The Birth of a Nation
Genesis 12-25- Who is Abraham?
- What is a Covenant ?
- What is the Covenant God made with Abraham?
- Land
- Descendants
- Blessing
- What do we Learn from Abraham?
Review: Genesis 12:1-3 | Genesis 13:14-16
Review: Genesis 15:12-21
Review: Romans 4:3 --> Genesis 15:6
Review: Matthew 26:28 | John 3:36
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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Grab your Bibles. We are going to continue in our series called Bible 101.
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You're just joining us.
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We've been spending these past few weeks, and we'll continue until two weeks after Easter.
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And this is an overview of the Bible.
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And all of these messages are available on our website.
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But here's the goal. In ten weeks, you will be so familiar with God's Word.
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I know for many people, it's an intimidating thing to look at this book and there's so many other books and all these names and places we've never heard of.
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How does it all go together?
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Well, that's the goal over these 10 weeks, is to get a strong overview of how the Word of God is put together and what the general theme of God's Word is all about.
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And then you'll be equipped to go and confidently read God's Word for yourself.
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So, so far we've spent some time talking about the Bible, why we believe the Bible is true, why we believe it was written by God Himself.
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We spent a week talking about creation.
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That's where it all started.
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In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
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Then things went south pretty quickly as sin entered the world.
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Then we saw in Genesis chapter 6, the sin got so bad that God said, "I'm going to blot out every living thing on the earth except for one man and his wife and his sons and their wives." And that was Noah. And God flooded the entire earth because of sin.
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But people were still sinners even after the flood because last week we were in Genesis chapter 11.
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You recall that the people united, and even though God said, "Spread out, fill the earth," that time the people said, "No, we're going to stay here.
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We're going to establish our own kingdom." And the Lord confused their languages and spread them out.
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They're like, "Well, Pastor Jeff, you said that we're going to be covering the whole Bible, but I'm going to be honest with you, we haven't made it very far.
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I mean, what week is this, like five or six or whatever, and we've only made it to like Genesis chapter 11.
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Actually, we've gone quite a distance already because today we're talking about Abraham.
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Did you know from creation to Abraham, that's a period of about 2,000 years.
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So we're on a pretty good pace.
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So there's 2,000 years from creation to Abraham And there's about 2,000 years from Abraham to the birth of Jesus Christ.
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And what you see in your Bible is for the first 2,000 years, everything we've covered to this point, God was dealing with the human race as a whole.
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But the second 2,000 years, starting with Abraham, where we're looking today, God deals primarily with the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or the nation of Israel.
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See, the first 2,000 years it was a global perspective, and now, starting in Genesis 12, where we're going to pick up today, the Bible really zeroes in on one family.
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That's the nation of Israel.
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And if we can get our bookshelf up here, everything that follows in your Bible has to do with the nation of Israel.
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Understand that this is a Jewish religion.
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But the first five books, that's the law that God gave to the nation of Israel.
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Then the books of history, the history of what?
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The history of Israel.
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Books of poetry, these were by Israel and for Israel.
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The prophets, the major and the minor prophets.
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These were Jewish prophets that God sent to give a message to Israel.
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Then you get to the Gospels, focal point of the Gospels.
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Jesus Christ, who according to his human lineage was Jewish.
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The Acts of the Apostles.
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Again, God sending the message out to Israel first, and ultimately to the Gentiles.
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Paul's letters, commentaries - general letters, commentaries on the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.
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What does death and resurrection mean?
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All the way up to the book of Revelation.
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Revelation talking about the end of the world, what's coming when Christ returns.
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One of the key characters in the book of Revelation is the nation of Israel.
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So the point is, today we're going to be introducing Abraham and talking about him and understand that everything that follows in the Bible circles around the Jewish people.
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So first of all, if you have your outline, who is Abraham?
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Let's answer that question. Who is Abraham?
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Remember we saw the flood, right?
