SPEAKER_00: Good morning, everybody.
SPEAKER_00: Really good to see you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm Tim Bowl, one of the teaching pastors here at Grace, and we're going to continue our series in the person of Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine making a mistake that impacted 4.5 billion people over 4,000 years.
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: I would say that could be classified as an epic failure.
SPEAKER_00: Epic.
SPEAKER_00: And yet it's the failure that happened to the man that the Bible tells us is the archetype of every person of faith, and that's the person of Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: In the person of Abraham, we have not just this man of incredible blessing, but we have a man who's filled with foibles, just like us, and whose mistakes might last for centuries, but who, when the books are finally opened about his life, he comes away with a positive grating from God.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to look this morning at the promise God made to Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to look at some failures in Abraham's life, big mistakes that he made, and then we're going to look at how God takes and frames that life so that we might be able to recognize how God views us.
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm convinced every time you walk into a church building and sometimes in your bed at night, the internal voice inside will ask the question, How am I evaluated by God?
SPEAKER_00: So I want this to be an encouragement to you today as we look at the life of an imperfect person by the name of Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: So let's start by opening up the Bible to Genesis chapter 15, and this calling of Abram.
SPEAKER_00: That was his name before God blessed him with a new name.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what Genesis 15, 1 through 6 says.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to just park here because this is the promise, one of the promises that gets the whole story of Abraham moving.
SPEAKER_00: After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.
SPEAKER_00: Do not be afraid, Abram.
SPEAKER_00: I am your shield, your very great reward.
SPEAKER_00: But Abram said, Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless?
SPEAKER_00: And the one who will inherit my estate is Elisiar of Damascus.
SPEAKER_00: And Abraham said, and Abram said, You have given me no children, so a servant in my household will be my heir.
SPEAKER_00: Then the word of the Lord came to him.
SPEAKER_00: Then he said to him, So shall your this man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.
SPEAKER_00: He took him outside and said, Look up at the sky and count the stars, if indeed you can count them.
SPEAKER_00: Then he said to him, So shall your offspring be.
SPEAKER_00: Abram, believe the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And God credited it to him as righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: All right, so this begins another part of the story of Abram.
SPEAKER_00: He is promised by God that he will have an heir.
SPEAKER_00: And in that promise, since he's an old man, since he's been married a long time, and since he has no son of his own, the thing that is obsessing within his heart, and I think that's what you could call it, is an obsession.
SPEAKER_00: Something that has gripped his mind and he can't think about anything else, is this idea that when he dies, he's not going to have an heir to give his estate to.
SPEAKER_00: He's not going to have anyone that can carry on his family name.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to end up having to give it to somebody who was an employee in his estate rather than to his heir, because he has no heir.
SPEAKER_00: And so God shows up and says, Abraham, I'm your reward, and I'm going to give you an heir.
SPEAKER_00: And this heir will be of your own flesh and blood.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in some versions of the Bible, in the translations, the word that is there for heir or for offspring is the word seed.
SPEAKER_00: Basically, it is God saying to Abraham, This child that you're going to have will come from your body, he will be your flesh and blood, he will carry your DNA, and through him all the nations are going to be blessed.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, he will have so many descendants that if you look up at the stars of the heaven, you won't be able to count how many descendants come from this promise I'm making you, Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: So what a promise.
SPEAKER_00: However, like most promises of God, they don't happen in a vacuum, they happen in real life, and real life doesn't always match what the promise seems to suggest.
SPEAKER_00: And Abram's got some questions, and so would you, and so would I.
SPEAKER_00: I'm an old man, my wife's past childbearing years.
SPEAKER_00: How in the world can this possibly happen?
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever noticed that God chooses procreation or some means whereby he fulfills promises as a way to try and show people?
SPEAKER_00: You think this is the only way it can actually be done?
SPEAKER_00: Who figured this out that people could be made by procreation?
SPEAKER_00: I figured it out.
SPEAKER_00: Guess who can figure out the other stuff?
SPEAKER_00: So can I.
SPEAKER_00: If I want a baby to be born, throw out the science books.
SPEAKER_00: I can make a baby be born.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, he does it to Abraham, and later on he promises the whole nation of Israel, I'm gonna really blow your mind.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna create a baby without two human parents, but only one.
SPEAKER_00: Huh?
SPEAKER_00: Man.
SPEAKER_00: Come on now.
SPEAKER_00: I've been around a long time.
SPEAKER_00: I know how babies are made.
