Genesis 15 - Beginning To Believe God
Main Idea: Choose to believe and follow the almighty God who loves you.
Believe God’s Word
Believe In God’s Sacrifice
Believe In God’s Future
Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)
As we've walked through the life of Abraham, Abram himself has walked through hearing a call from God that God had a purpose and a mission for his life that he was supposed to fulfill, and he disobeyed God at various points.
He had to deal with the consequences of his own misguided actions. He began to see things God's way, and he began to see God be victorious in his life.
However, the very first thing that we learned in the end of Genesis 11 about Abram and his wife, Sarai, was that they were childless, and they were over the age of 75.
And none of those two things changed from the very first time that God talked to Abraham to where we find ourselves today. And though God had promised, Abram, you are going to become a great nation. Your wife, Sarai, is going to have a child.
All the nations of the earth will be blessed through your family. He's not seen that happen yet. And frankly, Sarai, at over 75, I know we have a few people in the room that are over 75.
I don't think any of you are just like really expecting one of these days, I'm going to be with child again. It's not how it normally works, and that's not how it normally worked in the days of the Bible either.
This looked like a completely hopeless situation. And this frankly had caused Abram to doubt God's promise. And maybe that's where you find yourself this morning, hopefully not over 75 going, man, God, I just wish you would give me a kid.
But you have things in your life that you really wish that God would change, ways in which you have felt, if you will, let down by the Lord, that you expected this to take place, you expected this good or this relationship to last.
Maybe you've been sharing your faith with a loved one for decades. That's just not happening. But what Abraham discovers today and what we'll discover along with him is that we can begin to believe God.
And specifically today, we're gonna look at this truth that we need to choose to believe and follow. The Almighty God who loves you.
Whoever you are today, whatever your background is, whatever you've gone through in your life, no matter what mistakes that you have made, no matter what rejections of God that you have done in your life, God loves you. And he has a plan for you.
You are not an accident. You are not a mishap in God's plan. You are the point.
And he loves you desperately. And we are going to look at some of that today. Let's go to the Lord first in a word of opening prayer.
Then we are going to dive into the passage and see a couple of ways that we can begin to believe God even this week. Dear Jesus, thank you that when we call to you, you hear us.
And Lord, we pray that today as we look at your word, that you would remind us again of your good intentions for us.
Lord, if the fact that we can believe you, that Lord, though it is rarely on our timetable, though it's rarely in the way that we would plan it out, you are good and that your way is always best. We love you.
And we pray, as was prayed earlier, that if there is anyone here today that does not know you as their Lord and their Savior, that today would be the day that they make that decision to enter into your family. We love you, God.
And we pray all of this in the name of Jesus. Amen. We're going to begin in verse number one.
After these events, looking last week at everything that happened with Abram's nephew Lot, how there had been some family infighting.
And so Abram told Lot, hey, whatever patch of land you want you and your herds and your flocks to graze on, you take it. You take the best of the best. I'll take whatever you don't choose.
And so Lot had chosen a place of land that was directly near kind of a larger city in the area where there was a ton of wickedness, a ton of evil happening in those places. But it had some nice grass. And so Lot went into that area.
The kings in that land of Canaan, they rebelled against the Mesopotamian kings that were aligned together. They said, after 12 years, we're not paying our taxes anymore. You guys can kind of deal on your own.
The Mesopotamian kings came over to the land of Canaan. They defeated many groups. They defeated the Canaanite kings.
And they took all of their stuff and went north up towards where Syria or Damascus is today. And all of that would kind of be immaterial to the plot of the Bible, except that they also took Abram's nephew Lot with them.
And so Abram and the 318 servants, workers that he had with him, they all went up and they rescued Lot and his family. And we saw last week how God won that victory. It wasn't because Abram was some great warrior.
He was an old man, but because God had placed his favor on him, he was able to see accomplished what Abram could never have accomplished on his own. And it says, after these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.
Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield. Your reward will be very great.
If I'm receiving this, especially after like, you know, going through World War pre-one, I'm going to have some comfort there. I'm going to be thankful. But the fact that God has to tell him, don't be afraid, tells me that Abram does have some fear.
And his particular fear is that he is unprotected, which is why God tells him, I am your shield. I'm the one that will protect you and look out for you. When you see this word shield here, don't think like, you know, kind of a middle ages shield.
