Chapter 11. We'll just continue
in this tonight. Our internet is down, so I think
I have notified everybody that there won't be a live stream,
but there'll be some that won't hear it. You've noticed that I've taken
a little bit slower pace through 11 than I did the rest of it,
just because I wanted to make sure that we focused on the Old
Testament as these things came up. So tonight we're going to
be in verses 8 and let's see, actually not, yes, we're going
to go back through verses 8 all the way through the end of 19. And we're going to look at Abraham
one more time. Here we go. By faith Abraham obeyed when
he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an
inheritance. And he went out not knowing where he was going.
By faith he went to live in the land of promise as in a foreign
land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him to
the same promise. For he was looking forward to
the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is
God. By faith, Sarah herself received
power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she
considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore, from one
man and him as good as dead were born descendants, as many as
the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of
sand on the shore. All these died in faith, not
having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted
them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and
exiles on earth. For people who speak thus make
it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been
thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would
have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better
country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed
to be called their God, for He has prepared for them a city.
By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, And
he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up
his only son, of whom it was said, Through Isaac shall your
offspring be named. He considered that God was even
able to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking,
he did receive him back." So that's where we are. Now, all
of this goes together. All of this is not just teaching
us this, that, and the other. It's all one truth that Paul
is trying to express and more importantly embed into the hearts
of his Hebrew brothers and sisters so that they are not troubled
by their Judaistic brothers and sisters in the flesh. So that
they're not troubled in a way that they feel less confident
or if they feel drawn to fall back into Jewish life or Jewish
religion. It's often troubling because
we think of it this way. Let me paint a picture for a
moment in regards to how this looked. We know that Jesus, we
see the gospel accounts, we see all four gospel accounts, and
specifically we can look at John and we can see how Jesus spoke
to the Pharisees, to the Jews. We can see how Jesus then, and
he doesn't do this in the synoptics, or he, that's so silly. It's
not recorded in the synoptics in this way, but in John's gospel,
we see Jesus speaking with people one-on-one. We see the Jews dealing
with him, and we see that very clearly in Matthew, Mark, and
Luke. But in John, we then see Jesus taking side other folks,
like the woman at the well. We see him taking Nicodemus.
We see him talking to the blind man and to the lame man and so
on and so forth. And then we see the larger aspect
of Jesus' teaching in John's Gospel from a position that we
know that John is trying to show that Jesus indeed is God. He is God the Son, the eternal
God. He is the one who has come and
been sent from the Father. He is doing the work of God.
He is speaking the word of God. expressing and exegeting the
power of God and so on and so forth so that we know that we
have seen the fullness of God in all of his glory in the person
of Jesus Christ in every way. So with that being true, we come
to begin to understand, just a little bit, with the way the
Gospels expressly show Jesus' interaction with the religious
leaders of his day, we begin to experience or to be able to
understand Paul's concerns. And I always get this rebuttal,
maybe you don't get this rebuttal, but I always get this rebuttal
throughout my entire life. Well, you know, the Jews believe
in the same God that we do. And the answer to that is wrong.
The Jews of Jesus' day no more worship the God of Scripture
than this microphone is a doctor. You see how troubling that may
be to our spirit? To our mind? To the calculation
of our historical narrative? Of our cultural narrative? That
we go, wait a minute, you're telling me that Jews didn't worship
the God of the Bible? No, they spoke of Him. They considered
Him. They thought that they were worshiping
Him. They thought that they knew Him.
They thought that His Word was in their hearts and minds. And
Jesus teaches them over and over and over again that they not
only did not know Him, but they did not know His Word. Now we've
already seen that God is the designer, God is the builder,
God is the creator of all things. Why in the world do we need to
have Genesis 1 and 2? Why is it important that Genesis
1 and 2 is in the Bible? Well, we got to know the foundations
scientifically of where the world came from. Ain't wrong. That's
not the reason that it's written there. The whole name of beginnings,
Genesis, means that God wants to establish through His written
word to show that He is the founder of it all and that the main purpose
of Him creating the cosmos in His mysterious, undefined way
is to show the rest that is found only in the promise of the Messiah,
the seed of the woman. That's what the Sabbath is all
about. That's what the work of six days all point to. So that we see that God is the
author, the originator. So that if God created the world
and everything in it and created humanity, he did it for the one
purpose to show that out of humanity he would create for himself a
people. And that's what the whole history
of Genesis is about. That's why you have three, you
have a postcard of the beginning of the cosmos, and then you have
hundreds of pages, not a thousand pages of history. And it's not
chronological. It's not like this happened and
this happened and this happened and this happened and this happened,
though there is some chronology there to bring out the continuity
of God's sovereignty and the creation of humanity and God's
sovereignty in the history of humanity and God's sovereignty
in redemption of his people from humanity who are in the world
and who are dead in their sins and will not be saved and so
on and so forth. Yet we see this genesis, we see
that the word of God is the operative way in which God has revealed
his ability to create. He said, and there was, and it
was good. He said, and then there was,
and it was good. And God said in his word to Adam
and to Eve, by your seed of the woman shall come the one of my
promise who will strike the head of the serpent. And then that same promise is
given to Abraham. You see, so it's important to see this. God
is not trying to create this nation of priests on the earth.