SPEAKER_00: And this does not make any sense.
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
SPEAKER_00: God made a promise that was gonna require a belief other than what Abram knew to be true in his own life.
SPEAKER_00: And when God makes you a promise, it's often going to be the same way.
SPEAKER_00: God's gonna make you a promise out there somewhere that you say that doesn't seem to make any sense because when I look around, all I see is this stuff, and you're telling me there's something else out there.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_00: God invites you to trust him to see whether or not you'll believe him, that he can do anything, including give you offspring when you're old, give millions and billions of offspring to you, and then give you a son, cause him to be raised from the altar, and cause you to believe in a resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: That's what God can do.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what's happening in this promise to Abram.
SPEAKER_00: But Abram's a human being, and human beings oftentimes like to help God out.
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna read in Genesis 16 where Abram and his wife Sarah, both recognizing what science says, decide that they are going to enact a more scientific plan.
SPEAKER_00: One that goes and helps God out because God promised we would have an heir.
SPEAKER_00: We're really old, it's probably not gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00: So let's figure out a way that we can make this happen.
SPEAKER_00: So we read in Genesis 16, 1 through 4, this epic failure of Abram and Sarah that is going to impact 4.5 billion people, 2.2 million Christians, or 2.2 billion Christians in the world, 2 billion Muslims in the world, 15 million Jews in the world, and all three of those groups claim Abraham to be their founder.
SPEAKER_00: And none of them can agree on how they should act to each other, and at least two of those groups were in the news this week as the brothers were fighting each other, bombing one another in the Strait of Hormuz.
SPEAKER_00: How important are the decisions in our life?
SPEAKER_00: Pretty big.
SPEAKER_00: 4,000 years important and 4.5 billion people important.
SPEAKER_00: That's what you're going to read about what happened right here.
SPEAKER_00: In Genesis 16, 1 through 4, we read this.
SPEAKER_00: Now Sarah, Abram's wife, had borne him no children, but she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar.
SPEAKER_00: So she said to Abram, The Lord has kept me from having children.
SPEAKER_00: Go sleep with my slave.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps I can build a family through her.
SPEAKER_00: Abram agreed to what Sarah said.
SPEAKER_00: So after Abraham had been living in Canaan for ten years, now, ten years ago, God made him a promise to go to that land, and God was going to give him the land.
SPEAKER_00: It's been ten years.
SPEAKER_00: It's been a while since God made the promises.
SPEAKER_00: He slept with Hagar and she conceived.
SPEAKER_00: Alright.
SPEAKER_00: God said, Abram, I'm going to give you a son.
SPEAKER_00: He even comes later and he says to Sarah, a year from now you're going to be pregnant.
SPEAKER_00: And Sarah laughs.
SPEAKER_00: These are people who live in their world with a worldview of how things work.
SPEAKER_00: In that world, it was okay to take a second wife.
SPEAKER_00: It was okay to have multiple wives.
SPEAKER_00: It was okay to own slaves.
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, nothing we believe in today.
SPEAKER_00: But that's how the culture worked back there.
SPEAKER_00: So within the framework of their culture, this was an acceptable act.
SPEAKER_00: This was acceptable.
SPEAKER_00: The problem is it wasn't the plan of God.
SPEAKER_00: It was the plan of people trying to help God out.
SPEAKER_00: And what resulted?
SPEAKER_00: Hagar became expectant with Ishmael, her son, and the tensions between Sarah and Hagar would become real.
SPEAKER_00: The tensions between Ishmael and the later promised son would be real.
SPEAKER_00: The two sons would have people groups that arise from them.
SPEAKER_00: In Isaac, the promised son, the Jews, in Ishmael, the child that was put together by human thinking, the Arabs.
SPEAKER_00: And we know how that's working out today, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: Those two brothers are still fighting with each other, only on a much more massive scale.
SPEAKER_00: So I want you to think for a moment about how Abraham's wrong thinking, because all actions, all actions, all behaviors, start with some kind of thought.
SPEAKER_00: You just don't go out and do something.
SPEAKER_00: You normally have thought about something first.
SPEAKER_00: And so Abraham has some failed thinking as it relates to the power of God, the timing of God's promises, and how God wants to accomplish what he's made as an offer to Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: So what I want to do is to show you very quickly that in this failed man's life, a man of great faith, but a man who was not sinless.
SPEAKER_00: I want to show you some of his wrong thinking.
