SPEAKER_00: Good morning, everybody.
SPEAKER_00: Great to see you this morning as we open up a three-week series in the life of Abraham on the topic of legacy.
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to use Abraham these three weeks because Abraham's story in the Bible is an archetype of every believer's story.
SPEAKER_00: Now, when we say an archetype, what do we mean?
SPEAKER_00: We mean it presents us a model or a pattern that is true across everybody else's story.
SPEAKER_00: And while the circumstances of Abraham's story will not be ours because they were uniquely his circumstances, the basic premises and pattern of Abraham's life of faith is going to be relived out in every single follower of God who believes and accepts the call to follow him and to be his child.
SPEAKER_00: So we're going to talk about how at the end of your life are you going to be remembered?
SPEAKER_00: Are you going to be remembered like Abraham for his life of faith, or are you going to be remembered some other way?
SPEAKER_00: What I hope you'll get from these three weeks is a hope of encouragement that helps you understand how it is that God writes his books on your legacy.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're going to start today in Genesis chapter 12, and then we'll proceed to other parts of the Abraham story over the next couple of weeks.
SPEAKER_00: When I was a kid, I grew up in western Pennsylvania, in between Pittsburgh and Morgantown, West Virginia, in the coal fields and in the area of that part of the state where they had coal mining and steel mills, etc., etc.
SPEAKER_00: And there was in my community where I grew up, there was this wonderful place called the Carnegie Free Library.
SPEAKER_00: And the Carnegie Free Library was this beautiful building that existed not just in my hometown, but also throughout all of Western Pennsylvania in many of the steel towns and the coal towns.
SPEAKER_00: There were these beautiful libraries that Andrew Carnegie built on behalf of the citizens of those areas.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Andrew Carnegie was a super wealthy multi-millionaire.
SPEAKER_00: He would be, if he lived today, he would be like Elon Musk, billionaire kind of a guy.
SPEAKER_00: He was the guy who basically took steel and shipped it worldwide and figured it all out, and he was worth millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars.
SPEAKER_00: And Andrew Carnegie at some point in his life decided that it was important because most people who see somebody with that much money and who see them spend it on themselves as they acquire more and more and more and more, they kind of resent that.
SPEAKER_00: You know, this idea that billionaires are resented today is not a new idea.
SPEAKER_00: You realize that, right?
SPEAKER_00: People of wealth have always been resented by people who are just common ordinary folks trying to get by in life.
SPEAKER_00: And Carnegie began to think about his legacy.
SPEAKER_00: What are people going to be remembering me for?
SPEAKER_00: Will they remember my charity work or will they remember that I was a billionaire, that I made my money on the backs of slave wages?
SPEAKER_00: How are they going to remember me?
SPEAKER_00: And so he took his money and invested it in public libraries under the realization that you might be able to rescue a kid out of these circumstances if they got educated and they learned about all of the philosophies and education parts of the world.
SPEAKER_00: Education might lift them up from where they are to perhaps something else.
SPEAKER_00: And so even today, on every one of those buildings, you will see his name etched.
SPEAKER_00: The building that in the town I grew up in was this beautiful, it was a beautiful stone, looked like a Greek cathedral.
SPEAKER_00: And it had Carnegie, free library on it.
SPEAKER_00: And on all of those things.
SPEAKER_00: Why he wanted a legacy that people would remember him for doing something good for others.
SPEAKER_00: What you might not know is that Andrew Carnegie had a lot of other reasons for wanting to change his legacy.
SPEAKER_00: You ever hear of the Johnstown flood?
SPEAKER_00: The Johnstown flood out in western Pennsylvania killed thousands of people.
SPEAKER_00: It happened because a dam upstream, the river, upstream on the river from Johnstown, collapsed one day.
SPEAKER_00: That dam was owned by a country club, a fishing club, made up of multimillionaires, billionaires, one of whom happened to be Andrew Carnegie.
SPEAKER_00: Along with Frick and other Colberons, they had this exquisite and exclusive fishing club built on the river above Johnstown.
SPEAKER_00: That the lake that they fished in was held by this dam.
SPEAKER_00: Engineers of the dam kept telling the members of the club, this dam is in danger and you need to invest money getting it repaired.
SPEAKER_00: And they kept telling them and they kept telling them and they kept telling them until one day the 100-year rain came and the dam broke and killed all of the residents below.
SPEAKER_00: And what a mess.
SPEAKER_00: It was a disaster of unspeakable proportions at the time.
SPEAKER_00: And we look back on it now and say, it could have been prevented.
SPEAKER_00: And the members of the club knew that it could have been prevented.
SPEAKER_00: You might have all kinds of reasons in life to want to rewrite your legacy.