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Noah, his wife, his three sons, their wives, Noah's sons, Ham, Shem, and Japheth. Shem, one of Noah's sons was actually the father of the Semitic race.
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And Abraham was a descendant of Shem.
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And he was called out of a pagan culture by God.
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That's in Genesis chapter 12.
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We'll look at that in a second.
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But Abraham's story...
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If you were to sum up his life, and there are several chapters in your Bible about the life of Abraham, his life is one of tested faith.
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In Genesis chapter 12 we see it's Abraham's obedience that's tested.
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In Genesis 13, Abraham's values are tested.
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In Genesis 14, his loyalty is tested.
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Abraham even experienced the greatest test that I would suggest any man would be subjected to when you get to Genesis chapter 22.
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God tells Abraham to take his son and offer him as a sacrifice.
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Of course, God intervenes and stops him while Abraham is in the act of doing it.
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That's a whole other sermon.
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But here's the most important thing you need to know about Abraham.
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The most important thing about Abraham is this.
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God made a covenant with Abraham.
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That's the most important thing about Abraham.
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God made a covenant with him.
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You're like, "Well, hang on.
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What is a covenant?" That's a great question.
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That's number two in your outline.
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What is a covenant?
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In general, covenant is an agreement.
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Right?
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Like we say, the marriage covenant.
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What does that mean?
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It means two people have agreed to be husband and wife.
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It's agreement.
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That's the general sense.
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But when you get to the Bible, and you see the word covenant, regarding the Lord specifically, here's a better definition.
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A covenant is God's commitment to keep certain promises to His people on certain terms.
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God's commitment to keep certain promises to His people on certain terms.
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That's what a covenant is.
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Interestingly, the Hebrew word for covenant is the word "cut." And I think you're going to see why here in a second.
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probably where we get the expression we're going to cut a deal.
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So what is the covenant that God made with Abraham? If this is so important, what is the covenant? This is, again, this is Bible 101.
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Every student of God's Word needs to know this because this is so important.
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What's the covenant God made with Abraham? We find it given in Scripture, it's repeated.
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We're going to look at a couple passages here. First of all, look at Genesis chapter 12.
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First three verses says, "Now the Lord said to Abram," that was his name before God changed it, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.
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I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing.
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I will bless those who bless you.
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And him who dishonors you, I will curse.
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And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
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Keep that scripture up there for a second.
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There's something I want you to see.
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Last week, remember the people that were building the Tower of Babel?
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Their goal was to make a great name for themselves?
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Can't miss the contrast here.
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tried to make a great name for themselves and God said no it's not going to work and he confused your language and spread them out but then God turns to Abraham he says I will bless you and make your name great. If you're going to try to make yourself great it's not going to happen but when you seek the Lord and you allow the Lord to have his way in your life he will make you great okay so you have a choice there you want to be great yeah we all want to be great There's two ways you can go about it, your way or God's way.
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Your way won't work, God's way always works.
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So Genesis chapter 13 again, the covenant, "The Lord said to Abram after Lot," that's his nephew, had separated from him, "The Lord says to Abram, 'Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are northward and southward and eastward and westward.
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All the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever.
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I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted." Okay, so jot these down in your outline.
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The covenant that God made with Abraham was about three things.
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There are three things God said, "Abraham, you're going to...
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This is the covenant I'm making with you, man." The first one, letter A, is land.
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And what land is that?
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That is the nation of Israel.
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That is that chunk of land in the Middle East, and it belongs to the Jews forever.
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And I know people are fighting over it, and they will continue to.
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There are claims being staked on who this land belongs to.
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belongs to Israel because God gave it to Abraham clearly in his word.
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This land was ultimately claimed when Moses, we're going to talk about him next week, Moses led Israel out of Egypt where the Israelites were slaves.
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Moses led them out of Egypt and Joshua ended up leading them in to Canaan as it was called before Israel took control.
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And yet people are still fighting over it today.
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So that was the first promise that God made Abraham.
