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Well, it seems to me that all of us need to have heroes in our lives for inspiration. We all need to have people that we can look to for hope and for inspiration. And that's why I believe this morning all of us, including myself, need to hear this message about the hero and the heroes we're going to talk about, because hopefully you and I can get a glimpse of something more, of a life that is more. A life that is more than just ordinary. And I think if we boil it down here today, all of us in this room are searching for a life that is something more. Something that is significant, something that leaves a legacy behind. And we're going to look at a guy today whose life definitely leaves a legacy. Now, before we get to talking about all the details about him, I just want to point out to you that it's kind of interesting how all of this fell on this particular week. Obviously, today is Father's Day. And again, happy Father's Day for those of you who are fathers in the room. But we're talking about this series about heroes, right? And in this series of heroes, what we're talking specifically about is how do these heroes point us towards Christ? But as we got to thinking about that, and as I got to thinking about how significant it was that here we are on Father's Day talking about heroes, for those of you in the room, and I don't want you to raise your hands if you had a good relationship with your father or any of that sort of stuff. I know all of us didn't have that. But if you had any sort of a relationship with your father, and if it was any way even halfway good, you probably saw your father as a hero, right? I don't know about you, but that was definitely the case for me. I have have and had a good relationship with my father growing up, and so much so that I was like a huge fan of my dad, right? Growing up, I thought he hung the sun, moon, and stars, you know, like so. I was guilty, definitely guilty, of having these conversations on the playground at school in an elementary school that sounded a little bit like this. My dad is better than your dad because, and then you can fill in the blank, right? Did any of you guys ever hear those conversations on the playground or growing up have those conversations with other people? It's something that we do because we look to our fathers as heroes oftentimes. And it's interesting that here we are our Father's Day talking about heroes, but not only that, we're talking about a particular individual who's seen as one of the greatest fathers in human history. We're going to talk today about a guy named Abraham. And Abraham is seen as a great father. If you don't believe me, you just need to listen to the amazing kid song, Father Abraham, right? Do any of you know what I'm talking about? Apologies for those that actually, I should apologize for the people who do know the song. It's so bad, okay? There is a song in Christian circles called Father Abraham, and it's a kid's song. And if you didn't grow up in church circles, you're probably better off because of it, because this song goes a little bit like this Father Abraham had many sons, many sons had Father Abraham. I am one of them, and so are you, so let's all praise the Lord. Right arm. And then you sing the whole song again, and then you add your left arm, and then your right leg, your left leg, and then you're turning around, nodding your head. It's just to get kids moving, right? And it's an absolutely ridiculous song about a very unridiculous biblical figure. The reason that Abraham is so significant is because he's seen as a father not just by those of us who are in the Christian faith. He's also seen as a big father figure in those who are of the Jewish faith. And he's also seen as a father, a very significant father, of those who are part of the Islam faith. Interesting, right? And so today here we are talking about this major world figure, Abraham, in this context of this conversation about heroes. Now, the reason we're talking about heroes is because what we decided is it would be good for us as a church to look at these characters from the Old Testament and really ask the question of how do these Old Testament characters really point us towards Jesus? How do we see Christ in the very first pages of the scripture? Because oftentimes, if if you're anything like me, you you hear or you listen or you talk about these stories of Noah or Abraham or Moses or any of the other characters, David, all these characters we're going to look at. And you look at it as its own little story, its own little context, without much thought to the biggest story of the Bible. So this whole series geared around, and I'm really excited about it, it's geared around asking, how do these Old Testament figures point us towards Jesus? How do we see Jesus in the very first books of the Bible? And so I'm excited that that's where we're going with this series, and that's exactly where we're gonna be going today. Now, Abraham's a difficult figure to talk about because there's a lot that we could say about Abraham. There's things that I'm not gonna talk about today, I'm gonna give you a list. Uh I'm not gonna talk about the fact that Abraham was a patriarch, that he was seen as that patriarch means he was one of the fathers, the founding fathers. We're not gonna talk a lot about that. We're not gonna talk about how God set up a covenant with Abraham and all the means. We're not gonna talk about the significance of the lineage of his family, how you can trace from Abraham all the way down to Jesus. We're not gonna talk about the fact that he had a nephew that