SPEAKER_00: Well, God records our legacies.
SPEAKER_00: And he records Abram's legacy here in the passage we're going to read.
SPEAKER_00: And in Abraham's life, if he is a reflection of choices that occur to every follower of God and the choices that they must face in life, then it's important we pay attention and not just let these stories and let us think that these were stories from the past and what good and what point are they?
SPEAKER_00: So let's start on this legacy of Abraham and how that legacy of faith is recorded in the Bible and how it might become that we could be recorded for having a legacy of faith.
SPEAKER_00: So let's look at Genesis chapter 12, 1 through 5.
SPEAKER_00: Let me set the context.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis 1 through 11.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis, the first book in the Bible, means beginnings.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the word Genesis actually means.
SPEAKER_00: Beginnings.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're going to buy a car, you should make it a Genesis if it's your first car, because it means beginnings.
SPEAKER_00: 1 through 11, the beginning of people, the beginning of birds, the beginning of climate, the beginning of peoples, the beginning of sin, the beginning of punishment, the beginning of sacrifice, the beginning of judgment.
SPEAKER_00: The beginning.
SPEAKER_00: Don't fear.
SPEAKER_00: We know what's happening.
SPEAKER_00: Because this happened last service, too.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, we're gonna do it this way.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis 1 through 11, the beginning of all kinds of things.
SPEAKER_00: In Genesis 11, at the beginning of that chapter, is the Tower of Babel story, where all of the nations are trying to become like God, and God messes up their languages and scatters them around the earth.
SPEAKER_00: So all of these nations now exist on planet Earth because God has scattered their language.
SPEAKER_00: Now begins chapter 12, where God, having judged the world by a flood and now having spread out the nations all across the globe, picks one man and his wife and promises them things so that all of those nations that have been distributed around the world can eventually be blessed, so that they can receive what God intended when he first made creation.
SPEAKER_00: So that's where we pick up the story of Abram.
SPEAKER_00: He is in the town of Haran.
SPEAKER_00: He has come from the town of the Ur of the Chaldees with his father.
SPEAKER_00: And now God shows up with a calling.
SPEAKER_00: And remember what we said, this story of Abraham, and the premises and patterns of it are for every one of us.
SPEAKER_00: Because the same thing is true when God shows up in our life.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord said to Abram, now later we're going to learn that God changes Abram's name to Abraham, because that's part of what we're going to see about the journey of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Just as Abram had his name changed, someday you are going to have your name changed if you're a follower of God.
SPEAKER_00: I'll get to that in the future.
SPEAKER_00: Just a little tease.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord said to Abram, Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father's family, and go to the land that I will show you.
SPEAKER_00: I will make you into a great nation.
SPEAKER_00: I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others.
SPEAKER_00: I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt.
SPEAKER_00: All the families on earth will be blessed through you.
SPEAKER_00: So Abram departed as the Lord had instructed, and Lot went with him.
SPEAKER_00: Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran.
SPEAKER_00: He took his wife Sarah, his nephew Lot, and all of his wealth, his livestock, and all of the people he had taken into his household at Haran, and headed for the land of Canaan.
SPEAKER_00: All right, so we have God showing up in Abraham's life, and God has a request of Abraham, and we're going to see what this calling means for anybody in whose life God shows up and begins to talk to.
SPEAKER_00: Now, you might say, well, God hasn't showed up and talked to me.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes, God talks to us.
SPEAKER_00: He's written his word so that he can talk to us.
SPEAKER_00: He's given his spirit so that he can talk to us.
SPEAKER_00: And so this book and story of Abraham can be your story too.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, it is.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're going to look at these components of this call that Abraham receives, and then I want you to reflect with me about how that relates to your life.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing is this when God shows up and he enters your life and he asks for something, and here's what he asks you to do.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing God always does when he shows up and invites somebody to come to him is that he tells them to leave where they're at and go someplace else.
SPEAKER_00: Now, we're not talking about the fact that everybody has to sell their house and move to a different geography.
SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, the Littitz Mannheim area would be flooded with real estate this coming week if we all said we're going to be like Abraham and we're going to sell and move to a place we don't know anything about.
SPEAKER_00: No, the idea is this: when God calls a person, he doesn't leave them where they're at, in the way they think, or in how they respond to others, or in the things that they treasure.
SPEAKER_00: They leave the things that used to be precious to them and they go to some place that's different, a different way of thinking, a different lifestyle, different values.
SPEAKER_00: When God shows up in your life, he will ask you to leave.
SPEAKER_00: Now he's asking Abram to leave.
SPEAKER_00: What would be equivalent for us, Ur of Chaldees and Haran, were the equivalent of New York and Las Vegas back in that day.
