The Promise Keeper

As we celebrate this season, we must remember what this season is about. Christmas is about the first coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. It is most definitely a time to celebrate. If Jesus had never come, we would truly have no hope, and there would be no peace available to anyone.

The Bible has four gospels at the beginning of the New Testament which tell about the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Two of those gospels actually share about the birth of Jesus: Matthew and Luke.

When you look at Matthew’s gospel — which is at the beginning of the New Testament — you find something interesting. Matthew begins his gospel with the genealogy of Jesus Christ through his earthly father, Joseph.

Why is this genealogy of Jesus important? That is one thing that I want to look at today. It is so much more than just a list of names. This genealogy is actually proof that God is one who always keeps His promises.

If you look at the genealogy in Matthew 1, you see that it goes from Jesus’ earthly father (Joseph) all the way back to Abraham. There are four important parts of this genealogy which are each separated by 14 generations:

• Joseph – Jesus’ earthly father
• The Babylonian Exile
• King David
• Abraham

It is almost like God had this all planned out from the beginning.

But why would this genealogy go back to Abraham? It is because Abraham would play an important role in God’s plan of redemption.

‌The Call of Abram

In Genesis 12:1-3, we see God calling a guy named Abram to leave everything he had ever known and follow this God who was calling him.

¹ The Lord said to Abram: Go from your land, your relatives, and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. ² I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. ³ I will bless those who bless you, I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

Genesis 12:1–3 CSB

With this call, God promised that He would make Abram (who would later have his name changed to Abraham) great and would bless the entire world through him. That is a pretty big promise.

The Power of a Promise

Promises can be tricky things in our lives. I’m sure that we have all had someone make a promise to us. Some of those who have made promises to us have made good on them. Others have broken their promises, which leads to distrust and hurt that can last with us for some time.

In the movie, Hook, Robin Williams plays a grown-up Peter Pan who has forgotten who he was and becomes a workaholic. Peter had broken many promises to his son, Jack, in the movie. When Peter’s children are kidnapped by Captain Hook and taken to Neverland, Jack doesn’t have much of a problem at first with Captain Hook becoming his dad because his real dad had broken so many promises.

How do we know that God is One who will keep His promises when there are so many around us who fail to do so?

To answer that question, we must look back to the promise that God made to Abraham. In Genesis 12, God says that if Abraham will follow and trust God, then God will make his life a blessing to the entire world.

Through Abraham’s lifetime, God gave more information about how this promise would be fulfilled.

‌The Promised Son

In Genesis 18 and 21, God promises that Abraham and his wife, Sarah, will have a son. It would be this son, Isaac, that the promise would come through.

In this step of the process, we learn a little more about how the God of the Bible is the God of the impossible. In Genesis 21, Abraham is 100 years old, and Sarah is 90 years old. Talk about impossible!

‌The Promised Sacrifice

When we come to Genesis 22, we find a very strange passage. God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, to the Lord on a mountain God would show him. I thought it was through Isaac that the promised deliverer would come. The Messiah cannot come if Isaac is no longer living.

What we see from Abraham is a true measure of faith.

⁹ When they arrived at the place that God had told him about, Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood. He bound his son Isaac and placed him on the altar on top of the wood. ¹⁰ Then Abraham reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son.

Genesis 22:9–10 CSB

This scene should make any person scratch their head. God is not one who is pleased with child sacrifice. Why would God be telling Abraham to do such a thing? Why in the world would Abraham go through with this?

We see a glimpse of Abraham’s faith in God in the New Testament letter of Hebrews.

¹⁷ By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. He received the promises and yet he was offering his one and only son,¹⁸ the one to whom it had been said, Your offspring will be traced through Isaac. ¹⁹ He considered God to be able even to raise someone from the dead; therefore, he received him back, figuratively speaking.

Hebrews 11:17–19 CSB

Abraham knew enough about God that this was out of the norm. Abraham knew that he would be walking off that mountain with Isaac alive. He wasn’t sure how it was going to happen, but Abraham knew it would happen.

