gone apart, have just fallen apart because they become so world-centered. You know that it's a sin to love the world. First John, too. Love, not the world. That's the fifteenth verse. Do you know in James four and four that he tells us that if you... If you love the world, the love of the Father is not in you. No, that's in John too. In James four, he tells us that if you are friendly with the world, and that's friends in the sense of bosom friends, so friends. We ought to be friendly with those people. We ought to try to win people for the Lord. But if your bosom friends are ungodly people, he says that this is a very wrong thing. And in this case, the love of the Father is not in you. So be awfully careful about loving the world. If you've got a bad example for your children, let me tell you what happened in one city out in California. We heard about this and it was out there and investigated upon it. It actually happened. Two men who were elders in the assembly were both so wild about football. California is a great football state. I don't misunderstand. I like football too. I like sports. I think the Lord has given us an ability to play and all this kind of thing. But... One of these men said to the other. Now look, a certain Jane is on Sunday night. Do you want to stay and sit and get the dope for me and I'll call you after the meeting? Or do you want me to stay and see it and you come to the meeting? And they made it up between themselves. One elder to come to the meeting and the other to attend the football game so that they both know what happened that night. What do you expect our family to amount to? What do you expect the assembly where they are to amount to? A great big goose egg. And I saw it at Asheville. If you can't find some other time to watch football, don't say where I can meet you at all. Loving the world. And another terrible thing that's happening with families today is covetousness. I know whole families have been ruined because the father made money. And when he made money, he taught the kids to love the stuff. And they saw it all over him. They saw the example. And they knew that he loved it. And then when they grew up, And they loved it. He said, what in the world is the matter to my kids? I tried to teach them better. And I was brutal enough to say to him, well, why is you expecting them to pay attention to what you say? Look at what you've done. Look at the way you've lived your life. You've already got yours made. Now you don't want them to make it. They've got just as much right to accumulate it as you have. And you spent your life accumulating it. Now you tell them that you've already got a backlog and you don't have to worry about it. Now you tell them these things are not important. You expect them to listen to you? Of course they won't. In Habakkuk two and four, you may put this down in your notes, the Lord says that some of these people, among the children of Israel, among the children of Israel, had coveted an evil covetousness upon their house. What does that mean? That means that they live such a covetous life that their whole household was affected by it. Well, brothers and sisters, each of the things that cause are getting away from the Lord. And then the unequal yoke. I was just thinking about King Hezekiah. You read about that in the second Kings, I think it's the eighth chapter. Second Kings eight, yes. Hezekiah associated with a wicked king, Ahab. And the Lord brought him back. But his son married Ahab's daughter. And he's dropped out of the genealogy in the first chapter of Matthew. And so is his son. So the son and the grandson of a godly man are left out of the genealogy because they got affiliated with this wicked family, Ahab. Now, Ahab's wife Jezebel was the one that introduced Baal worship into the among the children of Israel, into the northern kingdom. Isn't this terrible? Can you imagine one who loves the Lord and knows the Lord, getting into things like this? Well, it happens all the time. We're citizens of heaven, according to Philippians third chapter. Our citizens are in heaven. Do we act like it? Then wrong attitudes toward family members. See, the selfishness in our own hearts is what causes the difficulties, the problems, and the sorrows in a family. The three chief causes for divorce in the United States are sexual incompatibility, which simply means pure selfishness, unwillingness to consider the other person, money problems, and in-laws. When a person feels hard and harsh toward his wife's family, or she toward her husband's family, they have forgotten that those are my loved one's loved one. Not long ago, I heard a young lady, they won't get married less than a year. I heard her say to her husband with a can of a sneer, you're a dear little sister who did so and so. And a real sneer on her face, you're dear little sister. You know, as much as to say, she's a stinker. I mean, she is. I don't know her. But she's asking for trouble. She's asking for problems in the family. Whenever you run down your wife or husband's relatives, what do you expect them to do but react to that? You see, this is a selfish attitude. The second thing, and our wrong attitude toward our family, is insubordination. Unwillingness to be subject. Unwillingness on the part of wives. But by the way, the fifth chapter of Ephesians says that we should be subject one to another. Submit yourselves one to another. There are times when husbands ought to be subject to wives. I don't mean that in the sense of there being the head of the family. I mean that sometimes their judgment is there. Do you remember what was said to Abraham, thou oughtest to hearken to the voice of Sarah thy wife? Now, he didn't say that about Hagar. That was wrong. He was wrong in hearkening to the voice of Sarah his wife and many of them. but he ought to have heard from the voice of Sarah his wife when she gave him what the word of God said. Some husbands know so much that they can't be told anything by their wives. Usually, there are people who are afraid for their own position. Most men are afraid that they are inferior in some way to women. And sometimes they are. These are the ones who are always wanting to get the