SPEAKER_00: Babylonian and Chaldean, and filled with the world's treasures and the way to get ahead and the values that occurred in those cities.
SPEAKER_00: And those values are very different than the values that God lays out in his word for us today, and very different for Abram.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham is living in the midst of this.
SPEAKER_00: And while he lived in the midst of this, he became a rich man.
SPEAKER_00: You just saw that he had much wealth when God showed up in his life.
SPEAKER_00: So he had made, he was, and he wasn't a young man.
SPEAKER_00: He was 75 years old when God showed up.
SPEAKER_00: He had established himself in that society.
SPEAKER_00: He had made wealth in that society.
SPEAKER_00: He had looked at life in that society.
SPEAKER_00: And so we learn a little bit about Abram's life and what God did when he showed up when Joshua begins to talk to the people of God in Joshua 24, verses 2 and 3.
SPEAKER_00: There, Joshua is going to tell the people of Israel this, this is what happened to your ancestor Abram.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what God did.
SPEAKER_00: And he wants to remind them of this story, which happened 470 years before.
SPEAKER_00: So when you read the Bible, sometimes it's you can get lost, the timeline gets lost, and you don't remember how this all plays out.
SPEAKER_00: The Abraham story occurs 470 years before this verse I'm going to read to you now.
SPEAKER_00: Joshua's going to remind the people of Israel this verse.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a principle and a premise for how God works when he shows up to his people.
SPEAKER_00: And this is how it works in your life too.
SPEAKER_00: We rejoice here when people give their life to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We light a light bulb on stage and we rejoice because they've been delivered from the kingdom of darkness and brought into the kingdom of light.
SPEAKER_00: But that, dear friends, is only step one of God's plan for your life.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the end step for you.
SPEAKER_00: God, if He has gotten involved in your life, intends to pull you out of the world in which you got saved.
SPEAKER_00: In the way you think, in the way you understand the world, and in the way you live.
SPEAKER_00: Back in the Chaldeans in Haran, they had a certain way of looking at the world.
SPEAKER_00: And Joshua's going to tell them what God took Abraham from.
SPEAKER_00: So let's read that now, Joshu 24, 2 through 3.
SPEAKER_00: Joshua said to the people, this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says.
SPEAKER_00: Long ago, your ancestors, 470 years ago, your ancestors, including Terah, the father of Abraham, and Nahor, lived beyond the Euphrates River.
SPEAKER_00: Yep, they lived in Haran, in or the Chaldees.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what their life was like in that place.
SPEAKER_00: Here's how they lived.
SPEAKER_00: And they worshipped other gods.
SPEAKER_00: But I took your ancestor Abraham from the land beyond the Euphrates.
SPEAKER_00: Now I want to just spend a moment to help us think through what Joshua is telling the people.
SPEAKER_00: There in that land, Abram's family, Gentiles, they were not Jews, they were Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: They worshiped pagan gods, idols.
SPEAKER_00: Think about the Ten Commandments.
SPEAKER_00: And if you can remember just the first one, here's what it says I am the Lord your God.
SPEAKER_00: You shall have no other gods before me.
SPEAKER_00: God is a jealous God.
SPEAKER_00: He wants the worship of himself only.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't want the worship of other gods.
SPEAKER_00: And what was Abram doing there in that land?
SPEAKER_00: He and his family worshiped other gods.
SPEAKER_00: Their values were very different than the values to whom God was and what God was going to call them to.
SPEAKER_00: And so it says there in Joshua and reveals to us a reality about our salvation.
SPEAKER_00: So many times we're guilty of talking about, hey, won't you accept Jesus and won't you come to Jesus and won't you give him your life?
SPEAKER_00: And indeed, that invitation is for every one of us.
SPEAKER_00: God invites us to come to the Savior and find new life and new creation in our own life.
SPEAKER_00: He invites us to that.
SPEAKER_00: But there's a second aspect to your salvation and mine.
SPEAKER_00: And I want us to notice carefully here this morning before we move on.
SPEAKER_00: Before you ever received Jesus Christ as your Savior, there was a God at work in order to get you to that place where you could give your life to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: There was a God who sent you a Savior long before you were born.
SPEAKER_00: There was a God who sent his Spirit to convict you of your need of a Savior long before you ever thought about God.
SPEAKER_00: There is a God who set up the circumstances of life in such a way so that when you heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, you would be able to respond to it.
SPEAKER_00: And notice that in that passage in Joshua, Joshua makes it very clear.
SPEAKER_00: God took him from that land.