This would be a gigantic shield that would cover and kind of surround a person. This would be something that you would hide entirely behind. I forget if it was the Spartans or one of the other groups that had one of those incredibly large shields.
It's something that surrounds you to protect you. And that's what God says for Abram here. He says, I am your shield.
Says your reward will be very great. Hebrews chapter 11 and verse number six would tell us, those that come to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who diligently seek him. For many of us, we believe that God exists.
Great. James 2 tells us, you believe that there is one God? Fantastic.
The devils also believe and they even tremble at that fact. But we must recognize the fact that our God exists and that he rewards those that follow him.
As the apostle Paul would tell us in 1 Corinthians, I has not seen, I has not heard nor has entered into the heart of man and the things that God has prepared for those that love him.
Or as Romans 8 tells us, we know that all things work together for good to those that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
I love there, it doesn't say all things are good for those that love God, but it says that he works all things together for good. And right now you might be in a season where it doesn't feel like anything's going good.
But I want you to know that that doesn't mean that God does not love you. It just means this is one part of the tapestry that he is weaving in your life. So here's this wonderful promise from the Lord for Abram.
But Abram said, Lord God, what can you give me? What kind of reward would be meaningful to me since I am childless and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus? Abram continued, look, you've given me no offspring.
So a slave born in my house will be my heir. Here Abram's saying, like, God, you called me several years ago to come to this place and gave me these promises, and yet I have not seen it happen yet. Where in the world are you?
And not only do I not have offspring, he says, I don't even have like lot with me anymore. And so the next, like, if I pass, the person that gets all of my stuff is just one of my household workers. So he says, they're Eliezer of Damascus.
So God gives a promise. Abram gives back doubt. He says, what in the world could you give me?
He's basically given up on God's ability to follow through on his word. Verse number four, now the word of the Lord came to him. This one will not be your heir.
Instead, one who comes from your own body will be your heir. So he counters the doubt that Abram had with a re-statement of the promises that he had already made.
Many times in our life, we want God to show us some great big additional sign above what he has already told us, when frankly, very often, we just need to go back to the word of God and say, okay, God, I'm wanting you to love me, to care for me, to
have good intended for my life. But right now, I don't see it. So God, would you give me a Lamborghini to like prove your love for me? And many times, we just need to go back to the word and see if Jesus died for me.
If God says nothing on heaven, on earth, or under the earth can separate me from his love, I don't need a new sign. I just need to reread, I need to rehear what God has already spoken to me. Then verse number five, God does this.
He took him outside and said, look at the sky and count the stars. If you are able to count them. Now, I realize we live in the 21st century.
There's lots of airplanes and helicopters and light smog and all that. But for those of you that enjoy hunting and have been out there on a clear sky, can you guys count all of the stars in the sky?
No, even with all of the current day tools that we have at our disposal to be able to see just millions and millions of miles away into space, we can still not count all of the stars that God placed in our universe.
And so it rings out as true for us today, as it did for Abram. It says, if you're able to count them, then he said to him, your offspring will be that numerous. God says, I will be good on my promise.
And frankly, Abram, I will give you so far above anything that you could imagine. Beyond your ability to count, I don't know how many numbers they had that they could count up to during this time period. You know, they didn't have calculators.
I don't know if it was, you know, once it got into the hundreds of thousands, if they were just like, all right, that's good. Not counting above that. So he says, I will do for you way more than you can imagine.
I think of Ephesians chapter three, where the apostle Paul tells the Ephesian church, says, my God is able to do exceeding, abundantly above all that we ask or think. Today, where is your faith with the Lord?
Are you listening to him and believing him? That's where Abram finds himself. Abram believed the Lord and he credited it to him as righteousness.
Now, the word righteousness, not a word that we use a lot today, it would mean this, right standing before God and man. Right standing before God and man.
The very first things that we read about Abram is God says, leave your land, leave your extended family, and go to the land that I will show you, and I will give you and your wife a family.
You will have tons of descendants, and all of the nations of the earth will be blessed through you. And immediately after God tells them those things, we spend chapters 12 and 13 reading about how Abram does not leave his extended family behind.
We see that he, if you will, auction sells off his wife to Pharaoh in Egypt in order to save his own skin. We see that he brings hardship on to the nations around him because of his wickedness. And he's been doubting God even in this thing.