SPEAKER_00: And before we pick up stones to cast at Abraham, let's remember that we have false thinking from time to time as well.
SPEAKER_00: So let's not get all bent out of shape over this guy's bad choices.
SPEAKER_00: Let's remember that you and I have made bad choices from time to time as well.
SPEAKER_00: But let me show you his first.
SPEAKER_00: God shows up.
SPEAKER_00: Did you see this?
SPEAKER_00: It was subtle, very subtle, but very, very, very important.
SPEAKER_00: Now we just sang a song at the end that said, I just want you, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I don't need anything else, right?
SPEAKER_00: Bad paraphrase.
SPEAKER_00: But nonetheless, you get the idea.
SPEAKER_00: And we sang that and we meant it, right?
SPEAKER_00: Look at what God does for Abram in Genesis 15.
SPEAKER_00: Abram, I am your great reward.
SPEAKER_00: What did God really offer Abram?
SPEAKER_00: He offered him far more than land, far more than an offspring, far more than children beyond the numbers of the stars.
SPEAKER_00: God offered Abraham himself.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't do that with just anyone.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham, I am your great reward.
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: John Piper says that our hearts find full contentment when they fully delight in God.
SPEAKER_00: And the truth is there's so many things that come into our life of things that we want other than God.
SPEAKER_00: And yet God is the fullest, deepest, richest, most incredible person in the entire universe.
SPEAKER_00: What we experience in this life and in this earth is just a small fraction of who he is.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, think about his attention to the minute details of life at the molecular level.
SPEAKER_00: And then think about his incredible detail and attention at the level of the universe at a macro level.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, everything is gravity-driven, mathematics driven.
SPEAKER_00: It's an incredible, right?
SPEAKER_00: And God says, that's just the surface of who he is.
SPEAKER_00: And he shows up to a mere man in the middle of this wilderness called Canaan, and he says to him, Abram, I am, that's God's name, your great reward.
SPEAKER_00: If he had only stopped there.
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not where it stopped.
SPEAKER_00: If you read the next verse, it says, But Abram said to God, obsessed with his own need, God, I don't have an heir.
SPEAKER_00: And God, in his graciousness, gives Abraham more than just himself as a gift.
SPEAKER_00: He makes a promise to Abraham that is going to bless all of the nations.
SPEAKER_00: When you desperately want something, desperately.
SPEAKER_00: And God shows up and says, Here I am, and I just heard you sing that I am all that you need.
SPEAKER_00: Is that true in your life?
SPEAKER_00: What's the one other thing you need beyond God?
SPEAKER_00: I'm guilty of it too.
SPEAKER_00: I love gadgets.
SPEAKER_00: Tammy gets sick of gadgets showing up at my door.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's cool.
SPEAKER_00: Look at that.
SPEAKER_00: Here's this little cable.
SPEAKER_00: I bought this this week because I lost the first one I bought, which I then found, so now I have two.
SPEAKER_00: It's this little gadget, it's this little cord, and on the one side, it's got four different connectors for all of your devices.
SPEAKER_00: So it has a Type-C connector, uh a FireWire connector.
SPEAKER_00: I don't even know all the names of the connectors.
SPEAKER_00: What I know is it's awesome.
SPEAKER_00: And I just thought I have to have this.
SPEAKER_00: Now, did I have to have it?
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure it'll be very convenient and useful when my phone and my old iPad and my computer, which all seem to have different connections, Apple has completely won my heart and my wallet, apparently.
SPEAKER_00: But silly little illustration.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we have much bigger ones.
SPEAKER_00: Oh God, if you'd just fix my kid.
SPEAKER_00: Oh God, but I'm still stuck in this same mess financially.
SPEAKER_00: You have a need like that in your life, it's just you're you're obsessed with it, you think about it all the time.
SPEAKER_00: But God, I don't have an heir.
SPEAKER_00: So God makes him a promise.
SPEAKER_00: Now, look at all the other mistakes that Abraham makes.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he just said, Here, take my wife.
SPEAKER_00: He offers his wife to Pharaoh because of his fear of Pharaoh.
SPEAKER_00: So he tells Pharaoh that Sarah, his wife, is his sister.
SPEAKER_00: In reality, she's his half-sister.
SPEAKER_00: They have the same dad, but different moms.
SPEAKER_00: And they married.