SPEAKER_00: Now that is an action of aggression.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, the heart of God is that he is never going to show up into somebody's life, call you to come to know the Savior, and leave you there where you just continue to think the same way, act the same way, and follow the same values.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: If God's going to reach into your life and save you, he's going to immediately put you on a journey.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible promises God's people what?
SPEAKER_00: That there's a day coming when God's going to enter into history and take his people from here.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, he's going to snatch them.
SPEAKER_00: That's the idea here.
SPEAKER_00: When Joshua's talking about what God did to Abraham, and we emphasize Abraham's journey, here's something else we need to remember.
SPEAKER_00: God was instrumental in making that happen long before Abraham ever gave a thought of God showing up and saying, hey, go to a land I'll show you.
SPEAKER_00: God took him from there.
SPEAKER_00: Once Abraham decided that he was going to obey this call, God arranged for him to get out of there.
SPEAKER_00: And God has done the same for every believer since.
SPEAKER_00: God wants you to move from point A to point B.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you find it interesting that when Jesus shows up to the fishermen on the Sea of Galilee, that the first words he says to them, hey, how you doing?
SPEAKER_00: I'm Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: What's your doing?
SPEAKER_00: What do you guys do for a living?
SPEAKER_00: Nope, none of that stuff.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing he says is, follow me.
SPEAKER_00: You know what follow implies?
SPEAKER_00: It implies leaving where you're at and going somewhere else.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that what it implies?
SPEAKER_00: Follow means that you're going somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, in uh in a couple of weeks, Pastor Dan starts the all-church journey.
SPEAKER_00: And as Pastor Rob mentioned, we got 25 groups, and uh, you know, 10 that are brand new, and you need to be a part of one of those groups.
SPEAKER_00: And you need to sign up because it's part of your development as a believer, of God taking you from one place in your spiritual life to another.
SPEAKER_00: And isn't it interesting that we call this thing the ACJ?
SPEAKER_00: Since we're living in the world where we do all of this stuff with little, you know, what's the ACJ?
SPEAKER_00: I used to ask that about things like LOL.
SPEAKER_00: But the all-church journey.
SPEAKER_00: What does journey imply?
SPEAKER_00: That you're going from one place to someplace else.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the experience that is meant for every believer and follower.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't want you to stay where you're at, he wants you to leave and go towards something better.
SPEAKER_00: You say, Well, I like it here.
SPEAKER_00: Well, you like it here.
SPEAKER_00: Really, you want to stay here where your life is is limited by time.
SPEAKER_00: This is what you want.
SPEAKER_00: You want to invest your entire life into the things that end someday.
SPEAKER_00: Do you still want to have that relationship where you and your wife are bickering all the time because you're still both too selfish people who haven't learned how to serve one another yet?
SPEAKER_00: Is that what you want?
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to leave that?
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to leave the pressure and the stress of how you're going to pay the bills this week?
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus says that he'll give you peace that passes all understanding and that he'll provide for every need.
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to leave stressing out about all of life, and you don't want to leave having to worry about how you're going to control life?
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to leave that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's only because you don't know anything better yet.
SPEAKER_00: God knows all about what's better.
SPEAKER_00: And in life, there's bad, there's good, there's better, and there's best.
SPEAKER_00: What is God interested in giving you?
SPEAKER_00: He's interested in giving you the best.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to try to walk you down that path from bad to good to better to best.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't want to leave you where you're at.
SPEAKER_00: Now, is it a quick journey?
SPEAKER_00: No, not quick, but it's a good journey.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a journey that he invites all of his people on.
SPEAKER_00: Is it a frightening journey?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: You want to know why it's frightening?
SPEAKER_00: Because of this second component that we find in this in the in the story of Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: It's frightening because he isn't telling you where he's taking you.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you've done any online stuff, right, and you're planning a vacation, you get online and you ask children.
SPEAKER_00: Chat GPT for uh, you know, what what can I do in this location or in the next location?
SPEAKER_00: And maybe it'll even send back pictures and give you things to do or consider on your trip.
SPEAKER_00: It'll even give you what bed and breakfast to stay in, how much you want to spend for food.
SPEAKER_00: It'll do an it's an entire travel planner, right?
SPEAKER_00: And you do that because, or you hire a travel agent, how old school, and you ask, you know, tell me all about this place where I'm going.
SPEAKER_00: Well, here's the truth, right?
SPEAKER_00: God not only calls you to leave a place, he calls you to go someplace better, but but he doesn't give you all of the details.
SPEAKER_00: Yesterday, Chat GPT, I said, Hey, I'm looking for a new bike trail, and it gave me a new bike trail.
SPEAKER_00: It was awesome.
SPEAKER_00: And I thought, this is pretty cool, and it laid it all out, showed me the map, gave me all the things, how long it was.