God gives amazing promises, and Abram doubts it. We would not see that as, yes, that is a person who is in right relationship with God and with people.
But the truth is this, the only righteousness that you or I could have, the only true right standing that we could have before God is because God gives it to us.
Titus chapter 3 would tell us, it's not by works of righteousness that we've done, but according to his mercy that he saved us.
Ephesians chapter 2 and verses 8 and 9 says, by grace you have been saved through faith and that not from yourselves, it is the gift of God not from works so that no one is able to boast. Many people today think about their eternity.
They think about their even Christian life as a set of scales and they hope that they're good outweighs their bad.
And if they've done enough good things and haven't done too many bad things, is that they can have a relationship with God or that when they get to the end of their life, if they were to see the Lord, He would allow them into heaven because they're
good outweighed their bad. Or for many Christians, the thought is, okay, well, Jesus got me into the gate through His righteousness, through His right standing with God. And so I got in because of Him, but now everything is because of me.
And I've done lots of good works and I showed up at church and I gave and I served and I did this and that. And the truth is any righteousness that we have is because God gifted it to us freely.
I love the verse in 2 Corinthians 5 that says, God made Jesus, the one who did not know sin, to become sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
The prophet Isaiah would tell us that all our good works, all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags in the sight of God.
You see, everything that we do as well intentioned as we may be still carries with it selfish motives, impure ways, imperfect ways of accomplishing what God has for us.
But I'm so thankful that simple belief in the Lord is what God says will be credited to your account and to my account as righteousness. This wasn't a new thing that only came along with Jesus.
This has always been the way that God's people have had relationship with him. Through belief in the righteousness of God, that they heard the word of God and they believed it and they followed it.
Here Abram believed the Lord and God credited it to him as righteousness. So then God goes another step. What is he going to say to this person that is now in right standing with God?
He also said to him, I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess. He says, not only are you going to have limitless descendants, you are also going to possess this land that you're walking in.
And Abram, fresh to right standing with God, begins to doubt again and he says, Lord God, how can I know that I will possess it? God told you you're going to possess it. If God is speaking to you, certainly you can believe his voice.
But he says, how can I know? And this is where we get phenomenally weird. Stay with me.
He said to him, bring me a three year old cow, a three year old female goat, a three year old ram, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon. And you all are instructed to bring these with you next Sunday, each of you individually.
So he brought all these to him, cut them in half, and laid the pieces opposite each other, but he did not cut the birds in half. Okay, now we just got way outside of any normal. This is an ancient Near East covenant treaty.
What this picture, so you have all of these animals that are cut in half.
Kids, I gotta tell ya, some adults let you down today because I was going to buy some dollar tree stuffed animals and cut them in half and line them down the aisle as a vivid picture of what this was, but I thought a little better of it.
Some people dissuaded me from the action. The point was this. You see, as you're walking through, I'll give the illustration here, and you guys don't have to move the camera or anything.
So you have, if you will, think of each of these chairs as one of these severed things. So here we have our severed in half three-year-old cow, severed in half goat, severed in half, I can't remember what the other one was. Was it a sheep?
A ram, yep, I was close, close. And a ram.
And as you're walking through the middle of it, and there's blood and it's creepy and it smells, like this wasn't something back in the old days that everyone was like, oh yeah, we're just like totally cool with this. We just like blood.
No, no one liked this. As you're walking through the middle, you have both individuals that would walk through together that were making this treaty.
And the implication was you break the covenant, you break the treaty, this is what's going to happen to you. It was a very, very vivid picture. And so God says, all right, you want to know that I'm going to be good on my word?
You want to know that I will give you this land to possess? Let's make a covenant. You don't believe me just when I say it?
Here's my promise. Verse 11, birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away. He's basically like, no, this is part of my treaty thing.
Like you got to get out of here. As the sun was setting, verse 12, a deep sleep came over Abram, and suddenly great terror and darkness descended on him. Okay, this phrase, a deep sleep came over Abram, were in the book of Genesis.
Do you guys remember the last time that a person had a deep sleep that was put on them? Adam and Eve. So here you have like this moment of great indication that this is God that put this sleep on Abram.
It wasn't just that, you know, he took a little bit too much Nyquil or something like that. Like, you know, God himself puts him in the sleep, and here this great terror and darkness descended on him.
Here it is the very presence of God that is coming to Abraham as this covenant is being made.
