Well, hello church, if you would open to Genesis chapter 12. Genesis 12. We'll actually be looking at three chapters, 12, 13, and 14, but I just want to read verses one through three right now. Genesis 12, starting in verse one, this is God's word. The Lord said to Abram, go from your country and from your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation. And I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you. And on him who dishonors you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. And so, Father, as Brother Tim has already prayed, Lord, we ask for Your help. We need courage. We need courage to be the people You've called us to be. Lord, open our minds up to the need for this tonight. And then would You give it to us for Your name's sake? We pray it in Jesus' name, Amen. We'll continue this series. If you're new, we're doing a series on virtue right now. And we'll continue that. And I want to say a few things to kind of intro us in before we get into this particular passage. Three things about virtue to kind of help us get our bearings around this. Three things need to come together for us to be virtuous. And I made these terms up. You won't find these exact terms necessarily, but the first thing we need is imputed virtue. That's a virtue that is not our own. It's accredited to us at the moment of faith. We have it in Christ. It's a legal virtue. It's an imputed virtue. It comes to us on the merit of Christ. We are virtuous in Christ. That is our identity and we live out of that identity. The second type of virtue that we need is an intellectual virtue. That is, we need to understand what it means to be virtuous people. Just because we are virtuous in Christ does not mean we know how to live that out properly. What is the moral framework for that? How do we understand virtue in this fallen world? Romans 12.1 says, we are transformed by the renewal of our minds. And so our minds must be formed and conformed to the image of Christ. And then there's another level in which we need virtue, and that's moral virtue. And this comes through habit. So we need to actually build habits of living virtuous. So how does someone learn to play the violin? through playing the violin. How does someone learn to fly a plane? Through flying planes. How does someone learn to do anything that they're good at? Through habit, through practice. And so the same is true with any virtue, we must practice. And when these three things come together, it actually begins to form us, form us into a whole person, into the image of Christ. Our character begins to look like Christ's. And so, this is not new. I think what I just laid out, even though the word virtue isn't necessarily always in Paul's language, that is the path of sanctification. That is what it means to grow in Christ. To go back to the terminology of virtue, this goes back early in the church. Many of you know church history, even the early church fathers spoke of what are called cardinal virtues. Cardinal virtues, there's four of them. Historically, so prudence or wisdom we talked about last week. There's justice, which we also talked about last week. There's fortitude or courage, which we'll talk about tonight, and then there's temperance or self control. Kent preached on that a few weeks ago. Those are what are called cardinal virtues. It comes from the Latin cardio, which means hinge. So these are foundational. They really inform and enable us to live out all other virtues. these four cardinal virtues. And so you could trace these back even actually before Christianity into Plato and into Cicero talked about these and then the early church fathers I mentioned, Augustine and Aquinas and Ambrose and many of those spoke on virtue. And so we're not obviously interested in getting back into Kind of a Greek or Roman thought on virtue. We want to know what the Bible says about virtue and we were studying in this series what virtues are biblical virtues are neglected in our culture and in the church. And then let's let's talk through those. One of those is courage. Courage. Here's a definition of courage. Courage is the resolve to act virtuously, especially when it's most difficult. It is acting for the good when it would be much easier not to. A courageous person understands danger and chooses to overcome their fear and proceed to face the danger and act according to their values. So this is not fearlessness or recklessness or rashness. It is a well-considered, wise, brave decision to do what is right despite the fear, discomfort, or temptation. Courage is the discipline to act on wisely chosen values rather than on impulse. So you can see that the connection between what we talked about last week, the need for wisdom in order to have courage, they really do go together. I was actually, my plan the whole week was to talk about the virtue of humility until Friday late afternoon, and I realized I'm struggling to find good examples of humility in the narratives of the Old Testament, other than Moses, which we already talked about. It's really hard actually to find good examples of humility. What I found quite easy to find good examples of was courage. Literally every major biblical character throughout scripture you can find good examples of the virtue of courage. Let me just walk through, listen to this. Noah displayed courage, trusting God for 120 years as he built the ark and preached repentance to an unbelieving world. Jacob showed courage facing his brother Esau who had vowed to kill him. Joseph, who was falsely in prison, had to be courageous when he stood before Pharaoh and had the pressure on him to interpret the dream or else he would die. Moses repeatedly faced the hostile power hungry Pharaoh and eventually led Israel out through the Red Sea. Joshua, probably the primary example of courage, was repeatedly told by God, be courageous. Rahab was courageous in her willingness to put everything on the line