SPEAKER_00: It even came back with a second chat and said, I've changed my mind.
SPEAKER_00: I think you should start at this place in the trail and not that place.
SPEAKER_00: And here's why.
SPEAKER_00: That one has a lot of rocks.
SPEAKER_00: This one's more smooth.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, more smooth sounds good.
SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to know, before I invested my time, whether or not it would be worth the trip, putting the bikes in the back, hauling them up to the bike trail, getting out and riding it.
SPEAKER_00: Would it be worth it?
SPEAKER_00: And so I wanted to explore.
SPEAKER_00: Tell me more about what it's going to actually be like.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's the thing about going on a journey with God.
SPEAKER_00: He's not gonna tell you.
SPEAKER_00: Not everything, not all at once, and sometimes not for a long time.
SPEAKER_00: Look at this verse from Hebrews chapter 11.
SPEAKER_00: Uh this is verse 8.
SPEAKER_00: And it talks about Abram, who God says, Get up and go to a land that I will show you.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, Lord, show me.
SPEAKER_00: Where's the map?
SPEAKER_00: Where's the chat GPT thing?
SPEAKER_00: You get up and go, and I'll show you after you obey.
SPEAKER_00: It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: Now look especially at this last line.
SPEAKER_00: He went without knowing where he was going.
SPEAKER_00: My goodness.
SPEAKER_00: Well, Pastor Tim, Abraham was a nomad.
SPEAKER_00: He traveled with horses and camels.
SPEAKER_00: Of course he could get up and leave.
SPEAKER_00: He was used to living in tents and packing up his life and moving.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham was settled in Haran, where he was a wealthy businessman who had life pretty good.
SPEAKER_00: He was a rich man.
SPEAKER_00: He was not a wandering man.
SPEAKER_00: Read the text and it'll tell you he lived there for years.
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't out packing his camel, going for a ride.
SPEAKER_00: God asked him to do something that was going to be uncomfortable, very different than what he was used to, and go on a journey and an experience that would be a far better blessing than anything he had ever experienced, but it was going to require him to trust the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: And that, dear friends, is the entire story of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: If you were to say, What's the Bible about?
SPEAKER_00: You could say it's it's it's about one thing.
SPEAKER_00: When you hear or read the word of God, will you trust it?
SPEAKER_00: See, in the first story of the human beings on planet earth, God gives them his word.
SPEAKER_00: This is my word.
SPEAKER_00: You can eat from every tree in the garden, but not that one.
SPEAKER_00: That one will kill you.
SPEAKER_00: And then the test became what?
SPEAKER_00: Will I trust the word of God that God knows more about life than I do, that his ways are better than mine are, and that if I just follow his orders and his word, I will be in a better place than if I disobey his word.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, we know what Adam and Eve did.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I want to have a good long conversation with Adam someday.
SPEAKER_00: Like, Adam, what were you thinking?
SPEAKER_00: And I hope by then he's sanctified and redeemed and he won't blame his wife.
SPEAKER_00: But we know that's what he did, right?
SPEAKER_00: He didn't take responsibility for himself.
SPEAKER_00: And the history of humanity has been what?
SPEAKER_00: The history of humanity is all of us having to wrestle with the word of God and sometimes obeying it and sometimes not.
SPEAKER_00: There's the story of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna give you the stories of the people who heard the word of God and who had to decide whether they would trust it or not.
SPEAKER_00: You went through a bunch of stories in this last sermon series, right?
SPEAKER_00: Of people who trusted the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: When the word of God shows up in your life, it's gonna be unique for you to obey.
SPEAKER_00: See, you're gonna be tested on the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: You're it's you're gonna find out whether you're willing to trust God and take him at his word.
SPEAKER_00: Here's Abram in this story of leaving, he trusts God and takes him at his word.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not convenient for him to move.
SPEAKER_00: He's got a big group of employees he's got to take with them on the journey.
SPEAKER_00: He's got a bunch of wealth.
SPEAKER_00: He's got to protect now.
SPEAKER_00: He could put it safely in his safe inside the city.
SPEAKER_00: Now he's got to carry it around.
SPEAKER_00: And we know what happens later in his life, robbers come and try to take it all.
SPEAKER_00: All right, his life becomes far more complicated because God asks him to go on a journey.
SPEAKER_00: When God invites you to go with him, he doesn't say that the journey's gonna be easy like my bike path was.
SPEAKER_00: He might say, no, no, no, you need a few rocks to build your endurance.
SPEAKER_00: But the question is, will you trust him that the journey he puts you on is better than the one you would have had had you not gone with him?