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There's a chunk of land that I'm giving to you.
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And I think that explains when you look at...
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We've already seen the degree of human sinfulness.
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But isn't it interesting that there's a New Jersey-sized chunk of land in the Middle East that everybody's fighting over and has been forever?
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Like, why is everybody fighting over that little piece of land?
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They're fighting over it because God gave it to the Israelites.
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That's why they're fighting over it.
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That's the first part of the promise.
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The second one we saw, descendants.
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God said, "Your descendants are going to be like the stars in the sky or the sand on the seashore." There's a problem with that though.
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So Abraham at the time, God gave him the promise, was 75 and childless.
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Everybody say that's a problem.
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Okay, it gets worse though.
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His wife, Sarah, was old and childless.
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Everybody say that's a problem.
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Okay, so Abraham was like, "Well, God promised that He was going to bless me through descendants." So one of the customs they had back then was they would take one of their servants, one of their maidservants, and have children through that.
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So they had a maidservant named Hagar.
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And Abraham and Sarah thought, "Well, maybe if we just have...
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Maybe Abraham, if you have a child through Hagar, that's what God meant." Well, Abraham and Hagar did have a child, and that child's name was Ishmael.
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He became the father of the Arab nation.
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God said, "No, I meant Abraham, you and Sarah are going to have a child." In an old age, Sarah ultimately gave birth to Isaac, who was the father of Jacob.
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And Jacob, his name changed to Israel, which Israel literally means "wrestles with God." So Jacob, Israel, had 12 sons and those sons ended up becoming the fathers of the 12 tribes of Israel and that's where we get the nation of Israel.
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So that's the land, that's the descendants, but something else you saw in this covenant was blessing.
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What is a blessing?
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I mean, that's one of those words we use a lot.
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Like, what does that even mean?
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Like somebody sneezes, we're like, "Bless you," and, you know, "I want to do this with your blessing and to say the blessing before we eat.
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What does that mean?
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Well, in the Old Testament, a blessing was a spoken word that places lasting benefits on a person or on a group.
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That's why you see in the Old Testament, for example, people would look for a blessing from their father.
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Like, "Father, speak a word over me to give me lasting benefit." That's what a blessing was.
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What is the blessing that was going to be associated with Israel?
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Israel was to be a light to the world.
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Israel was meant to lead nations of the earth to the living God.
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And this blessing is ultimately fulfilled through Jesus Christ.
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Understand, when God promised Abraham a blessing that would be for the whole world, that was ultimately fulfilled in Jesus, because according to Jesus' human lineage, Jesus was God in human flesh, but Jesus, you could say more specifically, was God in Jewish flesh.
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That's the blessing.
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I want you to turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 15.
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To see this covenant, how this...
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You see, God didn't tell Abraham, "Let's go down to the local notary and draft this up, and we'll get it notarized." God didn't say, "We're going to go to court and make this official." I want you to see how God sort of sealed the deal in making this official with Abraham.
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Genesis chapter 15, we're going to pick up in verse 12.
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And it says, "As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram.
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Behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him.
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Then the Lord said to Abram, 'Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. He's talking about the Israelites being in Egypt. See, he says, "But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for yourself, you shall go to your fathers in peace. You shall be buried in a good old age and they shall come back here in In the fourth generation, the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.
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Here's how the covenant was made. Look at verse 17.
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It says, "When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces." What pieces?
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earlier in Genesis 15 told Abraham, "Take animals and cut them in half." Like, what's that all about?
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They would, in those days, I know it seems like a weird custom to us, but they would cut animals in half and put the halves opposite each other and sort of make a path of animals divided.
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And when they were speaking their terms of the covenant, they would walk between those halves of the animal.
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you were saying, "If I don't keep my end of it, I should be cut in half like one of these animals." But it was a very serious thing to enter into a covenant in this way.
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But notice it says, "The Lord appeared, He manifested Himself as a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch." As that manifestation, the Bible says, "The Lord passed between these pieces," verse 18.