he was close with, a guy named Lot, and the crazy story of what happened with Sodom and Gomorrah. We're not gonna talk about the fact that God changed Abraham's name, that his original name was Abram, and his wife's name was Sarai, and it went to Sarah. We're not gonna spend a lot of time talking about all the significance of that, but if you are interested, I would encourage you to check out the story. It's in Genesis chapter 11 through 25. That's how much we have on Abraham. It's a number of books there, uh chapters there in the book of Genesis. Also, if you're interested, Romans chapter 4 is a whole chapter of the New Testament that talks about Abraham. There's other references to him throughout the New Testament. But we would really encourage you to check out the book of Romans and what it has to say about that. On that note, by the way, on your listening guide, there is a reading plan on the back that we all use to read through the Bible. If you are wondering, yeah, what is the Bible and how do I read it? That's a great place to start because on the back page there, you'll see just a reading plan. It's really simple. If you want to read the Bible, that's a great way to start. And I would encourage you, reading the Bible cannot help but change your life. I'm a firm believer of that. So join with us in that. We're gonna be reading some of these passages this week in Genesis and in Romans, like I've been talking about. Now, for our time today, like I said, we're not gonna spend a lot of time on all of those things. What we are gonna spend time doing is going back to Hebrews 11. And that's where Nick left us off last week. We talked about uh Noah out of Hebrews 11, and this whole conversation about heroes of faith is gonna continue on through the book of Hebrews. We're gonna let that be the context. And as we looked at the book of Hebrews, it's a particular part of the Bible that we call the Hall of Faith. And it's a play on words, yes, it's meant to be a play on words. Instead of Hall of Fame, it's a hall of faith. And specifically, what we see here in the hall of faith is three stories from Abraham's life. And these three stories are really gonna framework our whole conversation for today, okay? So that's where we're gonna be, and that's how we're gonna frame up this conversation. I would love to invite you to grab your Bibles. If you don't have one, there should be one in the seat in front of you. Uh Hebrews 11 is where we're gonna be going. So grab that Bible. Hebrews 11 is where we're going. Okay, so Hebrews 11, it's up the back of the Bible, sometimes a little hard to find. I always struggle to find Hebrews, I don't know why. But Hebrews 11 is where we're gonna be parked, and verse 8 is the verse that we're gonna be reading from. Okay, so here we go. Verse 8, Hebrews 11 reads like this. By faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed and went out to a place he was going to receive as an inheritance. Okay, that kind of makes sense. He went out not knowing where he was going. By faith, he stayed as a foreigner in the land of promise, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, co-heirs of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. Now, this is kind of an interesting passage because it starts us out with this story of Abraham going and following God. And I want to give you a little bit more context for this, so I want to invite you to keep your finger there in Hebrews 11 and flip back to the very first book of the Bible, to Genesis 11, with me, because that's where we pick up the story. And I want to point out something interesting to you about before we even get to Abraham's life. So let's go to Hebrews, sorry, Genesis 11, and we're gonna go to verse 31, is where we're gonna pick up the story, and it tells us just a little bit about Abraham's father. Again, Abraham went through a name change, so when he's referred to back here, it's Abram. Verse 31, Genesis 11 says this Tera took his son Abram, his grandson Lot, Haran's son, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram's wife, and they set out together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. Terah lived 205 years and died in Haran. Now, I didn't read that so you'd be amazed by the fact that he lived to 205, although some of you in the room are probably distracted by that right now. That was normal back then. People lived longer, okay? So he lives to 205. The interesting thing in this story that I do want you to see is the fact that he was on his way to Canaan and he settled. Okay? I don't know if you picked up on that in the story. Now, in case you didn't realize this, Canaan is the promised land. And so Tera, Abram's father, Abraham's father, was on his way to the promised land and he settled part way through. And as humans, we have a tendency to like to settle. I'll give you an example. A couple of years ago, we found out we were having twins. We have a toddler, we had a toddler at the time. We found out we're having twit twins, and we're like, well, we've got to get a bigger car. So we shopped around, we're like, we better get a bigger car. So we we're looking at all these different cars, we finally narrow it down to this one specific model of Hyundai that we wanted to buy, and we test drove a couple of them, and all the ones we test drove had this same issue. The center console, the little latch on the center console, was broken on all of them. It was a design flaw. And so whenever you'd accelerate, the center console would, you know, flap up, and then whenever you decelerate, it would like come crashing forward. And it was kind of annoying, right? So I read