SPEAKER_00: So when God calls, he calls us to go to a place that we haven't seen and trust him for it.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the same for you and I.
SPEAKER_00: We have a promise for something that's beyond this life, that there'll be a new heaven and a new earth.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't know exactly what all that means.
SPEAKER_00: We've been given enough snippets to know that it's gonna be a wonderful place.
SPEAKER_00: But we don't always fully understand the blessing in its reality, and sometimes, you know, we end up having to wait for it longer than we wish we would, and it's all part of God's working in our life, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like I know as a kid, you know, we sang this song.
SPEAKER_00: I've got a mansion just over the hilltop in that bright land where we'll never grow old and someday yonder we will never more wander, but walk the streets that are pure as gold.
SPEAKER_00: I've got a mansion just over the hilltop.
SPEAKER_00: All right, it's enough Elvis for today.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: There's this promise out there for me too, and for you.
SPEAKER_00: Follow me, and there's a day coming.
SPEAKER_00: I've promised I'm building you a place, and I'm gonna come back so you can experience that place.
SPEAKER_00: But in the meantime, guess what?
SPEAKER_00: In the meantime, you're gonna have to take my word for it, and trust me, it is going to happen, and it'll happen on my timeline when I'm ready and after I've prepared you to receive what I'm going to give you.
SPEAKER_00: When we were kids, we would go camping pretty much every year.
SPEAKER_00: We had a pop-up camper.
SPEAKER_00: And as you get to be a teenager, when mom and dad say, We're going on a camping trip, and you think, pop-up camper, yay.
SPEAKER_00: And guess what they did?
SPEAKER_00: We were going on a trip, we're going on vacation.
SPEAKER_00: We went on vacation, and they surprised me and took me to the baseball hall of fame in Cooperstown, New York.
SPEAKER_00: And if you know anything about me, you know I'm all things baseball all the time, and I love baseball.
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, you know, that was a pretty good surprise.
SPEAKER_00: But they didn't tell me right away that's what we were doing.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: They delayed.
SPEAKER_00: They had this surprise they wanted to bless me with.
SPEAKER_00: Boy, God's got something of a surprise for us, right?
SPEAKER_00: Um, look at what Isaiah 64, 4 says about the plans of God.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what it says For since the world began, no ear has heard, and no eye has seen a God like you, who works for those who wait for him.
SPEAKER_00: I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself that where I am, there you may be also.
SPEAKER_00: Wow, what's he building?
SPEAKER_00: What haven't you ever wondered what is your mansion gonna look like?
SPEAKER_00: I'm pretty convinced I might just get a shack in the back, but I'm okay with that.
SPEAKER_00: It means I'm in the presence of God, in the grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it looks like, but I've wondered what will the mansion that God is building me look like?
SPEAKER_00: And he's building one for everybody.
SPEAKER_00: You got one coming.
SPEAKER_00: You have one coming if you follow God.
SPEAKER_00: But you know why we don't get excited about it?
SPEAKER_00: We don't get excited about it because we have so many nice things here.
SPEAKER_00: And the idea of having to leave these nice things here for something that I can't see, that takes faith.
SPEAKER_00: And getting excited about the things I see here, making sure my lawn's mowed, the flowers are nice, the house is clean and decorated properly, that the cars are running right, that they're the right kind of cars.
SPEAKER_00: Um, all of that stuff that I'm wrapped up in now, it keeps me from getting excited about the things God has prepared.
SPEAKER_00: A new heaven and a new earth.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure there in the new earth there's going to be economy and jobs and responsibilities just like there is in this earth.
SPEAKER_00: It'll be different, but it'll be better.
SPEAKER_00: And it'll keep us busy for eternity in the presence of Almighty God.
SPEAKER_00: And isn't that the greatest joy of all?
SPEAKER_00: To see him and to say, Oh, that will be glory for me.
SPEAKER_00: Glory for me, glory for me, when by his grace I shall look on his face.
SPEAKER_00: That shall be glory, be glory for me.
SPEAKER_00: That's what's coming.
SPEAKER_00: You are gonna get to look into the eyes of the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That will be the greatest reward you will ever receive.
SPEAKER_00: And you won't care how many rewards and crowns and jewels you're given because you're gonna lay them all back at his feet, because you'll be so thrilled with this person.
SPEAKER_00: This person who made you, this person who is called the word of God, this person who died for you, and this person who rose from the dead for you.
SPEAKER_00: But now notice what it says about Abraham and this journey he's on with God and the place where God's taken him.
SPEAKER_00: It's found here in Romans 4.
SPEAKER_00: So the promise is received by faith.
SPEAKER_00: It is given as a free gift.