Then the Lord said to Abram, know this for certain, your offspring will be resident aliens for 400 years in a land that does not belong to them, and they will be enslaved and oppressed.
However, I will judge the nation they serve, and afterward, they will go out with many possessions.
So here he gives this prophecy of what was going to happen in the time of Joseph and his brothers, that they would go down to Egypt there in that time of famine, as we would read at the end of the Book of Genesis.
They would be there for 400 years, during which time period history would indicate to us.
The first time that they went down, there was a little bit closer family relationship between the Hebrew people and those that were currently ruling the Egyptian kingdom during that time period.
However, another group would come in in the couple of centuries after Joseph and his brothers got there. The invading people would conquer the current ruling Egyptian dynasty. And they would set up their own kingdom.
Because they were not related relatively more closely in the way that the Hebrews had been to the previous rulers.
They got scared of them, and Exodus would tell us about the enslavement that they would go through, as well as the murder of the first born males and the rest of the Hebrew children by that ruling Egyptian dynasty.
But again, none of that took God by surprise. He wasn't like, oh no, I sent them down to Egypt and all this stuff happened. No, no, God had a plan.
And he let Abram know hundreds of years in advance what was going to happen.
That just as Abram and Sarai had gone down to Egypt, how, if you will, Sarai had become enslaved and captured, and yet they were delivered by God through the sicknesses, through the plagues that God brought on Pharaoh and his household, and he
brought them out with many possessions, God was going to replay that same thing in the life of Abram's descendants. So, this is the guarantee, this will certainly happen.
Says, but you will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried in a good old age.
Abram's probably got mixed emotions right now, I know I do, of, okay, well, I really don't want, you know, B's grandkids to go through hard times, but I guess it's good that I'm gonna go down in peace, thanks.
But then God says something really, really interesting here. He says, in the fourth generation, they will return here for the iniquity of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure. God says this, I'm giving you this land.
It's currently possessed by a number of semi-pneumatic people groups that are in the land. It says, but there is blatant sin and wickedness and evil that is happening. And God is going to bring justice.
But in God's kindness and his goodness, he says, they haven't reached the full limit of where they're going to be before I bring justice. If you still breathe today, God is not finished with you.
You have not, if you will, reached the full measure of your wickedness before a holy God.
There is still time to repent from your sin, to turn from your own way, and to turn and receive the righteousness and forgiveness and relationship with Jesus Christ that God offers to you.
Then verse 17, when the sun had set and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch appeared and passed between the divided animals. We just got back into crazy weirdville. What in the world is happening?
This you would need to read through the rest of the Hebrew scriptures, through the rest of the Old Testament to recognize everything that God's doing right here.
When God was leading the children of Israel out from Egypt and he led them through the wilderness, does anyone remember what guided the children of Israel at night? Pillar of fire. Got the flame.
God's presence here is with Abram.
On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram saying, I give this land to your offspring from the brook of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates River, the land of the Kenites, Kenazites, Kadmonites, Hephites, Perazites, Rephaim, Amorites,
Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites. I want to notice just one last thing before we go to our application for today. Do you remember what I told you?
When we're making a covenant, well, not us, thankfully, when they were making a covenant back in the day, and you have all of these split animals, and you're walking through the midst of them, and both of you together, and you recognize, okay, if I
break the treaty, this is what's going to happen to me. Like, my life is forfeit if I break this treaty.
It's very meaningful if you have countries that they're saying, we're not going to go to war with one another, and if we do, or if you have someone that's like, yes, I'm going to buy this piece of property from you, and if I don't do it, like, you'll
kill me and dismember me. Thankfully, that's not how our processes work anymore today. How many people walked through this covenant, who passed through the middle? Verse number 17, well, you have the smoking fire pot and the flaming torch.
You've got God's presence, his light that passes through. Where's Abram? He's conked out.
Well, who put him to sleep? The Lord did. So God's making a promise.
He's making a covenant treaty with Abram, but only God passes through. In this, God assumes the responsibility for if there is a failure in the covenant.
Because from what we know from Abram, if Abram's awake and Abram walks through this thing, Abram's gonna break the covenant. He's gonna break the treaty. He's going to fail.
And so God took the responsibility of the punishment all on himself and gave all of the promise to Abram that Abram gets all of the benefit and God assumes all of the risk. What an amazing picture that is of Jesus Christ.