up on it online, and people were like, you just get a piece of Velcro and put it on there, you can still open it, but it'll hold it shut. I'm like, brilliant. I will do that as soon as we buy the car. Well, a couple of years later we just sold the car and I still didn't fix it. Okay, so we lived with it like that for two whole years, over two years. We left it how it was, we settled with it how it was, and that's our human nature, that's our tendency as human beings is to settle. And the awesome thing about Abraham's story, before we even get there, is he didn't follow in his father's footsteps to just settle. But he followed God. I want to show you what it says about Abraham. Let's read on. Chapter 12 of Genesis says this the Lord said to Abraham, Go out from your land, your relatives, and your father's house, to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, I will curse those who treat you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you. So Abraham went as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abraham was seventy-five years old when he left Aaron. Now, the first thing that I want you to point out, and I would encourage you to jot this down on your notes. There's a space in the fill-in-the-blanks, is that Abraham followed God. Abraham followed God. And sometimes I think as people, we make this really a lot more complicated than it needs to be. Following God looks like this. We listen for his voice, and we're ready and willing to follow him. It's not more complicated than that. Now we make it complicated because we're so distracted that we don't hear his voice, and then when he does give us direction, we want all the details and what's going to happen. We want to know all the, you know, hey, well, I need to know what all the implications of what's going on. And yet Abraham was faithful to follow God, even though he didn't know all the details. One of the cool things about this story that we're reading today is we're not reading it just from Genesis. That's one author's perspective. We're also reading it from Hebrews, which is another author's perspective, and we get another insight on this story. So I want to encourage you to go back to Hebrews 11 with me and see what it says, what we just read earlier. It says this in that first verse, verse 8, it says, He went out, halfway through, it says, He went out not knowing where he was going. Okay, so Abraham didn't just follow God, he went and followed God even though he didn't know where he was going. I don't know if that's impressive to you, but it's impressive to me, because I'm one of those people who likes to have all the details, right? I want to know all the details, the itinerary of what's going on. And yet Abraham's faith was one where he went and followed God, but what that looked like was him just following God even though he didn't have a roadmap. So you next fill in the blank there this morning is Abraham let God supply the roadmap. And I think we can learn a lot from that. Are we willing, A, not to just follow God, but B, to also allow him to be the one that supplies the roadmap in our lives. Now, the third thing I want to point out before we go into the next story this morning is back in Hebrews 11. The last sentence is an interesting one to me that we read. Verse 10, it says this for he was, it's talking about Abraham, looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. Now that's kind of a weird sentence, right? It's kind of a weird sentence. And the reason that it's there is because the author of Hebrews is telling us, hey, Abraham was promised this promised land, right? He was given that, but he went there and lived as a stranger. He went and he lived in a tent. He didn't go and set up, you know, a house or a mansion or a palace, a castle. No, he went and he lived there all of his days in a tent, and he was absolutely a hundred percent okay with that, because he knew he was looking forward to something much more. He was looking forward to eternity and what God had for him in eternity. And the thing that I want you to see this morning is that if Abraham is a hero, or for the context of our conversation today, a superhero, his superpower strength was that he had an eternal perspective. That's something that we talk about here from time to time, having an eternal perspective. Because throughout the scriptures, we see the value of seeing further down the line than just the here and now. Because the truth is, if we get caught up, if we get so consumed in the here and now, we're gonna eat it. Things aren't gonna go well, we're gonna get all wrapped up and messed up in the here and now. I want to give you guys a riding analogy. Is that okay this morning? I like mountain biking, a lot of you guys know that. And one of the things that I've learned as I've as I've been riding is one of the things that will make you crash and burn and hurt quicker than anything else is having the wrong perspective when you're riding. Our tendency when we get on a bike and you get on a piece of trail, single track as you c as we call it, you tend to look right in front of you when you're on your bike, right? You're like, okay, I better pick my wheel and my way around through this trail. Because when you're on a trail, what you're trying to avoid is there's rocks, there's roots, there's trees close by, there's cliff edges, there's cactus, all sorts of fun stuff, right? I'm making you guys want to go riding right now, aren't I? Uh so you've got all this stuff that you're trying to avoid and make your way through, and the wor absolute worst thing that you can do when you're riding is to ride like this, looking