SPEAKER_00: So God has made you a promise as a free gift.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't depend on what you do, it depends on whether you receive it.
SPEAKER_00: And we are all certain to receive it.
SPEAKER_00: Whether or not we've lived according to the law of Moses doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_00: What matters is do we have the faith of Abraham?
SPEAKER_00: Remember how I said Abraham is an archetype?
SPEAKER_00: Look, the promises received by faith as a free gift.
SPEAKER_00: Notice now the next the next verse.
SPEAKER_00: For Abraham is the father of all who believe.
SPEAKER_00: That is what the scriptures mean when God told him, I have made you the father of many nations.
SPEAKER_00: I am so tired of hearing people take, if you bless Abraham, you'll be blessed, and if you curse Abraham, you'll be cursed, and misread it and misapply it.
SPEAKER_00: God loves, read it.
SPEAKER_00: The father of many nations.
SPEAKER_00: When the promise came to Abraham in Genesis 12, we just read it.
SPEAKER_00: I will make you a blessing to all the nations, not just to one, to all of them.
SPEAKER_00: How many of the nations does God love?
SPEAKER_00: How many of the nations are blessed by Abraham's faith?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that means there's people from every tongue, tribe, nation, language, race.
SPEAKER_00: They're all loved by God equally.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so tired of people saying one country can do whatever they want to all the other nations.
SPEAKER_00: Nonsense.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't teach that in his word.
SPEAKER_00: God teaches that it was Abraham's faith to believe that God's promise was true, that when he left and followed God by faith, every single nation would be blessed.
SPEAKER_00: The Palestinians are loved by God.
SPEAKER_00: He died for them.
SPEAKER_00: He grieves when they grieve.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews are loved by God.
SPEAKER_00: He grieves when they grieve.
SPEAKER_00: Mongrel Americans are loved by God.
SPEAKER_00: He grieves when they grieve.
SPEAKER_00: How many of the nations does God love through the faith of Abraham?
SPEAKER_00: How many does he bless?
SPEAKER_00: Every single one.
SPEAKER_00: When you get to eternity in the new heaven and the new earth, there will be people from every tongue, every tribe, every language, every nation.
SPEAKER_00: Not from one, from all.
SPEAKER_00: Notice what it says.
SPEAKER_00: Why did God bless the many nations?
SPEAKER_00: This happened.
SPEAKER_00: Because Abraham believed in the God who brings back the dead to life and who creates new things out of nothing.
SPEAKER_00: Are you looking at this now?
SPEAKER_00: Abraham's faith was in exactly the same thing as you and I have our faith in.
SPEAKER_00: The promise of God.
SPEAKER_00: And what was the promise of God?
SPEAKER_00: Through your seed, all the nations will be blessed.
SPEAKER_00: Not seeds, Paul says in the New Testament, not seeds, not people of your same DNA.
SPEAKER_00: Through your seed, the Lord Jesus Christ, whose name is on our stage.
SPEAKER_00: Through him, all the nations will be blessed.
SPEAKER_00: Paul in the New Testament rewrites who Abraham is the father of.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham is the father of all who believe.
SPEAKER_00: And what do the people of faith believe?
SPEAKER_00: That God made a promise through his seed to bless the nations.
SPEAKER_00: That seed is Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He came to bless the nations by providing himself a sacrifice for sin so that the Lamb of God would save people from every place on planet earth, regardless of their background.
SPEAKER_00: Because he loves us all the same.
SPEAKER_00: He offers himself to the nations.
SPEAKER_00: Now notice what Abraham believed, and this I think I've got to land on and stick on for just a minute.
SPEAKER_00: You ever hear the verse in the New Testament that says, if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be what?
SPEAKER_00: Saved.
SPEAKER_00: Can I show you what saved Abraham?
SPEAKER_00: Look at the verse.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham believed in the promised seed, the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: Just like you and I believe in the Messiah, if we've come to faith in Christ, is the Messiah, the seed.
SPEAKER_00: And what else did he believe?
SPEAKER_00: That God raises the dead and creates new life.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the book of Hebrews tells us that when he laid Isaac on the altar, and God had asked him to sacrifice his son up until the last moment when he thought he was going to have to actually do it, the reason he was going to go through with it is because he believed that God could raise him from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: That's having faith in something, not seeing it, but believing it.
SPEAKER_00: Guess what?
SPEAKER_00: You're asked to believe exactly the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: And if you believe it, God says that there's a place that He's creating for you.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to accept it by faith, and you have to wait for it.
SPEAKER_00: How many years did Abraham wait for the promised son Isaac?
SPEAKER_00: A long time.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've been praying for something a long time and it hasn't happened yet.