wife in the place. Now, put her down. Keep her down. Do you know anything at all about yieldedness? Let your yieldedness be known to all. One thing about this. When it isn't a serious thing, when it isn't a matter of decision that affects Scripture, are you willing to let your wife have her way about some things? You find you're much more willing to give in to you in matters that really count if you're willing to. And if you're a serene person, if you're an established person, If you're a person with a good foundation, you're not going to be afraid to do that. We're going to turn to the third chapter of the book of Hebrews. The elder brethren here were very time they asked me to take the meetings on Sundays and Sunday evenings and Thursday evenings for the balance of this month. That means there will be six more after this one. I expect to take up the same subject right straight through, Lord Willing, unless he shows me something differently. And the subject will be departure and restoration. I feel a very much needed topic. My text tonight is the third chapter of Hebrews and verse twelve. Taking, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. All kinds of attempts have been made to explain this verse away. We've tried to give it to the Jews. We've tried to hand it over to the unsaved people. We've done everything with it except to accept it. as a warning to believers, which it is. It's true that he's using the example of Old Testament saints, the children of Israel. But these were people who knew the Lord, and they departed from the living God. They didn't lose their salvation, but they lost everything else. Their lives were spoiled. Their usefulness was spoiled. Their joy was spoiled. And because this is just as dangerous in our case as it wasn't there. We have some warnings in the book of Hebrews. There are some warnings for unbelievers. There are warnings in the sixth and fifth chapters of Hebrews for those who profess to be saved, apostate Jews. And we must not misapply those. We must not apply those to believers. But this one has two very careful safeguards. The first one is the word brethren, which is never used of Jewish brethren. It's always men, brethren, when he's referring to Jewish brethren. And the second one is the word, any. Let there be an any of you, an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. How could anybody depart from the living God? How could anybody turn his back on God? How could anyone turn away from one who's been so kind, who's been so good to us? who has given his best for us, and who has offered to bless us with everything. He has blessed us, in fact, with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly in Christ. How could anybody depart from him? Well, the fact of the matter is, anybody can. Any brother, any sister, any believer can depart from the living God. Now, let's build some fences around this. First of all, we're not talking about losing salvation. We sang a lovely hymn tonight, complete in thee. In the second chapter of Colossians, we are told that we are complete in the Lord Jesus. But in the fourth chapter of Colossians, Paul says that the man who preached to you and who brought news to me about you is laboring for you in prayers daily, that you might be perfect and complete in the will of God. If they were already complete, why was he laboring day and night in prayer that they might be complete? Well, because there's two kinds of completeness. We have completeness which is positional. We have completeness which is by means of our new birth and our relationship with the Lord. But there's another kind of completeness that depends upon growth and progress. And this can be retarded. And we can be hindered. The Galatians were saved people. but he wrote to them, you did run well, who did hinder you. It's possible for a Christian to cease to run well. It's not possible for a Christian to be lost. Eternal security is just as clear a doctrine as any doctrine in the New Testament. And there is no such thing as a Christian losing his eternal life. And I've had a brother insist he can lose everything else. You can find a Christian any place except in hell. That's a shame to say, but it's true. And only by the grace of God are we not found in any of those places tonight. Because a Christian can get so far away from the Lord that they can be just like we said about Manasseh. It says that Manasseh, the king of Judah, made the people of God to do worse than the heathen. I think that went over a little bit. He made the people of God to do worse than the heathen. I have a friend who was, for many years, was associated with a towboat company on the Mississippi River. Now, a towboat is not a boat that tows barges. It pushes them. But it's still called a towboat, because originally they did do it by towing. They still use towing on the high seas, but not in the streams. He told me a few things about these towboats that are very interesting. One of them is that the... the ship, the engine, is tied up to the barges, attached to the barges in two ways, by heavy chains or cables, and by a very frail telephone cord. This is because it's necessary to put men on the barges. They may have as many as twenty barges pushing these ahead. And sometimes the captain of the co-boats can't even see around the next day. They have a man out on the end bar so that he can see where they're going, and he can tell a captain anything that he sees, and it's right, and they do run it right. He can see any change in the river. He can see if there's any obstruction with a tree has floated down into the channel, or if there's any light at all, it's possible to tell those, they're practiced men, they know what they're doing. They can tell that there is a shoal, a fan bar, which might be a trouble to them, and so the captain is notified by the telephone line. Also, the captain can notify them when it's time for a change of shifts, or when they're going to tie up somewhere at the next dock, perhaps. When they take a little time off, it's getting foggy, it's getting too dark, and so the captain is in touch by the telephone line. He said that they used heavy enough cables or chains that they never...