SPEAKER_00: And so she's his half-sister, but he, there's a famine, he goes into Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: He is afraid that Pharaoh's gonna look at his beautiful wife because the Bible tells us Sarah at that time in her life was a beautiful woman, and he's thinking to himself, I know how this is gonna go.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a stranger, a foreigner, I have no army.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go down into Egypt, and he was gonna want my wife.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna get ahead of this.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna offer my wife to him.
SPEAKER_00: What a sick thing! I mean, hey man, have my wife.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, Pharaoh finds out and is appalled that this is what Abraham has done and kicks him out of Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: But listen now, listen.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham didn't just do it once, he did it a second time when he offered his wife to Abimelech the king back in Canaan.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Fool me once, shame on you.
SPEAKER_00: Fool me twice, shame on me.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't learn his lesson.
SPEAKER_00: You know, he didn't learn his lesson.
SPEAKER_00: He's back here and it's the same exact thing.
SPEAKER_00: His heart is filled with fear.
SPEAKER_00: He can't trust God to take care of him, so he offers his wife as a way to allay his fears.
SPEAKER_00: And now get this.
SPEAKER_00: Are you ready for this?
SPEAKER_00: This will really blow your mind.
SPEAKER_00: When Abimelech asks him why he did this, because God began punishing Abimelech and his whole household got sick.
SPEAKER_00: Abimelech didn't know that she was his wife.
SPEAKER_00: He again thought she was his sister.
SPEAKER_00: God puts all kinds of uh wounds and sores and sickness in Abimelech's household and then tells Abimelech, hey, you're being punished because you have another man's wife in your house.
SPEAKER_00: And Abimelech says, I didn't know that.
SPEAKER_00: And God says, I know you didn't know that.
SPEAKER_00: That's why I came to warn you that if you don't fix this situation, I'm gonna kill you.
SPEAKER_00: So he fixes the situation and he says to Abram, Why in the world did you do this to me, lie to me like this, and bring God's judgment upon my life?
SPEAKER_00: And he says, Ready?
SPEAKER_00: Long ago, when we lived back in Ur of the Chaldees, Sarah and I came up with this plan.
SPEAKER_00: You know, Abram gets blamed all the time for this plan?
SPEAKER_00: His wife was in on it.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he, it's, it's, it's, it's buried there in the text, but when you read it, you're like, huh.
SPEAKER_00: They were so afraid of going out on their journey when God called them to go, and Abraham gets blessed because he obeyed God and left.
SPEAKER_00: But they were thinking before they left, what if we go down into this land God's going to show us, and you're beautiful, and I'm rich, and some powerful king is gonna take you and my money?
SPEAKER_00: So they sat down ahead of time and they planned the plan together.
SPEAKER_00: Partners in crime.
SPEAKER_00: Go read in Genesis 16.
SPEAKER_00: Whose idea was it to give Hagar as a slave, her slave to?
SPEAKER_00: It was Sarah.
SPEAKER_00: Like, let's not just bust on Abram.
SPEAKER_00: She's got her issues too.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: They're both called and they're both blessed.
SPEAKER_00: And in Hebrews chapter 11, we both read that God bless calls them people of faith, and he calls them blessed, and they make it into God's Hall of Fame.
SPEAKER_00: Look what Hebrews 11 says.
SPEAKER_00: When by faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.
SPEAKER_00: All right, this is an imperfect couple.
SPEAKER_00: This is an imperfect person.
SPEAKER_00: Both his good and his bad are recorded for us in God's word, just like God records both the good and the bad that's gone on in our life.
SPEAKER_00: The question is, how does God take imperfect people like this and then talk well about them?
SPEAKER_00: Because Abram, I mean, these are some pretty, scandalous, and scoundrel kinds of things to do.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you agree?
SPEAKER_00: This is not like loving somebody else.
SPEAKER_00: This is all about being motivated by something other than love.
SPEAKER_00: Fear, worry, obsession.
SPEAKER_00: All of that stuff is a part of this story.
SPEAKER_00: It's all a part of Abram's life.
SPEAKER_00: It's all a part of this person who is the archetype of faith.
SPEAKER_00: He is an example of what we are supposed to be, and he is also an example of what every person experiences, true faith and the promises of God that are mixed together with mistakes and sin and failure.
SPEAKER_00: And it's all there.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we come before God, how can any person stand before him?
SPEAKER_00: In fact, when you read the story of God's people in the Bible, except for one or two instances, like a Joseph or a Daniel, in every one of the instances where God records the lives of his father.