that Yahweh was the true God. Gideon, a very fearful man, overwhelmed the Midianite army with his confidence in God. David was no coward when he faced the giant Goliath. Joab and Abishai faced massive Syrian armies and Ammonite armies with courage. Esther, literally everything Esther did, shows courage. Samson, at least at the very final act of his life, was courageous when he pushed the pillars down and killing himself and all the others. Daniel's courage was to keep praying, knowing it would put him in the lion's den. We know Jonah didn't walk into the wicked city of Nineveh and start telling people to repent without courage. And we know all the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Malachi, Zechariah, we can name all of them, all of them displayed courage to hold to God's Word and to preach God's Word. And the most repeated command in Scripture is what? Do not fear. Which is really saying, be courageous. And so, I think we need to take a look at courage tonight, because I really do believe there is an epidemic of cowardice in the church. And the fears of our culture have seeped in to the church. And many don't even realize that they're justifying fear in their own lives, maybe even some of us here, under the guise of wisdom, or under the guise of caution. You know, many times we'll say things like, I just want to be all things to all people, or I'm just trying to be wise, or I'm just trying to maintain peace. And really, it's a fear of man. It's a fear of man. Now, I think motives can be often very pure. I'm certainly, I don't want to judge anybody's motives. I think we should always aim to be charitable. We should always aim to be gracious. That should be the default all the time. But I was struck by something Votie Bauckham said in an interview a few years ago. Someone was asking him, what do you say about those who are trying to ride the fence on all these cultural issues? And he said, there's cowards in every generation. One preacher said, our preoccupation with consensus has a stranglehold around what we do. We've been taught to sanitize our lack of commitment. Nothing virtuous in life ever happens apart from courage. Somebody has to pull the trigger. So courage is doing what is virtuous or what is right, no matter of the consequences. And there will be consequences. There was one of the brothers in the church earlier this week who was asking for prayer because there's some immorality happening at the top of the management in his business and he's respectfully as possible trying to confront that and call out the immorality and the injustice that he's seeing. And that takes courage. It took a lot of courage for John the Baptist to call out Herod for his immorality. It actually got him thrown in prison and then his head chopped off. Courage has consequences. You know, in Acts chapter 7, there was a man named Stephen. And that was just his name until after that, when he stood up and preached the gospel to his death. And now we know him as Stephen the martyr. The first to die in the church. It took courage. Indy Wilson said, sometimes standing against evil is more important than defeating it. The greatest heroes stand because it is right to do so, not because they believe they will always walk away with their lives. Such selfless courage is a victory in itself. And so there is something virtuous and admirable about just the act of courage, regardless of the outcome. And the church in our day is so pragmatic, we love outcome. And we're always prone toward cowardice. I think the default position of every Christian in every church is toward cowardice. So a cowardly church, on the one hand, might, here's what it could look like. We won't touch that controversial issue, because if we talk about that controversial issue, we could either offend people in the church, or we could offend people outside the church, So we won't touch that with a 20-foot pole. Cowardice. If the Bible speaks about it. If something needs to be said about it. Or, a church could be cowardly, on the other hand, by doing what, well there's no other way to say this, doing what the liberal churches have done for years. When you basically take the scriptures and you try to Christianize secular ideas. Why? To avoid the pushback from the culture. It's cowardice. It's a lack of courage. Here's another example of what this might look like. The willingness to speak against some cultural issues that the world speaks against. Some issues of injustice, for example. let's condemn this particular injustice in the world and we'll speak very vocally about that issue because the whole culture also recognizes that issue. And so we'll feel very free to speak about that issue, but we won't speak about this issue, this issue, this issue that are also sins because the culture doesn't speak about those things. It's very subtle. It's very subtle. And before you put me in a certain category, which we're very prone to do that, right? Oh, you're already thinking, where do we put John Mark right now? I think one of the most cowardly things to do is for a church to only speak against all of the cultural sins or the sins of other churches or other people outside of them and not have the courage to address our own injustices. And so it takes great courage to look at brothers and sisters that we're with every week and call each other on the carpet when needed. We have a lot to learn, and I picked Abram as a person for us to study, not just because he's always courageous, but mainly because he's usually cowardly. And he has little moments where he's courageous. And it's realistic and it's helpful. So here's the progression of Abraham's life. His life is from chapter 12 all the way to 25 in Genesis, and it starts in courage. Chapter 12 starts with courage, then you have these little random moments that really is a pervasive set of sins. It's his besetting sin is cowardice. And then you have just a very few