Matter of fact, by the time Jesus comes to the planet and by the
time Jesus becomes 30 years old and is baptized by John in the
Jordan River, tiny little piece of water in comparison. The Pharisees and the Jews that
follow them are so far from the truth of the true gospel that
there's no hope for them at all. No hope for them at all. Except
the promise of God. You see how that works? And God created a people. And
those people are created in Christ Jesus. But to show the shadow
of that. Do you understand that the Garden of Eden is a shadow
of the presence of God in Christ? Is it a literal garden? Yes,
I do believe that it is. Is it a literal place where Adam
and Eve, the first people met with God? Yes, I do believe it
is. But ultimately, the picture there and the reason that we
see what we see in the Bible is that this is a type of Christ,
a type of gospel, that there was a time when we could see
and understand with veiled eyes. Even Adam and Eve looked through
veiled eyes to the glory of God who walked with them. Now think
about it for a second. Have you ever heard the philosophers
posit that Adam and Eve were righteous? They weren't righteous. They
didn't fall from righteousness, they fell from innocence. And
God gave them one simple instruction. One law, one command that was negative. Do not eat of that tree. And I paused for theatrical effect. Because I want to show you something.
It's that insignificant. That tree is that insignificant.
It's as if God were in the garden and said to Adam, you see all
these trees? You can eat of anything here.
You can have everything you want. It's all yours. It is yours.
But don't eat from that tree. You can eat the tree on the left.
You can eat the tree behind it. You can eat the tree on the other
side of it. You can eat the tree here. But don't eat from that tree. Nothing special. Oh, but the
Lord said, had he eaten from the tree of life and lived forever.
Folks, read the Bible and keep moving. If God had wanted us
to see some intricate detail of the specialness of these trees
and the probability of some middle knowledge baloney where God saw
a universe where Adam ate both trees and lived forever in sin.
This is not what the Bible is trying to teach us. The Bible
is trying to show us that God gave the first humans in their
innocence absolute perfect life and a simple command, don't eat
that fruit. What happens when someone tells
us not to eat that fruit? We've never even thought about
it before. We see that, what we call in
a simple layman's term, reverse psychology. Don't you eat that
corn. Don't you eat those peas. Kids
were like, I told you not to eat them peas. And then we spank
them for doing the same thing when they're seven. Go clean your room. Nope. That's what happens in the human
mind, even in innocence. We get to a place where we see
the temptation of the first humans and they are together. This isn't
a trick in the sense where Eve was taken off and then she, Adam
who was with her, standing together, listening to the devil's lies. And then all of a sudden, that
which was forbidden brought sin alive. That which was commanded,
that law caused sin to rise up in the hearts of the first humans.
God is showing the genesis of His divine purpose in all things
created. So that in His perfect plan,
He would redeem us from the curse of the law. Adam and Eve couldn't
obey a simple thing. Several years ago on social media
there was a little challenge that siblings were doing with
younger siblings. And they would set like a piece
of candy or cupcake or something down and they'd start the video
camera and they'd say, now, don't touch it. And if you don't eat
it, I'll give you more candy. Here's the one piece or here's
the one. If you don't eat it, if you don't touch it, if you
don't eat it, I'll give you more. And it's video after video, probably
tens of thousands, if not millions of people watched these children or stick their finger in it,
or eat it, or whatever, and then they come back, oh, did you eat
it? No, and they lie right there. I'm talking about a year and
a half old child. Sometimes can't vocalize because their larynx
and their vocal cords are not developed, but they know everything
they hear with their ears, and we saw that. And my daughter did it with my
youngest daughter. Ruby did it with Abigail. And
Abigail, she touched it a few times, but she didn't eat it.