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On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your offspring I give this land, the river of Egypt, the great river, the river Euphrates, to the land of the Kenites, the Kenozites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Gergesites, and the Jebusites.
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Let's see, usually when a covenant was made and the animal halves were divided, you had the little path, usually the two parties entering the covenant would take turns.
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Like I would walk through and I would state, here's my part of the covenant.
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I promise that I'm going to do this and I promise that I'm going to do that.
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And then the next person entering the covenant, He'd do the same thing.
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He'd walk through, "Okay, well now I'm going to promise to do this and I promise to do that." But both sides would walk through, and that was called a bilateral covenant.
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But this passage is so significant because you see, only God passed through.
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Did you see that?
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God didn't say, "Abraham, here's what I'm going to do.
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Now, I want you to walk through the pieces and tell me how you're going to keep your end." That didn't happen.
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This is called a unilateral covenant.
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God was saying, "Abraham, here is what I'm going to do." And the covenant did not depend upon Abraham.
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Abraham was faithful, yeah, he had a few bumps in the road.
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You can read about that.
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He wasn't perfect, just like me.
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I'm not perfect.
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And newsflash, and neither are you.
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Sorry, that hurt your feelings.
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Abraham was just like us.
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Yeah, he had some problems.
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When you look at the overall scope of his life, he was faithful.
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We're going to talk about that in a second.
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But the covenant wasn't based on Abraham being faithful.
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See, God wasn't up in heaven going, "Oh, I hope Abraham does his part of this.
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I mean, I'm going to keep my part, but I sure hope he keeps his part." It was a unilateral covenant.
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God was basically saying, "Abraham, you're a witness.
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I want you to watch.
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This is what I'm going to do through you." God's going to keep His Word no matter what.
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The covenant, again, wasn't based on Abraham keeping His Word, it was based on God keeping His.
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If I can just insert here quickly, I know a lot of times people struggle with the idea of salvation.
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How do I know that I'm saved and how can I be sure?
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The surety of your salvation is Jesus Christ.
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We're going to talk about that in a second.
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The surety of your salvation is based on God keeping His Word.
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Understand, your salvation isn't based on you keeping your word.
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Because you would lose your salvation about 30 times a day before you get out of bed, and who knows how many times after that.
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You can't do it.
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See the covenant that God made with you, as we'll talk about in a second, it's based on Him keeping His word.
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So that's why I can stand before you and say, "I have the assurance that I'm going to heaven." And somebody might say, "Well, that's awfully arrogant of you, Pastor Jeff." No, it's not.
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I'm a loser.
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I'm a failure by nature.
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But my surety of going to heaven is because of God keeping His Word, not me keeping mine.
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That's the same with Abraham.
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God says, "Abraham, here's how this is going to go down." That was the covenant that God made with him, a unilateral covenant.
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It was one-sided and it was for three things.
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Every Bible student needs to know this.
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Land, descendants, and a blessing.
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And finally for today, what do we learn from Abraham?
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What do we learn from Abraham?
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Well your Bible tells us that Abraham is the poster child for faith.
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Your Bible might not use the expression "poster child." However, he is the poster child for faith.
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the Apostle Paul in the book of Romans in the New Testament.
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Romans is the most comprehensive and exhaustive book in the Bible that talks about the nature of salvation.
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Okay?
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And when Paul, in this absolutely mind-blowingly incredible writing, inspired by the Holy Spirit, obviously, but as Paul was describing salvation and what it means to be saved, In Romans 4, verse 3, he quotes Genesis 15, verse 6, which simply says, "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness." Or it was, your Bible might say, "reckoned to him," or "credited to him." You see, by nature, we talk all about sin.
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we are born sinners, we are not righteous.
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No matter how many righteous things that we try to do, those things don't make us righteous.
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We are sinners who occasionally do the right thing.
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We don't have righteousness on our account.