moments when God gives him grace and he is courageous and magnifies the Lord through that. So let's walk through this. Let's start at Genesis 12. And we'll start in verse 1. We really can't understand anything else about this man's life apart from what God says to him in verse 1 and 2. He says, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. So that's the command. Now here's the promise. And I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. So what is Abraham's first act of courage? It is believing that promise and what? Leaving. His homeland, going to the unknown, leaving all that was familiar to him and going to what was dangerous and unknown. And he went, look at verse four, it says, Abram went as the Lord told him and Lot, remember that name, went with him. Abraham was 75 years old when he departed from Haran. And Abram took Sarah, his wife, and Lot, his brother's sons, that's his nephew. and all their possessions that they had gathered and the people that they had acquired in Haran and they set out to the land of Cana, that's the promised land. And they came to the land of Cana. And Abraham passed through the land in the place of Shechem and to the oak of Moriah at the time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, and here's the promise again, to your offspring I give this land. So he built an altar there to the Lord. And so he is obeying the Lord. He's moving in courage. He's believing the promise. He's moving into the land. Now look at verse 10. We have a shift. We have a shift in the narrative and we see cowardice emerge. Verse 10, it says, there was a famine in the land. That's in the land that God had promised him to go to. There's a famine there. So what did he do? So Abraham went down to Egypt. to sojourn there, for there was a famine that was severe in the land." So when you hear that phrase, went down or goes down, that needs to clue you in, that's significant. Going down was, Egypt was literally down below Canaan, but hell is down, death is down, the grave is down, going down is significant, that language. And especially when the juxtapose was God told Abraham, look up, Look at the stars. Look at the land. And Abraham just wants to look down. And when he does look around, he goes, this looks bad. This is famine. I want to go down to Egypt. I will find what I need there. He distrusts the Lord. Now, let me just say, we should be careful judging him too harshly. We abandon God's will for much less than this, do we not? I mean, if you miss a meal, anybody complain about missing a meal? I mean, it's a severe famine and he leaves and goes to Egypt, right? We need to cut him a little grace. We have a bad day and we seek to comfort ourselves with food, with entertainment, with sexual sin, with excessive spending. And this is a new believer, right? The Lord just appeared to him. He's a new believer, and he immediately realized, wait a second, following God is hard. Which Jesus told us, easy is the path to destruction, but hard is the narrow path that leads to life. It is hard to follow the Lord. God often leads us into trials and droughts. Why? So that we can learn to trust Him. And that's what God's doing for Abram. But Abram goes, it's too hard. I don't care if you've promised me good. This doesn't look good. It doesn't feel good. I'm going to Egypt. And again, think about yourself right here. What trial are you in that you're tempted to flee? Because it's difficult. You're tempted to compromise because it's difficult. Why does God allow trials in our life? They're tests. Will we trust God or not? Abram fails the test. And out of cowardice, what does he do? Next in this passage, he hands over his wife. Calls her his sister. which happens more than once, but first here, and it's a sin rooted in cowardice. Now, obviously, think about, put yourself in Abraham's shoes here. He's able to justify in his mind, well, she kind of is my sister, right? It's not 100% a lie. There's a little bit of truth in there. And so he goes with that. because he's fearful of losing his life and he justifies it to himself. But underneath, this is clearly fear. I mean, why else would you give your beloved, beautiful wife to a pagan king to enter his chamber as his wife? I mean, you don't do that unless there's some great fear. But then look at verse 17. This is amazing. It says, but the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife. Pharaoh called to Abram and said, what is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me she's your wife? Why did you say she's my sister so that I took her to be my wife? Here's your wife, take her and go. And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had. Do you see the grace of God in that? Abram's sinning cowardice, God restores his wife back to him and everything he owns. And that kindness from the Lord does something to Abram. It actually brings him to repentance. Look at chapter 13, verse one. So Abram went up from Egypt. That's repentance. He went down. To Egypt, in sin, he went up from Egypt. That's repentance. The kindness of the Lord brought him to repentance. It got him back to where he needed to be. And then we press on, verse two, chapter 13. Abraham was very rich in livestock, silver and gold, and it says, Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents, so that the land couldn't be supported by both of them dwelling together, for their possessions were so great. So because Lot is with Abram, and God's blessing Abram, Lot's getting blessed. And then it says this. There was strife between the herdsmen of Abram's livestock and the herdsmen of Lot's livestock. Now pause. This is the tension in the story. This is significant. There's conflict between Lot's shepherds and Abram's shepherds. And what does Abram do? He goes, no, no problem. We're family. We can work this out. He says, just look, look at all the land. Everything you can see. He says, if you take the right, I'll go to the