This brings us to a point we need to pause and think about. Are we willing to take God at His word, or do we need to know all the details before we are obedient? Faith is seen when we trust in the Lord without all the answers. Abraham trusted in the Lord and we see God answering in a mighty way.

¹¹ But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” He replied, “Here I am.” ¹² Then he said, “Do not lay a hand on the boy or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your only son from me.” ¹³ Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught in the thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it as a burnt offering in place of his son. ¹⁴ And Abraham named that place The Lord Will Provide, so today it is said, “It will be provided on the Lord’s mountain.”

Genesis 22:11–14 CSB

The Lord stopped Abraham from sacrificing Isaac and provided the needed sacrifice for the moment. It just so happened that in that exact moment and place, there was a ram caught in the thicket.

It is through this part of the story that God gives us an additional piece of the puzzle. God will provide the needed sacrifice at the right time.

This shows us that the promised Messiah would be one that would be the perfect sacrifice for our sins. This moment on the mountaintop with Abraham was pointing ahead to Calvary where Jesus would lay down His life as a sacrifice for you and me.

²¹ She will give birth to a son, and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

Matthew 1:21 CSB

Conclusion

The genealogy of Jesus at the beginning of Matthew’s gospel is so much more than a list of names. It is a reminder that God keeps His word.

The promise made to Abraham to bless the entire world through him would come at the finished work of Jesus Christ. Abraham may not have seen it with his own eyes here on earth, but he trusted that the Lord would keep His word.

We celebrate this season because God kept His word then, and He continues to keep it today.

¹¹ For the Scripture says, Everyone who believes on him will not be put to shame, ¹² since there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, because the same Lord of all richly blesses all who call on him. ¹³ For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Romans 10:11–13 CSB

Have you placed your faith in Jesus Christ? He has promised that any person who does so will not be put to shame but experience the salvation the Lord offers. That promise is the greatest gift that one could receive this season.

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Walking in Grace

We are working our way through the New Testament letter of Galatians. Paul wrote this letter to a group of churches he helped start on one of his missionary journeys. The purpose of Paul writing this letter was to correct some false teachings that were creeping into the churches in the region of Galatia. People were coming in telling these fairly new Christians that if they wanted to truly be right with God, then they would have to not only trust Jesus as their Lord and Savior but also obey the Law of Moses. It was essentially a move to make many who were Gentiles become Jewish. It really had nothing to do with them being right with God.

The trying to earn God’s favor by keeping a religious checklist was sold to the Galatian people as a means of freedom, but it only brought bondage. In the first three chapters of this letter, Paul explained that the Law was never meant to save a person. He states that only through the grace of God demonstrated through Jesus’ sacrifice can save a person.

Different scholars have said the theme of the letter of Galatians can be summed up in the word “freedom.” As we turn our attention to Galatians 4, we see Paul focusing in on the freedom that God calls us to. In the verses we will look at today, we will see Paul calling us to look through three lenses: how we got here, who we are, and where we’re going.

⁸ But in the past, since you didn’t know God, you were enslaved to things that by nature are not gods. ⁹ But now, since you know God, or rather have become known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elements? Do you want to be enslaved to them all over again? ¹⁰ You are observing special days, months, seasons, and years. ¹¹ I am fearful for you, that perhaps my labor for you has been wasted.

​Galatians 4:8–11 (CSB)

Skip down to verse 21 with me. We will look at the verses we are skipping in the coming weeks. But verses 21-31 go together well with what Paul says in verses 8-11.

²¹ Tell me, you who want to be under the law, don’t you hear the law? ²² For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave and the other by a free woman. ²³ But the one by the slave was born as a result of the flesh, while the one by the free woman was born through promise. ²⁴ These things are being taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai and bears children into slavery—this is Hagar. ²⁵ Now Hagar represents Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. ²⁶ But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. ²⁷ For it is written, Rejoice, childless woman, unable to give birth. Burst into song and shout, you who are not in labor, for the children of the desolate woman will be many, more numerous than those of the woman who has a husband. ²⁸ Now you too, brothers and sisters, like Isaac, are children of promise. ²⁹ But just as then the child born as a result of the flesh persecuted the one born as a result of the Spirit, so also now. ³⁰ But what does the Scripture say? “Drive out the slave and her son, for the son of the slave will never be a coheir with the son of the free woman.” ³¹ Therefore, brothers and sisters, we are not children of a slave but of the free woman.