And she came back and it was so exciting. She was so excited
to get the candy. I mean, you know, because if
they touch it, you take the candy away and throw it away. But it
drove the children mad. It drove them mad. There's candy. Don't touch the candy. That's
like saying, don't look at that speaker. Hey, don't look over
there. Don't look now, but isn't that
the precursor to somebody that wants you to look somewhere? Because that's what happens in
the human heart. Things that are restricted to
us, we want more. But there was an edge, there
was a push, there was a shove in the garden where the enemy
asked a question to draw doubt in the mind of the first human. And he said, did God say that you could not eat of that?
Did God really say you would die? Did God really say, and
what did Eve say? When he asked, no, God said if
we touch it, we will die. See, that's Adam's progressive
laws. God said don't eat of it, and
Adam told his wife, listen woman, don't even touch it. If you touch
that, you're gonna die. And I think that probably in
the garden, she had touched it and she didn't die. And the serpent
goes, see there, God is holding away from you that which will
make you awesome and great and magnificent. You'll be like God. Oh, we gotta have this. I mean, this
apple right here and this apple. Robin was telling me a story
about, you know, we had a conversation about wine and the taste of wine
and expensive wine and cheap wine. And there's always that
conversation amongst non-wine connoisseurs. And there was an
article that was printed somewhere about this very fine restaurant
where these extremely wealthy people ordered a $20,000 bottle
of wine. They know their wine, right?
But here's what happened. The waiter accidentally put the
$12 bottle of wine on their table and the $20,000 bottle of wine
on people like my table. And the wine that was $12, those
people talked about the deliciousness of that wine and how awesome
it was because they thought it was $20,000 wine. It's the greatest wine they've ever
had. Wine in a box from Kroger. See, because perception causes
desire. You put the Hope diamond in a
box, give it to a child that's a toddler, they chew on the wrapper,
throw the diamond down and play with the box. It's perception. And all of a sudden that became
important to the first couple. God purposed that to show, listen,
to show that there is no way possible that a human being can
ever have life without His mercy and His divine righteousness
imputed to them. That's the point. taken the Bible and we've broken
it into so many little segments and so many little covenants
and so many little pieces and so many little stories and we've
made these stories not even relate to one another. Abraham is a
continuation of the story of Eden. The promise of God in Eden
to give the promised one who would come to the seed of the
woman to crush the head of the serpent is the same promise that
was given to Abraham. And Abraham trusted God because
God established in him, in his heart, by his spirit, the gift
of faith to believe in this promise of going over yonder. I think that's how I said it
last week. Not back there or wherever I said it. I don't remember. You are old and your wife is
old and I'm going to give you that son that you've always longed
for. But it's not the son that's most important, God says. It's
that through this son, through Isaac, your offspring shall be
named and through your offspring the world will be full. I'm going
to give you offspring in the world that outnumbers the sand
and the stars. Now that's a pretty good promise
for a man who's nearly dead, who has no children. who have
no progeny to continue his name, who have no progeny to continue
his lineage, who have no progeny to continue his family, to keep
his family. Now we don't grasp that much
in our day because it's not as important. It's not like the
end of the world. You don't lose all that you have
if you don't have a child. You just sort of, somebody else
just helps take care of stuff. But Abraham obeyed. Because God
created Abraham for the purpose of being an image, a type of
His promise. To bring about, through these
natural means, the Christ, the Messiah. And he went out and
he just went where God told him to go. He was not faithful, but
he trusted in the One who was faithful. And likewise, his wife,
Sarah, verse 11, received power to conceive. How did she do that? Because God gave it to her. God
gave it to her. Even when she was past the age
of the ability to biologically conceive a child, He gave her
a child. Since she considered Him faithful,
who had promised. Now think about that. And this
is the point, I mean Paul's just driving this point, character
after character, person after person, circumstance after circumstance,
history after history, it's the same thing that he who is faithful
has done a good thing. He who is faithful has provided
the promise and fulfilled the promise and nothing's gonna stop
him. So that through the descendants
of Abraham, who was nearly dead, we see the nations rewarded. And we see the point of that
is not this temporary idea that God is going to create these
great nations on the earth. Israel was not a great nation.