down at the trail right in front of you, where your wheel is, trying to pick out a line. Now I know that may sound counterintuitive because it is. What you really want to do when you're riding your bike is to look way down the trail, to look through the corners, and you'll be much faster and much safer because you have the right perspective. Your body will remember what you've seen and will have already picked out the line. If you get so consumed with what's right in front of you, you're way more likely to go over the handlebars. Just ask Aaron Negron, he'll tell you a story about that. Or you're much more likely to eat it and fall off the side of the trail. And it's much the same in life. If we live life focused just on what's here in front of us without the eternal perspective, we're gonna eat it. We're gonna fall on our faces. And Abraham knew that. By God's grace, he knew that, and he had an eternal perspective. There's so much more we could say on that, but we need to keep moving. Let's go on to the next story this morning. So, as we read through Hebrews, the second story that we come to about Abraham's life is a story about Abraham and his wife Sarah and a situation that happened in their marriage. Now, it's kind of interesting because we read this book of Hebrews and it's written to Hebrews. That's kind of profound, right? Uh no, but it's written to Jews, and all Jews know the story of Abraham. So as you read through what we're about to read to, there's all this assumed knowledge that I'm not going to assume everybody in this room here this morning already knows the story of Abraham. So I want to give you a little bit of the backstory, okay? So Abraham is married to this very, very, very beautiful woman named Sarah. It's actually his half-sister. Now, that was, again, more culturally normal back then. And so he's married to his half-sister, and she's a very beautiful woman. Now, the issue in their relationship is that she is unable to have children. She's barren, okay? And she's unable to have kids. But God comes to Abraham, they go to the promised land, he comes to Abraham and says, Hey, I'm going to give you many, many children. Your children are going to have kids as numerous as the sand on the seashore, right? And Abraham's like, Okay, cool. But my wife doesn't have kids. And so he starts wondering what all of this means. He realizes that he's getting old. And he's like, Okay, I better help God out here. I better help figure out what's going on here. And so he and Sarah have, I'm sure, many conversations, but they finally come up with a plan where he is going to sleep with her maidservant, again, something that was more culturally normal back then, and and and have a child through her. And so he sleeps with Hagar, she gets pregnant, and has this child, Ishmael, and God comes to him and says, Hey, that's not what I was talking about. That wasn't the plan that I have for you guys. I'm still gonna give you you and Sarah a kid. And Abraham's like, dude, we are really old. Like, this is not humanly prop possible. What are you talking about? But sure enough, when Abraham turns 100 and Sarah is 90, they have a kid. They have this promised child, Isaac. It's an amazing story. We'd encourage you to check it out this week. But there they are, and they have this child, and that's what this next part of Hebrews 11 is about. So let's read it. Hebrews 11, 11, it says this By faith, even Sarah herself, when she was unable to have children, received power to conceive offspring, even though she was past the age, like we just talked about, since she considered the one, see the capital O, that's God, who was who had promised, was faithful. Therefore, from one man, in fact, from one as good as dead, that's talking about Abraham, unable to have kids, uh, came offspring, as numerous as the stars of heaven, and as innumerable as the grains of sand by the seashore. And what I want you to see here is that it's almost as if God is waiting till it's absolutely impossible. He's not just waiting until people are like, well, that's kind of unusual and unlikely. He's waiting until it's absolutely impossible for them to have kids, and then he gives them a kid. He gives them the promised child Isaac. The word Isaac, the son, that that name means laughter, right? Because it's kind of a laughing matter that they were even able to have a kid in their old age. That's why he was called that. And so what I want you guys to see here this morning is that it's completely ironic that God would use these two old people who are unable to have kids to then be the father and mother of thousands and millions of people. We can trace that back through and see that they've been the father of many, many, many, many generations because of God's goodness and God's faithfulness. And the thing that I want you to write down here is simply this God loves bad odds. God's in the business of dealing with bad odds. Because here's the deal when God walks into a situation and there's bad odds, there's no way for us to explain what happens outside of God. You can't look at Isaac and say, well, you know, they just got lucky in their old age. No, no, no. God was working, that was a miracle, and we can't explain Isaac outside of God. And the same is true in our lives. When there are situations and moments in our lives where the odds are stacked against us, that's where God is able to move in an amazing way. And this isn't me getting up to give you a prosperity message today. I just want you to know that God loves those bad odds in your lives, and you need to hear that this morning. Okay? Well, Hebrews 11 continues. If we were to