Galatians 4:21–31 (CSB)

‌How we got here

While we typically will read something from beginning through to the end, I want to take a different approach to these verses to catch the thought the Holy Spirit is sharing through Paul here.

Paul is trying to share how the Law by itself holds us in bondage. The tool that he uses to illustrate this is an analogy of Sarah and Hagar from Genesis. Sarah was the wife of Abraham. God had promised to bless Abraham and make him a great nation that God would use to bless the entire world. Hagar was a servant of Sarah’s.

Just so we’re all on the same page, because of Sarah’s age, she told Abraham to have children with Hagar. This is how they figured God would work out His plan. Hagar would give birth to Ishmael. In verse 24, Paul states that Hagar and Ishmael represent the Old Covenant (the Law), and it only produced slaves. How did it do this? The Law produced slaves because we could not keep the Law. Each person who has lived on this earth (except Jesus) has broken God’s law and stands condemned before Him.  Once again we see the Law cannot save us.

We don’t like to think about living in slavery to anything, but we do. Paul mentions in verses 8-11 how the Galatian people were enslaved to things that were not God before coming to faith in Christ. We are the same way. Each of us was a slave to our sinful nature before we came to faith in Jesus Christ.

Who we are

The next lens that we need to look through is the lens that shows us who we are in Christ.

In verse 29, Paul uses a particular phrase in talking about Isaac, the child born through Sarah: “as a result of the Spirit.”

Isaac was born to Abraham and Sarah in a miraculous way. They were both past the age of childbearing (Abraham was 100 and Sarah was 90). God supernaturally enabled this couple to have a child for His purpose. Isaac would be the child of promise. It would be through Isaac’s line that Jesus would come to earth.

Paul uses the illustration of Isaac to show us that we are not slaves of some religion. We are children of freedom in Jesus Christ.

Paul warns the Galatians that to return to a former way of life is to turn away from true life. He says in verse 9 that they would be going back to slavery after already being set free.

The things said by these false teachers sounded good though. They would talk about things that could be seen in the Old Testament: circumcision, festivals, and such. But Paul says that trying to be right with God by doing these things is no different from any other person of any other religion trying to do the same thing through those means.

If you go to church, sing songs, and study the Word, thinking this is how you’re going to work to earn God’s favor, then you are no different from the over one billion Hindus in the world today who are bowing down to their gods. If your Christianity is a check-off box in order to make you feel good about yourself before God, in order to save your skin on the day of judgment, then your Christianity is no different from every other religion in the world, and ultimately it will condemn you.

I came across a question while preparing for this message that really stopped me in my tracks. It was this: What if Satan’s strategy to condemn your soul involves not tempting you to do all the wrong things, but instead leading you to do all the right things with the wrong spirit?

Christianity is radically different from every other world religion. Rather than calling you to be a slave to a religion, Christianity calls you to be a son with a personal relationship with God.

When we make Christianity a list of things we have to do, we make it no different than every other world religion. I like what one person said, “We ought not be a people who prayed a prayer a while ago and now are just trying to do our best to get things right with our lives on a week-in and week-out basis. We should be a people who walk with God and know Him intimately. We ought to serve God wholeheartedly, not because we’re trying to make ourselves right, but because we’ve been made right by God’s grace.‌”^[1]Tony Merida and David Platt. Exalting Jesus in Galatians. Nashville, TN: Holman Reference, 2014.

If you have trusted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you are free.

Where we’re going

This brings us to the final lens that we need to look through. We have seen where we come from and what Christ has made us, but where do we go from this point?

In verses 25-26, Paul compares Hagar and Sarah by saying Hagar represents the earthly city of Jerusalem (slavery to sin), but Sarah represents the New Jerusalem (freedom in Christ).