SPEAKER_00: Do you realize that making you wait is all a part of the process of blessing you when you finally get it?
SPEAKER_00: Only 147 days till Christmas, I think.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how many days it is.
SPEAKER_00: I don't count it down anymore, but I used to as a kid.
SPEAKER_00: I used to mark it off with an X.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, waiting was gonna take forever.
SPEAKER_00: Come on, you remember those days, right?
SPEAKER_00: Anticipating what you were gonna get, waiting for it.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, the days would drag on.
SPEAKER_00: Is it Christmas yet?
SPEAKER_00: It's not Christmas yet.
SPEAKER_00: Boy, when it came, the wait was worth it, normally.
SPEAKER_00: Normally.
SPEAKER_00: But God is developing you in the process of journeying you so that when it finally happens for you, the wait will have been worth it.
SPEAKER_00: So do you have faith like Abraham?
SPEAKER_00: Are you willing to go from where you've been to where he calls you to go, even if you don't know all the details?
SPEAKER_00: Can you trust him?
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says this, and we close.
SPEAKER_00: This story of Abraham's being written in a book.
SPEAKER_00: I knew a politician who uh stood up, called all the TV stations, and said he was not going to obey the law of the state of Pennsylvania, and he purposely broke it.
SPEAKER_00: And his reasons for telling all of the reporters who were in the room when he said, I'm not going to follow this law, I'm breaking it, was this.
SPEAKER_00: I want to be on the right side of history.
SPEAKER_00: Really?
SPEAKER_00: You want to be on the right side of history.
SPEAKER_00: Do you realize that history is written by the winners?
SPEAKER_00: And that history gets changed by whoever's in power?
SPEAKER_00: In the last 10 years, the history I learned in the history books growing up in school has completely completely changed.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a battle, isn't there, every single day for who's gonna write the history?
SPEAKER_00: Who's gonna be the winner?
SPEAKER_00: Do you really want to give your whole legacy to making sure you're on the right side of history?
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: It's the wrong book to want to be written in.
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you what the right book is to be written in, the book of eternity.
SPEAKER_00: You want to be right in the book of eternity, not in the book of history.
SPEAKER_00: Here it is.
SPEAKER_00: I saw the dead and the great and the small standing before God's throne.
SPEAKER_00: And books were opened.
SPEAKER_00: And another book was opened, which is the book of life.
SPEAKER_00: And the dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.
SPEAKER_00: You think Abraham and Daniel and Moses are the only people that have been written down in the pages of a book?
SPEAKER_00: Oh no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says you're being written down too.
SPEAKER_00: Every action, every idle word that you've ever spoken, everything that you've ever done.
SPEAKER_00: Now, that should make us want to have our legacy that's in that book written down in the right way.
SPEAKER_00: And some of us are sitting here saying, I think my legacy will be okay, and others of us are sitting here saying, Oh no.
SPEAKER_00: Really?
SPEAKER_00: I've got to stand and listen to all the stuff of my life?
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe, but we're not going to talk about that until next week.
SPEAKER_00: This week, it's this reality.
SPEAKER_00: God calls us to walk by faith, not by sight, and he tells us without faith it's impossible to please God.
SPEAKER_00: So if you've heard the call of God in your life, here's what you need to remember.
SPEAKER_00: If you say yes to it, you'll be saying that you trust the word of God, that Jesus can save you and that he can change your life.
SPEAKER_00: If you walk with God on the journey, he's going to take you to a place and build your life and develop your life in ways that you can't possibly imagine now.
SPEAKER_00: But he wants you to go with him on the journey.
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to go with him on the journey.
SPEAKER_00: And when Jesus comes calling and says, You know that I have saved you.
SPEAKER_00: I want to forgive you.
SPEAKER_00: I am the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And I invite you to myself.
SPEAKER_00: Dear friend, when God shows up, it's worth leaving wherever you're at in the way you think, in the way you understand life, and going with him on a journey so that he can change your life and give you amazing promises.
SPEAKER_00: Father in heaven, thank you for your word.
SPEAKER_00: Now, may we reflect deeply on it today as we think about the life of Abraham and how he obeyed.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't always obey perfectly, and neither do we.
SPEAKER_00: But he did leave.
SPEAKER_00: And because he left, you promised to bless him.
SPEAKER_00: And because you blessed him, all of the nations on planet Earth, including my heritage and every other heritage, can call upon the name of God and find forgiveness in life.
SPEAKER_00: So now, Father, give us a faith like that.
SPEAKER_00: A faith that trusts you even when we don't know we're going.
SPEAKER_00: A faith that rests, that you'll take care of us on the journey.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Lord God, for being our God.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for calling our name.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for leading us as our good shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus I pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.