read verse 13 through 16 today, you would see that it goes and zooms out of talking about Abraham to talking about all the heroes of faith. So he kind of zooms out, the author zooms back out and talks about all these heroes of faith and then goes back to talking about Abraham. So we're going to skip over those verses, but I'll give you a quick summation. Basically, it tells us this all these heroes were living by faith till they died. So they did a good job of that. They did not receive all the things promised in this life. And they realized that there were foreigners, or some translations even say aliens in the land. Again, they had that eternal perspective we were talking about earlier. But I want for us to jump to verse 17 where we're given this beautiful, beautiful story of Abraham and his son Isaac. And I want for us to focus in on that this here this morning. Genesis 22, you can find this story, and again, it's in our reading plan this week. So I would encourage you to read it. But I'm going to give you the Cliff Notes version. Because if we go ahead and read Hebrews 17 in 11, 17, it won't make sense without saying this first. Abraham is there with his son of promise, right? He's got this son. The son's probably in his teenage years at this point. And Abraham's there, and God comes to him one day and says, Hey, Abraham, I want you to go and worship me. I want you to build an altar on this mountain and worship me, but I want your son Isaac to be the sacrifice. And it's an incredibly intense story as we read Hebrews, sorry, Genesis 22. And as you read through our account, what you see is that Abraham, this is incredible. Abraham gets up, the Bible tells us, the very first thing the next morning and leaves. It's not like he sits around and says, Well, was that really God? I don't know if I heard God this morning. That was kind of weird what he said. No, he gets up the very first thing and leaves with a couple of servants and with his son. And they head out for a three-day journey. He's got three days for this to play mind games on him, right? Put yourself in his situation. So they're walking across, they finally get to the mountain, and he says to the servants, hey, you guys stay here with the donkey. Isaac and I are going to go on and worship God. And he takes the wood for the sacrifice and loads it onto Isaac's back. And they head up the mountain. Now, Isaac is a clever kid. He says to his dad, they're halfway up the mountain, and he says, Hey dad, what's going on here? He's like, hey, we've got everything for a sacrifice except for a sacrifice. And Abraham says to his son, he says, God will provide. And they keep heading on up this mountain. And as I think about this story, it's just so intense. They get up to the top, they build this altar. I can't imagine what's going through their minds at this point of Abraham or Isaac. And he binds his son and places him on the altar. And he gets there with the sacrificial knife, raises it, and God stops him. He says, Abraham, Abraham, stop. I've seen that you're faithful. I've seen that you're willing to go through with what I've asked you. I was just testing you. And he looks across to the side and they see there in some bushes stuck is a ram that God has provided to be a substitute. And so they take, he takes Isaac off the altar and he places this ram there instead, and they sacrifice it and offer it as a burnt offering to God. There on this mountain. And it's an incredibly intense story, and one of the most important stories that we see here in the life of Abraham. But I want you to see what the author tells us in Hebrews about this story. So let's go to verse 17 of chapter 11 of Hebrews. By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. He received the promises, and he was offering his unique son, the one who would have been said about, your seed will be traced through Isaac. He considered God to be able to raise someone from the dead, and as an illustration, he received him back. And it says here in Hebrews 11, again, a different perspective, it says that he knew that God was able to raise his son from the dead. It wasn't like God would be able to give him another son. God had already told him it's through Isaac that you're going to have many, many other sons. And so in this moment, he's like, okay, if God is who he says he is, if he's led me this far, I'm going to believe that God is able to raise my son from the dead if that needs to be what happens. And so what I want you to note here this morning is that in the midst of testing, Abraham showed great faith in God. Now I just want to stop here for a second and make sure we are all tracking here. This story has incredible significance. You read through the life of Abraham, there's significance all the way through it and symbolism, but it's the thickest right here in this part of his story. Think about it with me. Abraham is asked to sacrifice his one and only son. Does that sound familiar to you guys? John 3 16? For God so loved the world that he gave his only son to die on a cross, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but has eternal life. Let me show you something more. Abraham, remember in the story, Abraham loads the wood for the sacrifice onto the back of his son. Just like Christ had to carry the burden of his sacrifice at Calvary. He carried his own cross. And this illustration continues. Think about the altar situation. There, Abraham's about to go through with this act of sacrificing his son, and God stops him and provides a substitute. And that's true for each and every one of us. Jesus is the substitute who comes in in our place, and instead of