As Christians, we are to live in the freedom Jesus has given us. It is not a freedom to live for earthly pleasures or for sin, but it is a freedom to live as we were supposed to live.

Free from the weight of sin

We don’t have to carry our sin on our shoulders any longer. Christ has taken that upon Himself when He went to the cross.

‌Free from others’ expectations

Everywhere you turn, there are people who want to tell you how you should live. You may be able to please some, but you will never please everyone. There will always be someone who you disappoint because their expectations aren’t met.

When you come to faith in Christ, you are brought into His family, and the only expectation you have to live up to is His.

It is so freeing when you realize that you do not have to please every person you come in contact with. You are called to please One, and His name is Jesus Christ. You will find that when you live to please Him above all else, the other stuff He will take care of.

‌Free from fear

So many people are crippled by fear these days. We don’t have to live our lives wondering if we’ve done enough for God to accept us. We can rest assured that Jesus’ finished work on the cross is sufficient for covering all of our sins.

Conclusion

Paul reminds us through these verses in Galatians 4 that if we have trusted in Jesus, then we are to walk in freedom and not slavery. It is a matter of understanding our identity in Christ.

How do we see ourselves? Are we trying to manufacture this relationship with God in our own strength? Are we trying just to do the best that we can do? Or are we fully trusting in Jesus and allowing Him to transform us into His image?

I would encourage you today to experience and walk in the freedom that Jesus has provided for any who would trust in Him. If you’ve never placed your faith in Jesus, I would encourage you to do that today. Come and see what real freedom from the inside out is. If you have trusted in Jesus, are you walking each day in the freedom Jesus died to give you? You may need to confess areas where you have been trying to do it yourself. You may need to turn those over to Him and His control so that you can experience freedom again. I would encourage you to do that.

References[+]

References

↑1	Tony Merida and David Platt. Exalting Jesus in Galatians. Nashville, TN: Holman Reference, 2014.

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God's Covenant with Abraham

The age that we live in is one of constant upgrades. It seems like people are always looking to upgrade something in their lives: phones, TVs, houses, cars, internet services, etc. We seem to be looking for the bigger and better things in life.  

When you do upgrade something in your life, there is a learning curve that comes along with it. You may not exactly know how use it properly or understand how it all works. You just trust that what you now have is better than what you had previously. 

Today, I want to talk about the transition of upgrading. Not only does it pertain to the technology devices in our lives, but it applies to our lives as well. It may come in a job promotion or the birth of a child or something else. How do we handle the upgrades in our lives the way that God intends?

Abraham

One of the most popular persons in the Bible outside of Jesus is the man known simply as Abraham. There have been songs written about this man that we have learned through the ages. The Bible teaches that he is the father of all who have faith in God. Three major religions in our world today (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) highly regard this man.  

Abraham was a man that went through some pretty impressive upgrades in his life. I would like to look at this man’s journey through some upgrades and see what God can teach us as we face the upgrades in our lives as well.

Called to a New Life

We are introduced to Abraham at the end of Genesis 11. We see that he sets out with his father and some other family members away from Ur, a prominent area of the time. They settle in Haran (modern day southern Turkey). It is from there that things really take a turn for Abraham.

In Genesis 12:1-3, we see God call out Abraham to leave his family and go to a place that God will reveal to him along the way. 

¹ The Lord said to Abram: Go from your land, your relatives, and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. ² I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. ³ I will bless those who bless you, I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

Genesis 12:1–3 CSB

But with this invitation came the promise that God would bless him greatly: he would become a great nation, he would have a great name, God would bless the entire world through him.

What would it take to get you to let go of all that you know and set out like this? I don’t many people who would just up and leave everything that they have known. It would take a good deal of trust to just drop everything and go in a new direction. 

That is exactly what God called Abraham to do.  There will be times in our own lives where God asks us to simply follow Him.  He may not exactly reveal the destination.  He may offer nothing more than His presence on the journey and a promise that it will work out.  Would that be enough for you to follow God out like Abraham did?