SPEAKER_00: Faithful saints, he puts in there all their failure.
SPEAKER_00: You want to know why he does that?
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says the saints of the Old Testament and the New Testament, those stories were given to us so we could learn from them.
SPEAKER_00: And here's one of the things to learn from the failures of the saints.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, we've made plenty of dumb decisions and we've just joined them in their dumb decision crowd.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: I'm I, you know, I've had a dumb decision or two in my life.
SPEAKER_00: And so have you, if you're honest.
SPEAKER_00: But when the New Testament starts talking about Abram and Sarah, notice I'm going to share with you some verses now from the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not just the writer of Hebrews who commends them, it's James who commends them.
SPEAKER_00: It's John who commends them.
SPEAKER_00: It's Paul who commends them.
SPEAKER_00: And you're almost like reading, like, wait a second.
SPEAKER_00: Well, let's show you the history of God's history.
SPEAKER_00: And it's one that should encourage your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham, it says, was a man who was justified by faith.
SPEAKER_00: Look at what Romans 4 says.
SPEAKER_00: This is Paul writing to us about the life of Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: He says this.
SPEAKER_00: What does Scripture say?
SPEAKER_00: And Paul will create the entire book of Romans around this promise of God to Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: And he will talk about justification, which is a big term, which means that you have righteous standing before God instead of sinful standing before God.
SPEAKER_00: So here's what Paul writes.
SPEAKER_00: What does the scripture say about Abraham?
SPEAKER_00: This is Genesis 15, verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Now notice two things about that word, about that verse.
SPEAKER_00: First, when God views Abraham, God doesn't primarily view him through the lens of a 4,000-year-old mistake that has impacted four and a half billion people.
SPEAKER_00: When God looks at Abraham, he evaluates him like this.
SPEAKER_00: You are a righteous man.
SPEAKER_00: What?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, stop.
SPEAKER_00: God, hold on here a minute.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham had faith.
SPEAKER_00: He was not a righteous man.
SPEAKER_00: Not all the time.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of the time, he worshipped God, he made altars, he gave tithes, he delivered his family from the enemies.
SPEAKER_00: But then there were those times I just mentioned, times when he just failed miserably.
SPEAKER_00: So, God, how can you look at Abraham and say he's righteous?
SPEAKER_00: Well, here's the key in that verse.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham believed God, he had faith.
SPEAKER_00: Now, did you notice the next part?
SPEAKER_00: God credited it to him.
SPEAKER_00: God reckoned it to him.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that he had it in himself.
SPEAKER_00: God credited it to his account.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because Abraham's faith believed the promises of God.
SPEAKER_00: I'll leave my land and go to a land that you say that I'll inherit.
SPEAKER_00: I'll believe that you'll give me a child that will bless the nations.
SPEAKER_00: I believe that through him salvation will come.
SPEAKER_00: I believe, the Bible tells us, Abraham believed that even if he had to take Isaac's life, he believed God would raise him from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: He believed the same exact thing we believe: that there's a sacrifice, that a blood offering pays for the sin of those who believe in it, and that death is not the end, that even if you die, you'll be raised to life.
SPEAKER_00: What's God's word say?
SPEAKER_00: If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
SPEAKER_00: How do you get saved?
SPEAKER_00: You get saved by God crediting to you the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Pastor Dan talked about in the communion.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus became our substitute.
SPEAKER_00: He took our sin upon himself.
SPEAKER_00: All those bad, epic failures in our life, they all belong to Jesus now.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus gave to you his sinless, righteous life.
SPEAKER_00: And God credits to you the righteousness of the Savior.
SPEAKER_00: How does God look at you?
SPEAKER_00: Remember last week we looked at the book of Revelation, there was the books came out, and the good and the bad deeds were judged.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that occurs at a judgment called the Great White Throne Judgment, and it's for people who've never placed their faith in the Savior.
SPEAKER_00: There's a second judgment for those who have come to know Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It's called uh whatever it's called, I can't remember right now.
SPEAKER_00: The Bemisat judgment.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_00: And at that judgment, the Bible talks about believers being rewarded for their works as a Christian, but it also says that there's something called the book of life.
SPEAKER_00: And the book of life is opened.
SPEAKER_00: And if you were if you were looking last week at this, I talked about the the book of judgment where the good and the bad are weighed.
SPEAKER_00: And then I also said the next verse talks about the book of life.
SPEAKER_00: And whoever's name was found written in the book of life has salvation.