stopping himself, God goes through with the act and sacrifices his son. And I don't know if you guys are getting all the symbolism here, but it should move you. It gives me chill bumps when I think about the depth of the gospel. And the fact that we're here in the very first book of the Bible and we're reading about the cross. Are you guys seeing this here with me this morning? How amazing is that that our God would write the depth of the gospel here in the very first book of the Bible. And it's incredible to think about the fact that Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son. Put yourself in his shoes. Those of you who are parents, think about what that would mean. And that's what God did for us through Jesus. He didn't stop, he went through with the sacrifice. And so I want you to see here today that this is an amazing story and an amazing way that we are pointed towards Jesus and the cross. There's two big questions that we're attempting to answer through this whole series. The first question is this: How does the hero that we're talking about each week point us towards Christ in their strengths? And that's essentially what we've spent the last few minutes talking about. But the second question is, how does the hero that we're talking about point us towards Christ in their weaknesses? Because you've got to know Abraham and all these other heroes we're going to talk about were human, just like us. They weren't perfect, and they had their shortcomings. The problem is when we look at heroes, we think, yeah, they're the good guys, and we only see that through a good perspective. But we've got to realize and understand that Abraham and all these other guys are just shadows of the ultimate hero, Jesus. Okay? So I need you to hear that. I need you to know that today, and I want to just very quickly touch on a couple of Abraham's shortfallings because I think they're really helpful for us as well. There's three main instances I want to point out to you in Abraham's life. The first one is this Abraham early in his life, well, I guess he was 75 when he left. So not so early in his life, early where we pick up in the story. He's heading through Egypt with all of his family and his belongings. And as they're going through the land of Egypt following God's direction, they come across Pharaoh, and Pharaoh seeks to talk with them, and he sees Sarah, Abraham's wife, and realizes she's incredibly beautiful. And he's like, Who is that? And Abraham is very passive in this moment. He says, Yeah, that's my sister, which is a half-truth, right? He didn't go on to say, Yeah, and my wife, okay? And so what happens is uh Pharaoh's like, well, I'd like to take her into my household. And so he does that. Interesting read. And what happens is God has to intervene and make things sort back out the way that they're meant to. God has to step in and help Abraham out, and everything ends up okay, it's okay. But in that moment, he was so passive in his relationship with his wife. It's a moment that we see the weakness, the humanity of Abraham. Another moment that we see the humanity of Abraham is in that story I touched on earlier. There's that moment where he's like, okay, God's promised me many children, I'm gonna get some children, I'm gonna figure out this situation in and of myself. And as humans, we just do that, right? We try and sort things out for God. We try to help him out. And by doing that, he sleeps with Hagar, gets pregnant with and she has this son, Ishmael, who then goes on to create a whole nation of people who, if we look to the Middle East, are still at war with the sons of Isaac. And by trying to take things into his own hands and control the situation, it's called caused all sorts of chaos for generation after generation after generation. Because he tried to take control of the situation. The third one is actually the same as the first, and it's incredible to me. He does the exact same thing a second time. He comes across this king many years later. So Sarah's getting pretty old at this point, by the way. He comes across this king, and this king says, Wow, she's beautiful. Uh, I'd like her to be a part of my family. He's like, Oh yeah, that's my sister. And so God again has to step into the situation and take care of it. He's passive twice. And so I think there's a great warning for us in this as we look at his life and we look at some of these weaknesses. So, in this conversation today, I want to ask, what do we need to walk away seeing? What do we need to look at Abraham's life and be like, yeah, I needed to hear that or see that today? Because the truth is, I don't want you to walk out of here with a, you know, a history lesson on Abraham. What I want you to walk out of here today seeing is God and his faithfulness and his goodness through the life of Abraham. So I have four things that I want you to think about as we're getting ready to finalize our conversation here this morning. The first thing is this God's story of redemption is woven throughout the Old Testament. And we see the parallels to the cross here at the very first part of the Old Testament. And I don't know about you, but this amazes me. It really does. When I look at that story of Isaac on the altar and how parallel it is to what God did to us, substituting and the Lamb. I mean, it's incredible. And so your fill in the blank there is simply this Abraham was a shadow of Jesus, our ultimate hero. I want you to walk away today amazed at the scriptures and how through the narrative of the scriptures we see Jesus. And I just want to stop really quickly at this point and just address any of those of you in