Called to a Covenant

As the years pass by, Abraham is on this faith journey with God, but he begins to wonder if he misheard the Lord.  God has protected Abraham through a series of events, but one part of what God had promised seemed to be missing: a child to build a nation through.  

¹ After these events, 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.

Genesis 15:1 CSB

Abraham does not see how this can work out because he is still childless.  

Waiting is one of the hardest things to do in life.  We have been conditioned by our culture to have things almost immediately.  When we do not see things immediately, we are tempted to think that they will not happen.  It is important to remember that we operate on God’s timetable not the other way around.

God makes a covenant with Abraham to assure him that the Lord is carrying out His plan. This covenant that God made with Abraham is important.  A covenant is not simply a promise.  It is like a binding contract between two parties that, if broken, has some drastic consequences.  

It should be noted that only God passed through the sacrifices.  He did not make Abraham pass through.  This was to show that the work that is to come out of this covenant is solely on God.  It will be the work of God and not man.  

When God calls us to His plan, there may be responsibilities that we have, but the weight of God’s plan being fully accomplished rests on Him.  God will do His great work in and through us.  What He asks us to do is trust and follow Him.

Called to Commitment

One final piece of the picture of Abraham that we will look at this morning is that he was called to commitment.  While God had promised to bless Abraham and make him a blessing to the world, Abraham had to come to the point of doing things God’s way.

Abraham showed that he was a regular man and not some super-spiritual person in that he tried to take matters in his own hands.  

Abraham would take his wife’s servant, Hagar, and conceive a child with her.  His name would be Ishmael.  He thought that this would be the answer to God’s plan.  

We can be tempted to take matters into our own hands many times.  We like to be able to contribute to the plans that we are a part.  The problem with that at times is that if we do not see the full picture, then our contributions can actually cause more problems than solutions.  

God told Abraham that He would give Abraham a child through his barren wife, Sarah.  This did not make any sense seeing how he was close to 100 years old now and Sarah was 90 years old.  Abraham tried to get God to bless Abraham’s plan instead of following God’s plan.

¹⁸ So Abraham said to God, “If only Ishmael were acceptable to you!”

Genesis 17:18 CSB

We must resist the temptation to do God’s job for Him.  He is fully capable of carrying out His plans.  We have to come to grips with the fact that we make terrible “gods”.  We are limited in our abilities.  We are not all-powerful.  We are not all-knowing.  God is.

If we truly want to experience God’s best in our lives and be part of what He is doing, then we have to trust that He actually knows what He is doing.  We may not be able to see it.  We may not understand it.  

Conclusion

Like Abraham, there are times in life when we will go through upgrades.  God will want to do something new in our lives.  He will want to take us to deeper waters.  He will want to use us to make a lasting impact on this world.  It will stretch us… it may not be fun… 

The one thing that will determine if we have victory through these upgrades is trust.

 Do we trust that God is able?  Do we trust that God is who He says He is?  

Abraham trusted God… and we’re still talking about him some 4,000 years later.  

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Abraham believed God

What would you attempt if you knew that you would not fail? The fear of failure is something that can cripple a person from experiencing many things in life. No one likes to fail. It seems better to not attempt something at all than to fail at it. The problem with this type of thinking is that it will rob us of much in life.

What would you attempt if God works all things for the good of those who love Him? What would you do if you knew that the all-powerful God of the universe was always with you? The Bible says that both of these statements are true. We may say that we believe that these statements are true, but what do our actions say?

We are starting a new series called Faithful where we will take a look at some people in the Bible that were called faithful. These people did not let their faith remain just in their heads but allowed it to come out in their words and actions.

Abraham

We are going to start by looking at a guy named Abraham. You have probably heard of him. There have been songs that have been written about him. There’s a good reason for that as we will see from what we look at today.

Abraham was a guy who showed his faith in God by being obedient even when he didn’t know what the outcome would be. He trusted that God would be true to His word, and this made all the difference in both his life and the lives of many others. We see his story summarized in Hebrews 11. We are going to look at four ways in which Abraham believed God.