The scripture tells us that she was nothing, that she was small,
that she was weak, she was powerless, she was poor. But in the context
of spiritually speaking, because she was the elect of God as a
type of the true descendants of Abraham who are only in Christ
of all nations, remember, all the world, We'll be blessed. We see the picture of the gospel,
of the promised one. And in verse 13 is where we are
tonight. It says, these all died in faith. Moses is over here a little ways
over on verse 23. And Moses did some things, and
we'll talk about Moses when we get over there. But Moses, he didn't enter into the promised
land. Moses didn't enter into the Promised Land because of
something. Something simple. What was it? It had to do with a rock. It
had to do with some water. And all throughout the history of
the Exodus, here's Moses being led by God, being taught by God,
being used by God. to display God's massive power
before the Israelites, provision and providence before the Israelites,
over and over again, continually showing and securing His promise
is sure because He has the power to do it. And Moses was told
once when there was no water, I want you to strike that rock.
I want you to take that stick I gave you for comfort, your
security stick, and I want you to hit that rock and the water's
going to flow out of it. So Moses goes, whack, and the
water comes out, and thirst averted. Dehydration and death averted.
And then in a very similar circumstance, later in the ministry of Moses,
here he is again, and the people are thirsty, and there's an opportunity
for God to show the miraculous. And there's just a simple formula
that Moses is used to. Water, rock, whack, drink. There it is. Water, rock, whack,
drink. That sounds like a new preschool dance or something.
And so God tells Moses, yeah, you can get water out of that
rock. Why don't you just speak to it, okay? Just say, open sesame,
whatever it is that you're supposed to say. Water, please. Agua. Whatever language you want
to speak, just speak to the rock. And Moses is so flustered and
so used to the striking, he just goes, there's your water. And
God is enraged. He's enraged. Why is he enraged? Because Moses is a defiant, disobedient,
rebellious, wicked, evildoer. That's why. God said speak, he
said whack. Are you kidding me? God's going
to condemn Moses for hitting the rock instead of speaking
to the rock when it's God's fault because God had been hitting
the rocks all the time. He told him all the other times to hit
the rock. Why? Just like Adam, not supposed
to eat that fruit. Eat the fruit over here, eat the fruit over
there, eat the fruit everywhere, just not right there. Well, I can't
stand it. I've got to have that. And Moses,
I believe, hit that rock not in defiance, in stupidity. I hear you, Lord. What are you
doing? What are you doing, Moses? Because
you've disobeyed me, I'm going to kill you now. I'm going to
kill you and your body's going to rot in the dirt, in the desert.
You've been out here for 40 years and we're on the outside of the
promised land and you've been sent the spies in and they've
all came back and told you, you know, the two good and the others
that said, nah, nah, nah, nah, these people are scary. And I
told you I was going to give you the land, but the point is
Moses, you disobeyed me. I'm not going to let you have
the land. And here's the cool thing about it. Abraham and Sarah
and Moses and Enoch and Noah Jacob and Isaac and all these
people died not having received the things promised. Didn't Abraham
have a son? Yeah, but that wasn't the point
of the son. That wasn't the point of the promise. The point of the promise was
not to give Abraham a child for himself. The point of the promise
was to show that God, in his creation of a child in the womb
of an elderly man's wife, can do far greater things than
that through that child. When he can send his own son
into the world. And he can create a people that are more numerous
than the stars and the sand on the seashore for himself and
for his glory, who are saved, who are redeemed, who are righteous. They died in faith. They weren't
looking for the temporary promise. They weren't looking for the
promise for their own benefit. They were looking for the promise
of God for the Messiah, for the son of promise, for the true
one who was coming. And so the whole time they live
their lives, now this is something, this is really what I wanted
to get to here. They live their lives as if aliens in the world. We also should learn from this. That when we are believing in
the promises of God, we are not worrying as much as we could
about the world in which we live because all that has come is
the plan of God. We talked about that some last
week. But if we keep on going, and
I talked about, I actually preached this portion last week. So let's
just keep going there. If they've been thinking of a
land that they had gone out, they could have gone back. But
as it is, they desire a better country that is a heavenly one.
Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he's
prepared for them a city. Now, full stop. Now he's going to show Abraham
again, by faith, verse 17. When he was tested, offered up
Isaac, who had received the promises, and he who had received the promises,
Abraham, was in the act of killing his only son, of whom God had
said, through Isaac shall your offspring be named. Now let's
stop there for a second. Remember what I've said a thousand
times over, that the apostolic authority of the New Testament
defines and trumps the Old Testament theology. That is why the Pharisees
were so lost. They had designed their religion
in a way that suited them. They had come to the place of
understanding, just like Sarah did, that the way we're going
to establish God's promises are to take matters into our own
hands. And we're going to walk out a
plan that will fall in line with God's purposes and He will honor
it. Yet God is not one of us. Who are we to answer
back to God? What are you doing? Why did you
do this? Why is this happening? What's
going on in our country? What's going on in my life? What's
going on in my body? Why are you doing this? Don't
you know God? You have a better plan than this? That's what's happening. And
Abraham would have been in that same place if it were not for
the promise of God and the God-granted secure faith that he had in believing
the one who was faithful who had promised it. God told Abraham
that all the world and all of his descendants would come through
Isaac, not Ishmael. Isaac. And then God said, now take this
son through whom I promised the nation's life and blessing and
glory and kill him to me. Burn his body to me. Now, what's the big deal about
burning? Bleeding and burning. It's consummation. It's a, if I take something,
I don't even wanna talk about these things, they're so silly.
But you know, when I was in middle school, we used to have these
bonfires called afterglows. Remember those, Julie? I don't
know if y'all had these things. And you bring your devil music
and you throw it in the fire. You know, eight tracks, cassette
tapes, 45s. Silly stuff. Bring your country
music. and give it to the Lord, just
chuck it in the fire. You know what happens when you throw something
in the fire? You don't get it out. You don't get it out. When you throw something in the
fire and it catches on fire, even if you put the fire out, that's
damaged. You can't operate anymore. Put
your hand in the fire, your hand's damaged. Put your face in the
fire, you're an idiot. But either way, it's damaged,
things happen. Fire is bad when we get into
it. So in an act of sacrificing,
not only do we kill something, but we burn something because
the act of fire visually in the context of sacrifice is a picture
of God taking this thing before Him and consuming it with His
fire as it rises up to Him. So it is left to nothing. And when I burn in my little
incinerator, it is left to nothing. It's 1,100 degrees in that sucker. It's good stuff. You can get
rid of cardboard in a clickety split. And God said, Abraham, I want
you to go incinerate your son. I want you to go cut his throat
and catch him on fire. You know that kids? It's what
God asked Abraham to do. Go kill your son, bleed him and
set him on fire and watch him be consumed by the fire as an
offering to me. And Abraham got up early the
next day and took his boy and took his servants and took his
mules and took the wood and took the tools for offering and went
out. Genesis 22 I think. And when they get to the place
where they were going to do this, Abraham tells his servants, he said,
you stay here, here son, you carry the wood. You see that
image? You carry the wood and you walk
up here and you and I are going to go. And Isaac's looking around
going, dad, where's the, where's the sacrifice? What are we going
to kill and give to God? And Abraham says, son, God will
provide for himself a sacrifice. And we know the picture. He lays
it out. He tells his son somewhere along the way, and his son submits.
I wasn't very strong as a kid, but I'd put up a fight, somebody
gonna tie me to a thing and cut me up and burn me. But he didn't. The Bible doesn't say that he
did. And I'm willing to bet that Isaac, with tears down his face,
whatever the Lord wants, Father, bind my hands and my feet, and
let's do this. Why? Because Abraham taught his
son and God granted faith to Isaac to trust. Isaac knew the
promise that through him would all the offspring of his father
be named. So even in his own mind, I'm
willing to bet you that as Abraham believed, so Isaac did. But at this point in the Old
Testament, Abraham believed that Jesus, the Messiah, was the resurrection
and the life. Did you hear me? He might not
have known that he would be called Jesus, Yahweh saves, but he knew
that by the name of God, who is Yahweh, who saves, he would
redeem his people. And he knew that it was the promised
one, not just his son, but it was the promised one who would
come through his son, who would bring redemption. He had faith
in the truth of Jesus Christ before the name of Jesus Christ
was ever on the scene in Hellenized Israel. And he believed in the resurrection
and he believed in the life. How do I know? Verse 19, he considered
that God was able even to raise him from the dead. Now how do
you know that, Paul? Who told you that? The very fact
that Abraham took Isaac to the mountain, tied him up, set the
wood underneath him for fire, and put a knife to his throat
tells us that. Abraham knew that through Isaac
his offspring would be named. Abraham knew that the promised
land was not truly the purpose. Abraham knew that him having
a son was not really the true essence of God's eternal promise.