SPEAKER_00: How do you get written in the book of life?
SPEAKER_00: By asking Jesus Christ to be your Savior because you believe the promise of God and the Lamb of God who washes away your sin, writes your name in the book of life.
SPEAKER_00: And when the books are opened at the end, and when God opens the book for you, he's gonna see your name there, and what's gonna happen to you?
SPEAKER_00: You are gonna be credited with righteousness, no matter how many epic failures you've had in your life.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that something worth?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's amazing.
SPEAKER_00: And if Abraham's the archetype, he's like the example of people of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what you can take heart in.
SPEAKER_00: When God evaluates you, if you've come to know the Savior, God's not gonna evaluate your eternal standing by how many times you got it right and how many times you got it wrong.
SPEAKER_00: He knows all of those things, but he's going to evaluate your life by the fact that Jesus Christ got it right all of the time.
SPEAKER_00: And it's that righteousness given to you.
SPEAKER_00: You're not standing before God in your own righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Thank God.
SPEAKER_00: Which means that you have to start re-evaluating your life.
SPEAKER_00: You can't keep evaluating your life on the basis of your failures.
SPEAKER_00: You have to start evaluating your life on the basis of his success.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ satisfied God's work.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible calls that propitiation.
SPEAKER_00: It's a big long word, which means this: God was satisfied in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as a payment for your sin and as a means to give you the righteousness of his son.
SPEAKER_00: And so, God's word says he's the father of all believers who believe in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And just as just like Abraham is this father of people who share in that faith, so if you share in that faith, Galatians 3 says this, understand then that those who have faith are the children of Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: Did you know in Isaiah 41, God says of Abraham, he is my friend.
SPEAKER_00: Did you know that Jesus says to his disciples, I no longer call you my disciples, now I call you my friends.
SPEAKER_00: That's how God wants to call you.
SPEAKER_00: That's how God thinks of you, and that's how God wants you to relate to him.
SPEAKER_00: Not relate to him in the basis of your failures, but relate to him on the basis of the success of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Scripture foresaw that God would justify us by faith.
SPEAKER_00: And he announced that gospel to Abraham 4,000 years ago.
SPEAKER_00: And because Abraham believed, all the nations are blessed through the offspring that God sent through Abraham, the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's the offspring, you see, through your heir.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't Isaac.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, Isaac was the first offspring, but that's not the seed that God's talking about.
SPEAKER_00: God's talking about Abraham, I'm going to give you a promise.
SPEAKER_00: His name is Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He's coming through your lineage, and all who believe in him will be blessed.
SPEAKER_00: So, how about you?
SPEAKER_00: How are you interpreting your life?
SPEAKER_00: You interpreting it through the life that you've lived so far, or are you going to interpret it through the life that Jesus lived for you?
SPEAKER_00: He lived for you, he died for you, he rose for you.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why we say that faith, right?
SPEAKER_00: Faith is a gift and that salvation is a gift.
SPEAKER_00: You don't get saved by your works because you have epic failures in your life.
SPEAKER_00: You don't measure up, neither do I.
SPEAKER_00: But you do measure up in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why James says that Abraham was called righteous because of his obedience.
SPEAKER_00: Well, what did he obey?
SPEAKER_00: Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar?
SPEAKER_00: What made him righteous?
SPEAKER_00: His obedience to receive the promise.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: God said, offer up Isaac.
SPEAKER_00: He did.
SPEAKER_00: And because he obeyed, God reckoned it to him as righteous and he credited it to him.
SPEAKER_00: And what's God ask you to do?
SPEAKER_00: Believe in my son who I laid on the altar of Calvary's cross.
SPEAKER_00: Do you believe in that salvation gift?
SPEAKER_00: It's yours free for the asking.
SPEAKER_00: And if you say, because, you know, you might not interpret your life as being a failure, you might interpret your life as being, I'm pretty good.
SPEAKER_00: Why do I need a savior?
SPEAKER_00: Because God says you do.
SPEAKER_00: God says you're not perfect.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're going to live by the law, the Ten Commandments, you better obey every single one of them, every time in your life, all 365 days a year, 24-7, for every year you've lived.
SPEAKER_00: And if you break one of those, you've broken them all.
SPEAKER_00: And if you've broken even one, you're done.
SPEAKER_00: You need a perfect record, not a 99.4% ivory soap record.