That on the cross 2,000 years ago, he died in our place and freely offers us redemption, what the scripture would call the New Covenant, the New Testament. That is in the New Covenant, you have Jesus died in our place. He made the sacrifice.
He was punished for sin so that God's justice would be satisfied and he offers full forgiveness and free relationship to us, that we don't have to earn our way back to God. That way was already paved through the righteousness of Jesus.
We don't have to worry about getting to the end of our life and wondering if our good outweighs our bad.
We have been clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ for everyone that calls on him in faith, that turns from their sin and their wickedness and turns in faith to Jesus, asking for his forgiveness and asking him to be their Lord.
So this is how Abram began to believe God. I don't think any of you are called to dismember any pigeons this week, Lord willing. So how do we begin to believe God?
Well, in closing today, I want us to see that we need to believe God's Word. If we're going to believe and follow the Almighty God who loves us, we need to believe God's Word.
We need to believe what God says about himself, his character, his goodness, his holiness, his mercy.
Because as we walk through our life, we will hear time and time again that subtle call of the serpent from Genesis 3 that would say, God's holding out on you.
If you just do this, if you just say this, if you live your life in this way, if you disregard what God said here, then you can really have the good life. You're not going to have it walking with God.
Or if God was really good, this or this wouldn't happen to you. Reject those calls from Satan and instead choose to trust in God's Word, to believe what God says about himself. Believe what God says about you.
That you are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are created in the image of God with a plan and a purpose that God has set out for you from all creation past. You are not an accident.
You are not an afterthought. You are not rejected. You are not outside of the love of God.
You are the prize that he left heaven to die for. Believe what God says about the way that he has wired our world to work. Our world says that you can accomplish everything you want if you just kind of bulldoze over other people.
You can love people by just allowing them to do whatever they want to do. And instead we need to turn to God's word and say, God, I recognize that just as Jesus, he didn't lead through an iron fist, but instead he laid his life down.
He came to serve others. That's how I need to lead. That's how I get ahead in my job.
That's how I exist in my family relationships, is not through being a tyrant, not through just bullying everyone else over, but instead by laying my life down in service for others.
We recognize that though our world signs off on plenty of things that go against the word and will of God, that it is the loving thing to do to call people to say, no, no, that's the path that leads to the destruction of our souls.
Let's follow the word of God. We ought to not just like trust in God's word, believe in it, but we ought to act on God's word. We ought to live our life as though Jesus really is our Lord.
If someone were to follow you around this week, would there be any difference in your life if you profess to be a Christian or if you said, I'm not a Christian, would that change anything in how you live your life this week?
Believe God's word by acting on it. Live your life as though you are an heir to everything that God has given you. In your relationships with other people, are you constantly needing affirmation and praise from other people?
Or are you secure in who God has named you to be? Are you able to overflow love and kindness to others? Or are you always needing it from external sources because you don't recognize who God has made you to be?
Who Jesus says that you are? We ought to believe God's word by obeying it, by forgiving and loving others. I love Ephesians chapter four and verse number 32.
We are to forgive one another just like God for Jesus' sake has forgiven us. There are people that earthly speaking do not deserve our forgiveness.
But when we realize that we have been forgiven an eternal debt that could never be paid back, that we couldn't ever climb our way back up into God's good graces after all of our failures, and yet God loved us and forgave us and made us his children,
all we can do is extend that forgiveness out to others. Jesus gave the example. You have a person and he owes $20 million to this king, this ruler.
And he begs the king for forgiveness and says, hey, just give me like a little bit of time and I can get all of your money back. And the king forgives him the debt.
And then that man goes out, finds another servant who owes him $20, and he starts choking him out and saying, give me my money right now.
And that's often how we interact with others, that though we've been greatly forgiven by God, we refuse to forgive others. Obey God's word and forgive and love others.
Jesus' words by this, all men will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. Let's obey God's word by staying away from greed and sexual immorality and wickedness.
These are all things that typify our world, but it ought not to typify the child of God. Not only are we to believe God's word, but we need to believe in God's sacrifice.
We're talking much, we've talked much this morning about Jesus Christ, the sacrifice that he made for us on the cross 2,000 years ago.
And the Bible says that if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, we will be saved.
Scripture says just as Abram believed God and God credited it to him as righteousness, the same can be true for you today. You don't have to attend church for long enough to experience a relationship with God. You don't have to give enough money.