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See, God has to put it on our account.
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It would be like if you were renting an apartment and you were behind $500 in the rent, and you didn't have it in your bank account, but I went to the bank with you and I put $500 on your bank account, and you used that to pay the bill, pay your rent.
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Now, you didn't earn it and you didn't put it there, but it was there, and you had it, and you possessed it, because somebody else put it there.
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And that's how it is with righteousness.
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in Jesus Christ we are pronounced righteous.
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Like, well I'm not a righteous person.
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No, by nature you're not.
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He puts that on your account.
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Jesus takes you to the spiritual bank, so to speak, and your righteousness says zero, and Jesus says I'm going to put my righteousness on his account.
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And you're like, well how does that happen?
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tells us Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Abraham wasn't saved because he was great and he was great. One of the greatest people in history. That's not why he was saved. Abraham wasn't saved because he was moral. He was sometimes and he blew it sometimes. He wasn't saved because he was moral. Abraham wasn't saved because Because he had huge accomplishments. He did.
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That wasn't what saved him.
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What saved Abraham was simply he believed God.
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Salvation has only ever been by grace through faith.
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You see, you could say that grace is God's part.
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What is grace?
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Grace is God giving to you what He requires from you.
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grace. God says you have to be righteous as we said you're not righteous. God says I'm going to give you righteousness. I require that from you so I'm going to give it to you. Holiness I require that from you so I'm going to give it to you.
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That's what grace is. Everything that we need God has supplied for us on our behalf. That's grace. So how do I get this grace? How do I receive it? You God. But to just boil it down in simplest terms you can say faith is our part.
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Faith isn't a work, faith is believing in the work that God's done. Much like the word blessing, the word faith is one of those words we throw around a lot that maybe don't know exactly what it means. My favorite definition is one James MacDonald used, I'm going to share it with you. He says that faith is believing God's and acting upon it, no matter how I feel, because God promises a good result.
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I'll say that again.
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Faith is believing God's Word, and acting upon it, no matter how I feel, because God promises a good result.
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That's faith.
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And I want you to understand church, that when we talk about faith, it's not about how much faith you have.
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It's about who your faith is in.
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Because as a pastor I hear people say to me, "Oh I just don't have a lot of faith, and oh if I could just have some more faith, I don't have a lot of faith." You don't have to have a lot of faith.
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Jesus said you need faith like a what?
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What did he say?
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Faith like a mountain?
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No, faith like an ocean?
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What did he say?
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A mustard seed, right?
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Jesus said you just need a little bit of faith.
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Why?
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Because it's not about how much faith you have.
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It's about who your faith is in.
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Now it's true.
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Over time and experience in your walk with Lord, your faith will grow.
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That's absolutely true.
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I can say that I have more faith now than I did certainly 20 years ago, 21 years ago, however 22 years since I came to Christ, I have more faith today than I did even last month.
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Honestly.
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My faith is growing.
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But it's not about how much faith you have.
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It's about who your faith is in.
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I like to share this little story I heard one time to help illustrate that.
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You know, the story goes there's a little boy who liked to ice skate.
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Are the ice skaters here?
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Like, OK, a couple of you?
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All right, I've ice skated like four times in my life.
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I'm terrible at it.
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OK, but there's a little boy.
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He liked to ice skate.
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And it was getting late in the fall, and the pond had just frozen over.
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He's like, all right, I'm going to go ice skate.
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He put his ice skates on, and he ran down to the pond.
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And he jumped on, but it had just frozen over, so the ice wasn't very thick.
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And he jumped on the ice, and the ice cracked, and he fell through.
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fortunately is that was nearby dragged him out of the water about a week later weather got really cold and the on froze again but this time it rose rose and uh... because that's a state you want to go ice skating the pond is really frozen solid the kid this time he didn't run down and jump on the ice he walked down and he put his skates on, and as you can imagine, he very gingerly stepped out onto the ice, and it was quite a while before he was sure that it was going to hold him.