the room who are not Christians or you're not sure if you're a Christ follower, not sure if you're a Christ follower yet. I just want to encourage you to make a decision to follow God. He is an amazing God, and he is the one who is able and willing to substitute his son in place for your sins. The Bible very clearly tells us that the wages of sin is death. We all deserve to die, and yet Jesus comes in and substitutes on that altar instead of us. There's symbolism all the way through here, but just to give it a quick summation, just know that there is a God who loves you, has a plan for your life, and he is ready and willing to allow Jesus to be your substitute. If you have questions about that, talk to the person who brought you along here today. Talk to one of us, talk to Nick, talk to myself, and really would encourage you to ask these questions and think more about what this means for you in your own life and your own journey. The second thing I'd point out to you as we're wrapping up is this that Abraham was radically obedient. He wasn't just kind of obedient, he was radically obedient. Think about it with me. He went to the promised land even though he didn't know where he was going. He went and was ready and willing to sacrifice his son when God told him to do that. He was radically obedient. And I want to ask myself, I want to ask you guys, would we have the same tenacity? Or are we more like Abraham's father who got halfway to the promised land and settled? Again, I don't want you to walk out of here thinking about Abraham and his amazingness. I want you to think about God and his amazingness to Abraham. But I want you to know that it was by God's grace that Abraham was radically obedient. And my prayer for myself, my prayer for each one of you is that you too would be radically obedient by God's grace. The third thing, specifically I want to talk to fathers here in the room this morning and what we learn from Abraham's story. Specifically to us as fathers, there is a call in this message to be good fathers, to be like Abraham, to be a good father. And I think that that message specifically speaks to some of those issues that Abraham had in his life. And so my encouragement to us as fathers is that good fathers reject passivity and reject the illusion of control. Remember those three instances that I told you about Abraham's life? The first moment he was passive. As men, we struggle with this. It's easy for us to come home from a long day of work and just sit on the couch and play with our phone or to turn on the TV or whatever it is that you like to do to decompress. Men, let's not be passive men. Secondly, men, let's not be controlling. Control is an illusion. God is in control. We are not in control. And in the situation when it came to getting an air, God, Abraham tried to help God out. How ridiculous is that? But we as men tend to do the same thing. We're either passive or we're trying to take control of the situation. And so my encouragement to us as men and as husbands and fathers today is this is that we would reject passivity, but we'd also reject this illusion of control and realize that God is the one who is ultimately in control. Lastly, I really want you guys to walk out of here, like I said earlier, not thinking about Abraham, but thinking about God. God is faithful to fulfill his promises. And I really pray that you would walk out of here today knowing that God is the one who is the hero of this story. As we look to Abraham's life, we see God's goodness, we see God's faithfulness all over his story, all over his story. We see God's goodness and faithfulness and grace towards Abraham. And I believe that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and he is that same faithful God to each and every one of us today. I was thinking about this last thought this week, and this scripture came to my mind, and I was like, where is that found? So I looked it up, and it was in Hebrews 12, and I was like, well, that's appropriate. Hebrews 11, Hebrews 12 is the next thing. So the next thing the author of Hebrews says, I want to read to you kind of as we close, and I want you to really let these words, don't be distracted by the fact that I said as we close, but I want you to really think about the words of this scripture as I read it over you here this morning. Listen to this. Hebrews 12, verse 1 and 2. Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, all these heroes that have gone before us, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run the race, let us run, sorry, with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and the perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that lay before him endured the cross and despised the shame and sat down at the right hand of God's throne. What I want to point out to you from this scripture here this morning as we close is this God, Jesus, is the source. He's the author, some translations say, and perfecter of our faith. And what you need to know this morning is that Abraham wasn't the source. He wasn't the author of his own faith. He wasn't the perfecter of his faith. That was God. That was Jesus. And the same is true for our lives. Don't walk out of here today hearing that you should have more faith. You should be like Abraham. You should follow God obediently. It's only by God's grace that you will be the person that God's called you to be, because he is the author and the perfecter of your faith. And I want to encourage you today, more than anything, to walk out of this room today in a posture of submission to He who is the author and the perfecter of your faith. Let me pray for you guys.