Abraham believed God when he did not know where

​By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed and set out for a place that he was going to receive as an inheritance. He went out, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he stayed as a foreigner in the land of promise, living in tents as did Isaac and Jacob, coheirs of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

Hebrews 11:8–10 (CSB)

The author of Hebrews reminds us of when God first called Abraham to follow Him. Abraham did not even know about the Lord when this call first came to him. Abraham was raised worshipping the false gods of Babylon if any. In Genesis 12, we can see that God calls Abraham to leave everything that was familiar to him – family and friends. God tells Abraham to go to a place that He will show him.

How many of us would leave everything that we know to step into the unknown simply on the command of God? We are a people who like the details. Abraham wasn’t given the details. He was only given the directive to go. That is the way it goes in our lives sometimes.

The way that Genesis 12:4 is constructed shows that Abraham immediately obeyed. He didn’t have all the answers, but what He did have was the command of the Lord. Would that be enough for us? It should be. If we can be sure of anything, it is that God’s Word is true and reliable. It has never failed, and it never will.

Abraham believed God when he did not know how

​By faith even Sarah herself, when she was unable to have children, received power to conceive offspring, even though she was past the age, since she considered that the one who had promised was faithful. Therefore, from one man—in fact, from one as good as dead—came offspring as numerous as the stars of the sky and as innumerable as the grains of sand along the seashore.

Hebrews 11:11–12 (CSB)

Part of the promise that God made to Abraham was to give him not only a land but a legacy. This legacy would come through a child. Children are a blessing from the Lord. They can try our patience at times, but they are truly a blessing. The amazing thing about this child was that both Abraham and his wife, Sarah, were past childbearing age. They were not supposed to be able to have children, but with God nothing is impossible. Abraham had learned this lesson from his faith journey with God. There is no barrier that God cannot overcome.

We may encounter situations that are above our abilities, but there is nothing that God cannot do. How do we forget this truth so easily? It happens when we put our focus on the shifting sand of our circumstances and not on the solid rock of who Jesus is. We may not always see the how of God’s plan, but we can count on the fact that He has it covered.

Abraham believed God when he did not know when

​These all died in faith, although they had not received the things that were promised. But they saw them from a distance, greeted them, and confessed that they were foreigners and temporary residents on the earth. Now those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they were thinking about where they came from, they would have had an opportunity to return. But they now desire a better place—a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

Hebrews 11:13-16 (CSB)

Abraham never got to see the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promise on this side of heaven. He didn’t get to have a great mansion in the Promised Land. He didn’t get to see the numerous descendants of faith that would come. Some would say that this was a waste and a broken promise.

The truth is Abraham is seeing the fulfillment of God’s promise. Verse 13 says that he saw them from a distance. This is to mean that he was seeing it with his faith sight. With every passing day and every person that enters heaven because they have trusted in the promise of God that is Jesus, Abraham meets them as well.

Our timetable does not always match up with God’s. We are tempted to place parameters on the plan. God has a greater knowledge that is perfect. He is never late. His plan always unfolds at just the right time for maximum fulfillment. We may be tempted to throw in the towel and quit on God’s plan. We would do well to use the faith sight that Abraham used in seeing God’s plan includes God’s perfect timing.

Abraham believed God when he did not know why

By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. He received the promises and yet he was offering his one and only son, the one to whom it had been said, Your offspring will be traced through Isaac. He considered God to be able even to raise someone from the dead; therefore, he received him back, figuratively speaking.

Hebrewsw 11:17-19 (CSB)

The last chapter of Abraham’s story that was shared by the author of Hebrews was one of great faith. The full details of this account are found in Genesis 22. The Bible tells us that God called for Abraham to offer up his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice. Isaac was the promised child. He was the one that was given to Abraham and Sarah when they were past their childbearing years. This was a test of faith. After all, God was asking Abraham to give up the promise that He had made to him because much of God’s promise to Abraham was tied to Isaac.