Abraham understood that his own history was revealing something
extremely majestic about the person of God. That the glory
of God is revealed in what is shown to us in scripture by what
God has done and is doing and has promised to do. And so, OK, God, if you want
me to kill my son, then that's work on your part. You'll have
to bring him back to fulfill your promises. OK, son, you're
going to die for a while. Don't know how long. Don't know
how far. Don't know. Don't know what's
going to be like. Let's go. Let's go. And of course, the angel stopped
him. Had Abraham done it, God would have resurrected his ashy
son. would have brought the molecules
of his burned body back to flesh. Is that not the image of the
picture, the vision of Ezekiel? Dead, dry, bleached, brittle,
disassembled bones. Speak to the bones, Ezekiel. Prophesy to them, preach to them
the promises that I've made, see. God preached the promises
to Abraham and the Spirit of God secured the faith in the
heart of Abraham to believe. He preached the promises to Sarah
and He secured in the heart of Sarah the faith to believe. He secured it to the point that
it proved that He was the author of all the good things. That
Abraham came to the light of the promised one so that it would
be clearly seen that his works were carried out in God. Because
there's no man worth His salt. who will arbitrarily and blindly
just take his only son to be killed from just the possibility
of resurrection. We call that in our world insanity. But Abraham was very sane because
he believed in a very promising God, a very faithful God, a very
life-giving God. And so the primary point to see
through all of this as we go through and then next week we're
going to talk about Isaac and we're going to talk about Jacob
and Joseph. The gospel is what Abraham believed.
Isn't that what Paul's trying to say? Believe in the finished
work of Christ. Don't believe in Moses. Don't
believe in Abraham. Don't believe in the law. Don't
believe in Judaism. Don't believe in the Pharisees.
Don't believe in Melchizedek. Don't believe in all these things.
Believe in the one to whom they pointed. The point of scripture
is to show us the promised one, Jesus Christ, God with us, Emmanuel,
Messiah, the Holy and the Anointed One of God, who is righteous
eternally and impeccable. physically. That means he cannot. It doesn't mean he's like ripped
and awesome. It means that he's unable to
sin. I was like, that sounded funny.
He's unable to sin. Jesus could not sin. Isaac wasn't
the promised son. Jesus is the promise. And in
the same way Isaac took the very lumber that would torch his body
as a sacrifice, Jesus carried the very lumber that would actually
make his sacrifice effectual, on which he would die. And as Isaac was not worthy to
be sacrificed, Joseph, as we'll see, was not worthy to be the
one who would lead the people of God into salvation, though
he was a Savior. hated by his own family, thrown
away, left for dead and then imprisoned and all the suffering
and so on and so forth. I'm getting ahead. But you see,
it's all about Christ. It's all pointing to him. And
it's very sad to me when very learned Bible scholars refute
what I'm saying. It's very concerning. Because they don't know how other
way to teach this. unless I have to go to someone
else's writing so that I may glean what I cannot see, because
it's not there. Beloved, this is the promise.
The Old Testament saints were saved by faith in the gospel
of Jesus Christ, and so are we. And the only ones that are truly
the sons of Abraham and the daughters of Abraham are those who are
found in Christ Jesus. Paul says that very clearly. He teaches
that to the Romans and to the Galatians. He teaches that here
to the Jews, to the Hebrews. And so we don't have to look
back. We don't have to worry about how we're going to work
out God's promises on our soil and in our life and in our timing. And then if we misstep or if
we do this or if we're not as faithful as Abraham, Christ is
faithful and the work of redemption is finished. We can rest in it. God is the genesis of salvation
and he's also the finisher of it. Why do you think he expresses
himself that way? I am the Alpha and the Omega. I am the first and the last. I was here before and I will
settle all things at the end. I am the, as we sang Sunday,
the Ancient of Days. He is our God, and He is not
ashamed to call us His people. Let's pray. We thank you, Father,
for the truth of the Gospel. And Lord, for just the beauty
of how the narrative of Scripture As Jesus would rebuke the Jews
in John's gospel and tell them that the word, that your word
did not live in them for they did not see your glory in the
face of Jesus Christ, your son. Lord, I shudder when I hear those
words. I often weep when I hear the
woes that Jesus spoke to them in the scripture. First, because
I feel just utterly helpless, because I am. And second, because
I know that if it were not for you loving us first, we would
be in the same audience. So we thank you, Father, for
your everlasting love. We thank you for your everlasting
promises. We thank you, Lord, for life. In Jesus' name, amen.