left. If you go to the left, I'll go to the right. No problem. Seems really generous. Seems really generous. And I thought it was generous. And I thought it was very selfless for Abram to offer Lot this until I studied a little more and realized it's not generous and it's not selfish. It's cowardly. God gave him the land of Canaan. It wasn't his to give away. What is he doing? Here's what he's doing. He's trying to avoid a conflict. A family conflict. and he's giving away something that God gave him that he's not to give away. That's fear. That's cowardice. That's very relevant for us. He feared the conflict and the family tension that this could create in his home more than he feared God who had given him the land. What was Abram? He was passive. What is passivity? It's fear. It's cowardice. Many men are passive. In parenting, it's saying, I'm not going to discipline my kids. You know, they'll be fine. I want to be loving. I want to be gracious. I'm not going to discipline them. I'll ignore the command of God. I won't take leadership of my home. Passivity. and marriage. Passivity causes all sorts of problems. A husband says, I won't lead my wife on this or that issue because it could become an argument. And I want to avoid an argument. And I want to avoid conflict. So therefore, I won't address this issue. I'll just overlook it. You say, but aggression is bad. Being domineering is bad. Yes, it is. That is sin also. But passivity is sin. and has horrible consequences as well. You know, guys, it's very important we not downplay the seriousness of cowardice. The Bible doesn't. In fact, at the very end of the Bible in Revelation 21.8, it says this, as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, murderers, sexually immorals, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars who have their place in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur. cowards in the list with murders and sexually immoral. And cowardice also leads to other sins. You know, children that have passive fathers often find much sin in their lives because they're not guarded from it. And wives that have passive husbands fall into all sorts of sins. And Abraham's cowardly behavior in trying to avoid relational conflict ends up doing this to Lot. Lot picks the land that's close to Sodom and Gomorrah and it gets appealing to Lot and he ends up there. And he gets taken captive because of Abraham's passivity and cowardliness. So Abram's cowardice is literally threatening all the good that God's doing to him. His cowardice is putting it all at jeopardy. The fear of drought causes Abraham to leave the land and go down to Egypt. The fear of death causes him to pass off his wife. The fear of conflict causes him to give away the land. This is his besetting sin. This is his biggest struggle. And it's causing him to give away all the good God is doing for him. And it's not only jeopardizing his own life, it's jeopardizing his marriage, it's jeopardizing his children, and all nations and people after him. And Abram's hope is ours. A virtuous God. You realize the virtue of God comes out most clearly when ours is lacking? Church, remember that the virtue that you need most is always God's virtue. Look at the virtue of God, the character of God toward Abram. Everything he's squandering and fearfully pushing away and letting go of, God is restoring to him. God is relentless in His goodness toward Abram. To keep His promise to Abram. Even in spite of Abram's sin. And here's what I want to say to us, church. There are some of you who have squandered things because of fear and cowardice in your life. And here's what God wants to, I believe, do for you today. Give it back to you. He wants to restore what you've let fall away. But here's what it will take. Faith, repentance, and courage to move forward. God does restore. He does. I want to draw out a few practical lessons here on courage. Here's the first thing I want to say. God's grace taught Abram to believe the Lord and that belief led to courage. So the grace of God that he's experiencing in the midst of his sin builds his faith to trust the Lord and when he begins to trust the Lord he can now begin to grow in courage and overcome this besetting sin in his life. Courage isn't recklessness. It's calculated to make decisions to do what is right based off of a trust in God's past faithfulness. Let me say that again. Courage isn't recklessness. It's calculated to make decisions to do what is right based off of a trust in God's past faithfulness. So Abram gets 318 soldiers together to go on, and if we were to keep reading into chapter 13, I'm not gonna read that whole section, or I'm sorry, into chapter 14, he takes on four kings. When I say Abram's acting with courage, this is what he does that's courageous. He gets 318 men. I don't know who they were, maybe just men who worked with him, some friends he knew. He literally grabs these men and they go after four kingdoms that have taken Lot captive and he recaptures Lot. He delivers Lot and all the other things that they had taken with Lot. That was not reckless fit of anger on Abram's part. That was a calculated decision saying God has been good to me, he's trustworthy, I'm going. John Bloom said it this way, courage is not an anonymous, self-generated virtue. Courage is always produced by faith. Whether our faith is in God or something else, courage is a derivative virtue. Courage is a derivative virtue. It comes through faith. When we believe God and who He is and what He's done, courage comes. I was reading this in my morning devotion today. I'm reading in Isaiah right now. And I read Isaiah chapter 7. And Isaiah is going to tell Ahaz, don't fear the Assyrian army that's coming to attack you. Don't fear them. And then here's what he says, if you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all. Faith being what will enable Ahaz to stand firm against this Syrian invasion. Psalms 27 