Imagine a baseball team that's been struggling for a while and all of a sudden they found themselves a super pitcher.

I mean, this guy could send it down at 115 miles.

He can send a fastball, a knuckle ball, a spinning ball, every kind of ball.

But he has one problem.

He refuses to watch the signals of the catcher.

So whenever the catcher would signal him for a low fast ball, he would throw an inside

curve ball.

Now the results are not very pretty.

Eventually, no matter how good this hot shot may be, the team will lose.

This kind of picture is a picture of an individual Christian who works hard, who tries hard, but refuses to get his signals from the Lord Jesus Christ.

The consequences are unpleasant often. And today we encounter Abraham in Genesis 16 and 17 to be doing his own pitching without paying attention to the signal.

Turn with me to those passages in Genesis 16 and 17.

When we left Abraham in Genesis 15, he was spiritually and emotionally on a peak.

God has passed through the pieces of the sacrifice to confirm his covenant with Abraham.

And you would have thought that from that moment on, Abraham is going to live a life of obedience.

He's going to give a life of trusting in God and waiting upon God.

But instead, in a moment of impatience, he did an about face and stumbled headlong into one of the biggest messes that he's ever made,

and we're still suffering from that mess today.

I'll come to that in a minute.

Remember I told you that testing always naps at the heel of success?

Well, if Genesis 15 can be called the chapter of faith, Genesis 16 can be called

the chapter of defeat. In Genesis 15, Abraham walked by faith. In Genesis 16, he walked in

...