You don't have to be dunked in a Baptist tree enough times. No, it is simply faith and belief in God's word that Jesus accomplished what he said he did.
Not only do we need to believe in God's sacrifice by accepting Jesus as our Savior and our Lord, we ought to reflect on his sacrifice and let it motivate us to love and obey him and to reject our sin.
That when we believe in God's sacrifice, we don't go back to the same sins that put him on the cross. We don't love the things that Jesus died to forgive. Instead, we turn in faith to him.
We accept, we reflect on his sacrifice, and we project to others what he has done for us and what he has done for them. That we tell other people about Jesus and all he has accomplished.
And then lastly, today, we need to believe in God for the future. For your future today. Think of Jeremiah 29 and verse 11.
I know the thoughts that I think towards you, says the Lord. Thoughts to bring you hope and a future to bring you to an expected end. God's plan for your life is not continual misery and grief, though certainly we will cry as Jesus cried.
We will experience loss as Jesus experienced loss. But each of those moments in our life draw us into closer relationship with God. We're able to experience the comfort that living in the community of God's people brings.
And so there is hope for your future. And you can believe in God that your best days are not behind you, but your best days are always ahead, because not only do we believe in hope for today, but we believe in heaven as our future.
Jesus said that he went to prepare a place for us. Scripture says to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. And one day we will shed this mortal body.
We will put on immortality. We will shed immorality. We will put on God's perfect holiness forever and always, and it is that there will be no more tears for us.
There will be no more sorrow, no more death, because God is making all things right. There is hope for today. There is heaven in your future, and God's goodness is planned for you.
The words of Psalm 23 echo out to us, even as it followed around David, who sometimes walked through the valley of the shadow of death, but he said, Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of
the Lord forever. Believe in God for your future. And then I also want to mention just briefly in closing, believe in God for the future of Tabernacle, of our church. I know some of you have been here for 50 plus years.
Some of you have been here for one year or less. Realize that Tabernacle's success is guaranteed as we follow the Christ who hell's gates can't stand against.
Jesus said that he will build his church and that the gates of hell will not prevail against it. He didn't say it's just going to be an easy road, but he said even the forces of hell are unable to defeat what the Lord God is building.
So, the call to us then is let's build Jesus' kingdom. Let's not build our own. But as we do that, we can know that there is hope and success for the future.
And if it's true that Jesus will build his church, then let's be involved. Let's commit to God's people. Let's participate in God's work.
Let's give, let's learn, and let's share what God is doing in this place. We can believe in God for the future revival of our area as we faithfully preach, declare, and live Jesus. The early disciples turned the world upside down.
And don't you think that God can do in Essex and Middle River and Joppa and everywhere in between? Don't you think he can do that again? Do you think he's less powerful in 2025 than he was in AD 25?
No, we serve a mighty God who has his people who are called by his name, humble themselves and pray and seek his face and turn from our wicked ways. Then we can see God's incredible work happen again.
God revived back at Pentecost in the great awakenings in the 17 and 1800s. And in the reformation, don't you think that God can bring revival? Yes, to our area.
Yes, to our church. But don't you think he can bring revival, new life in you? And then we can believe in God for the future of the longevity of the legacy of our faith as we continue to pass it on intentionally to the next generation.
Who are you bringing up in the faith? Who will know about Jesus, about Abraham, about the great songs of the faith because of you? You are called to pass on the torch to someone else.
Today, we gotta learn to begin to believe God, to recognize that God has given us his word, he's given us his promises. He has died in our place.
He is the one that assumed all of the risk, that underwent all of the payment, so that we could freely be offered forgiveness in him.
If you don't know Jesus as your Savior, if you've never accepted his payment for sin, today can be the day that you do that. Right at the end of service, I'm gonna be standing right in the back over by that welcome table.
I would love to talk with you, to show you how scripture says, you can believe in Jesus in your heart and be saved. But also love to talk with you later this week if that works better for you. Then we need to believe in God for the future.
But believing in God for the future means there's gotta be some actions taken now. If we believe that God will work, if we believe that God will continue on our faith, let us be faithful to pass that baton.
Let us be faithful to be involved in God's work. Let's believe God, because when we believe God, incredible, amazing things happen. Not because we manufactured it, but because we have a trustworthy, praiseworthy God.