13 says, I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord. Be strong. Let your heart take courage. See the connection. I will believe the Lord. I'll wait for him and my heart will take courage. The belief. In God and who he is and what he said leads to the courage. It's what gives you a backbone. and removes your timidity. Number two, courage doesn't mean all fear is gone. Courage does not mean that all fear is gone. So Herman Melville, who wrote the book Moby Dick, I don't know how many of you have read that book or seen maybe a movie or something, but there's a scene where the chief mate, Starbuck, addresses one of the crew and he says, I won't have any man in my boat who doesn't have some fear of whales. He said, if you don't have at least some fear of whales, you're not getting into the boat. Why would he say that? Because he knew if you have no fear of whales, you will do foolish things that will jeopardize the lives of all the other men in the boat. You better have at least some measure of fear of whales so that you'll act wiser and more cautiously and calculated in what you do or don't do. So courage doesn't mean all fear is removed. Now, Aristotle said this, He said, the brave person is not one who has never been afraid, but one who in spite of fear resolves to stand up for their convictions. So I don't watch a ton of movies, but I've seen a few war movies and they all have some sort of, not all of them, a lot of them have some sort of scene where you have like this old sage And he's wise. And then you have this young warrior who's about to do something that requires a lot of bravery. And he says something to the sage, what do I do if I'm fearful? Is it okay? And he goes something along the lines of only those who are fearful can do courageous things. It doesn't mean that you don't have fear. The text doesn't say Abraham wasn't scared to go Rescue lot. It just says he did it. Even though the fear may have been there in his heart. He acted. In faith and went forward. Now here's the 3rd. Courage grows through practice. So you say I want to. I want to grow in my courage. What do I do and I and I would say practice. Aristotle in his work on ethics, he famously said this, I'm sure you've heard, we become brave by doing brave acts. I think that's right. You want to get good at being brave, do something brave, and then do it again, and then do it again, and do it again, and it gets easier and easier. It really does work that way. You know, and let me apply this to our generation because, and I put myself in this category, but There is such a problem with commitment in our day. What do we often call that? Fear of commitment, right? And so we're scared to get married, and people wait forever to get married because what if I make the wrong decision? Or we wait forever to have children, or we wait forever to join a church, or we wait forever to get a certain job. Why? Because we're afraid to commit. There's a fear of commitment. We're afraid to speak up when we need to say something. And so here's what I don't want us to do. I don't want us to think courage is something I need these one or two big moments in my life to make a big decision and I need to act brave. No. Courage is something you need to practice every single day. Do you know how hard it is in our culture of immorality to walk a different path? of purity, when the whole world is doing what is right in their own eyes, and you say, as for me, I'm going to do what the Lord has said. Every day, there are opportunities for courage. And I think that's what happened in Abram's life. that the courage that he had to go in this battle, to go and rescue Lot, that took courage, but it didn't take as much courage as what happened a few years later. Remember what happened a few years later in Genesis 22? God said, Abram, I want you to take your son, your only son, up to the altar, and I want you to sacrifice your only son. I don't care how scared Abram was going into battle to rescue Lot, it was nothing compared to offering up his only son. That took far more courage. I think he had practiced. He had grown and was able to then trust the Lord in that moment. So church, I want to walk us into the table to take the Lord's Supper. And I want us to take a moment when we pray here And then when we walk up, and I want there to be maybe this thought in our minds. In this story, we are lot. You are lot. You are the one captured. You are the one captured. Enslaved in Jesus is Abram. Only a greater Abram, only a greater hero. A greater warrior. So Abram voluntarily entered into and fought a war to rescue Lot. That was brave. But Christ voluntarily came down from heaven to fight a war and to rescue us. It was infinitely more brave. Because He went under the wrath of God for us. He overcame our greatest enemy, which is death itself. Think about the courage of Christ when you go to the table. Think about His victory on your behalf. Let it provoke in you a desire to live courageously for His glory. He is worthy of it. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, Lord, we confess that we are so prone to timidity, toward looking at whatever the right thing to do is and then just turning the other direction and walking away. Lord, we're prone to wander away from what requires risk and what could bring consequences. And so, Lord, we pray that You would put in our hearts a resolve to do what is right, to do what is virtuous, regardless of the consequences, because it would glorify You and it would bless others. Deepen that type of courage in us for Your glory, Lord. And Father, we pray that as we come to the table, as we think about the work of Your Son, that we could rejoice deeply in the perfect courage of Christ, who looked head on at all the enemies that defeated us and He won that battle. We praise You, Jesus, for what You've done. Help us to rejoice in it as we come to the table. We pray it in Jesus' name, Amen.