SPEAKER_00: Because that soap is not clean enough.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're sitting here thinking I'm good enough, no, you're not.
SPEAKER_00: Only Jesus Christ can make you good enough.
SPEAKER_00: And he not only wants to make you good enough, he wants to make you so righteous that when God looks at you, he calls you his daughter.
SPEAKER_00: His son.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we say we're a Jesus church.
SPEAKER_00: We're not here talking about moral principles.
SPEAKER_00: Obey better and God will like you.
SPEAKER_00: Because you can't pay well enough.
SPEAKER_00: If I could preach a sermon in a synagogue or a mosque, they preach moral sermons too.
SPEAKER_00: But they don't have a savior.
SPEAKER_00: They think you can work your way to heaven if you do enough good stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Live by the law, live by your going to Mecca, and whatever else they teach in Islam.
SPEAKER_00: And we say you can't get there.
SPEAKER_00: But here's somebody who can get you there.
SPEAKER_00: His name is the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the normal journey, and I'll close with this.
SPEAKER_00: The normal journey of the Christian life is two steps forward, one step back.
SPEAKER_00: It really is.
SPEAKER_00: Here's Abraham's journey, and it's probably yours too.
SPEAKER_00: Fear causes you to fall, then you believe, then you have some doubt, then you obey, then you wait, then you stumble a little bit, but you still have faith, which means you keep maturing.
SPEAKER_00: And finally, ultimately, you come to the place where you're able to just surrender it, no matter what it is, even if it's your only son Isaac, you're finally able to surrender it on the altar.
SPEAKER_00: You see, that was the last test of Abraham's life, not the first, not the middle, the last.
SPEAKER_00: And my guess is that Jesus works with us, he's building us up towards that place where he can declare us righteous, where we've totally and fully surrendered.
SPEAKER_00: Faith ultimately takes God at his word and increasingly acts accordingly.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what genuine faith looks like.
SPEAKER_00: And because of his faith, Abraham credited it to him.
SPEAKER_00: God credited to him as righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Are you righteous today?
SPEAKER_00: If you know the Lord Jesus Christ, you are.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, it doesn't mean you're without sin.
SPEAKER_00: But that blood that Jesus shed at Calvary covers your sin so that God can't see it.
SPEAKER_00: And that righteousness Jesus gave you when you believed in him, that's what God sees when you stand before him.
SPEAKER_00: So this morning, what are you acting like in your life?
SPEAKER_00: Are you seeing yourself as a sinner who's got made epic failure and you have to live out of that epic failure for the rest of your life?
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: God's word is filled with redemption.
SPEAKER_00: It's filled with grace.
SPEAKER_00: It's filled with mercy.
SPEAKER_00: It's filled with kindness.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy God who extends to us undeserved mercies.
SPEAKER_00: And he wants to extend that to you today.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you gave your life to Christ, but you've allowed Satan to cause you to interpret your standing before God other than how Scripture talks about it.
SPEAKER_00: You're standing before God.
SPEAKER_00: You were credited with the righteousness of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You are called the friend of God and the child of God.
SPEAKER_00: And it's time in your mind to think like that.
SPEAKER_00: And if you've never given your life to Christ, the Bible says today is the day of salvation.
SPEAKER_00: And you don't know how many more days you'll have to take advantage of this opportunity and come to the cross and give your life to Christ and to say to Jesus, I know I'm not perfect.
SPEAKER_00: But I believe, Lord Jesus, you are.
SPEAKER_00: And I believe you came to save me.
SPEAKER_00: Save me now.
SPEAKER_00: In just a moment after the song and after the close of the service, we'll have prayer teams up front.
SPEAKER_00: And it might be that you have to do some business with God.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you need to invite him to be your savior, and our prayer team wants to help you be able to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you've been just thinking about yourself in a wrong way, and your entire life's been evaluated about some failure in your past.
SPEAKER_00: Stop it now and start living for Christ, knowing that He's made you righteous with God.
SPEAKER_00: Obey and move forward, forgetting the things that are behind, Paul says.
SPEAKER_00: It's time to put your lens forward to the cross and fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith.
SPEAKER_00: Now, dear Jesus, we give you praise for the life of Abraham and his faith.
SPEAKER_00: Boy, he didn't get it always right, but he got it right when it came to believing your promise.
SPEAKER_00: And I pray for us that we will get it right too by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: May we give our life to him today and may we interpret our life through that lens and no other.
SPEAKER_00: For I ask it in your name, Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.