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Now you see in those two accounts, in the first account, the kid's faith was very strong.
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What he had his faith in was very weak.
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It didn't matter how much faith he had, that wasn't going to hold him.
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And in the second story, his faith was very weak.
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But what he was putting his faith in was very strong, and it was able to hold him.
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And so it goes for you.
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You can have very strong faith in something that is not going to save you.
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There are cults, coast to coast, that have people with a lot of faith in these false gods.
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They're not strong enough to say.
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It's not about how much faith you have.
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It's about who your faith is in.
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And you can be sitting here today and you're like, "Oh, Pastor John, I'm just sort of at the beginning of my journey and I don't have very much faith." Who is your faith in? That's what matters.
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And as I close, I want to remind you that as we talk about the greatness of Abraham, because God made a covenant with him, I want to close by reminding you that God made a covenant with you too.
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Did you know that?
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The Bible says that we live under the New Covenant.
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You see, your Bible says Old Testament and New Testament.
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It's divided into those two sections.
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But another way of saying that is Old Covenant and New Covenant.
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We're not having the Lord's Supper today, but we do often.
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And every time we have the Lord's Supper together, what we are doing is we are remembering and celebrating together the New Covenant.
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We're remembering the words of Jesus Christ when He said in Matthew 26, verse 28, This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. You say, well, what are the terms of this covenant? I mean, we saw what God had promised Abraham and we saw how Abraham responded in faith. What are the terms for me in this new covenant? Well, that's all wrapped up in John chapter 3, verse 36. Here's the terms of God's covenant with you. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.
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Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. That's the covenant that God's made with you through the blood of Jesus Christ.
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The question is like, "Abraham, do you believe God?" Do you believe God?
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When God says, "If you believe in my Son, you'll be saved," do you believe that?
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If you reject my Son, the wrath of God remains on you.
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Do you believe that?
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Because you see, like Abraham, if you do, if you believe God, if you take God at His and allow your life to reflect that you've actually taken God at His word.
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He will credit that to you as righteousness.
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Let's pray.
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Father in heaven, we thank you for the glorious truths of your word.
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We thank you, Father, that you have entered into a covenant with us.
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We don't deserve it, God.
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And it would be an audacious thing for us to think that we deserve you making some kind of an agreement with us.
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But by grace, Father, you have reached out to us.
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By grace, Father, you have pursued us.
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By grace, Father, you have entered a covenant with us.
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A covenant based on the blood of your Son.
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for the forgiveness of our sins.
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Father, today I just pray for my brothers and sisters here, for our friends that are going to be listening to this through the podcast and the website.
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I pray for them too.
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Father, we would find ourselves like Abraham.
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This is what you said.
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I believe it.
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I'm going to live my life like I believe this is true.
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You promised to credit the very righteousness of God onto our accounts.
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Father, today I pray that we are like Abraham.
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He followed you not knowing where you were going to take him.
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He took steps of faith, not having any idea what was around the corner.
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Father, we certainly experience this in our individual lives.
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We experience this in our family.
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Father, right now I pray for this church because we're experiencing this as a church right now.
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You've called us to take a step of faith.
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We don't know exactly how the next three years are going to look.
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But you've made it very clear that this is the step that you want this church to take.
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Father, we're taking it.
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Not because we have all the resources in our hand right now.
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Not because it's some kind of a surefire deal.
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We're taking this step because we trust you.
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We know that you're not going to lead us somewhere unless you're going with us.
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You're going to use us to reach people for Jesus Christ.
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Give us Abraham-like faith today, Father.
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We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Review Genesis 12-25
Why is Abraham such an important Old Testament character? What three promises did God make to him?
How were people saved in the Old Testament times, before Jesus came?
Define "faith". How did Abraham display faith? How does your life display you have faith
How would you respond to a struggling Christian saying, "I have faith, I just don't have a lot of faith."?
Breakout Questions:
Pray for one another.