God takes no delight in the death of anyone. Death is ultimately the result of sin. God did not want Isaac to die, but He did want to know what did Abraham cherish more – the gifts or the Giver?

What about us? What do we want more – God or the things that He can give us? As one person once said, “What if you got to heaven and found the streets of gold, gates of pearl, mansions aplenty, loved ones and heroes of the faith, no sin or sickness or pain, but there was no Jesus? Would we be okay with that?” The truth is that heaven is heaven solely because of the presence of Jesus.

Hebrews 11:19 along with Genesis 22 tells us that Abraham demonstrated his faith by his willingness to do whatever God told him – even to give up the promise. Abraham knew, though not fully understanding, that God was good and would keep His word. Even if Isaac had died that day, Abraham believed God would miraculously bring him back because God will not go back on His word.

Conclusion

Abraham was a man of great faith. Was he perfect? No. There are plenty of instances that we are told about when he did things in a wrong manner, but one thing that he always came back to was his faith in God. We may not understand how God always works. But we do know enough about Him that we can place our faith in Him and trust Him even when we don’t know where He is taking us, how He is going to do it, when it is going to work out, or even the full why behind His plan. God knows that on this side of heaven that we are not going to be perfect in every part of our lives. He is asking us to place our faith in Him and be faithful each step of the journey.

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What Do I Do Now?

I am using the chronological read-thru-the-Bible plan this year from One Year Bible. Today's reading brought out something very interesting to me.

In Genesis 12:1-3, we see the call of God to a man named Abram (later to become Abraham). This is an amazing call: become a great nation, a blessing, curses on anyone who attempts to curse you, a great name. It came though with a high price tag: abandon your way, your norm, your plans and follow God.

We see that in Genesis 12:4, Abram takes the deal and follows after God - even without knowing where God would take him.

The interesting part comes next to me. I'm not sure I have ever noticed this before. In Genesis 12:10-20, Abram though having this great experience with God, tries to take matters into his own hands. This just makes a mess of things.

How often do we do this? We have this great experience and grow in our relationship with God only to follow it up with "I got this one God." What happens next? We find ourselves picking ourselves up out of the muck.

Before you throw in towel, see what Genesis 13:1-4 tells us. After Abram blows it in a major way, he returns to the place where he last knew God was in first place in his life: the place he heard the call.

When we get off-track and find ourselves in the muck of our self-reliance, let us make a quick trip back to the place we last seen God. Back to the places where He was so real. This journey that God has called us to is one where we have to fully rely on Him.

"Without faith it is impossible to please God." Hebrews 11:6

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More Than Meets The Eye

Read Genesis 13

In this passage of Scripture, Abram sets out on the journey that God had called him to. He was to go to a place that the Lord would show him. No more details given.

A problem arises between Abram's and Lot's helpers. The land isn't able to support both of them together in one spot. They're going to have to split ways.

Abram leaves the choice up to Lot. Lot chooses the land that looks good. As verse 13 breaks the mold on Sodom and Gomorrah, we are told that these were cities filled with sin.

Just because the cover of the book looks good doesn't mean that the contents are worth the price needed to pay. Often the price that you end up paying far exceeds the price on the sticker.

May we share the wisdom of Abram as he was willing to wait upon the Lord for direction. He was very aware of the wisdom found in Proverbs 3:6...

think about Him in all your ways, and He will guide you on the right paths.

What is there in your life that may be more than meets the eye?

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Choosing Great

As I was reading my devotion for this morning, it was talking about choosing great over good.  This can be a very difficult thing at times.  When you come to a crossroads and there are two paths to choose from, which one do you take?  You see things down both, and they both look good.  The truth is only one is the great choice.

Another truth: looks can be deceiving.  Just ask Lot. If you read Genesis 13, you find the story of where Abraham and Lot went separate ways.  They weren't at odds with each other.  There was just a shortage of resources to take care of both families and their livestock.  Abraham, the elder and leader, allowed Lot to make the decision about who would go which way.  Ultimately, Abraham was trusting the Lord to continue to chart out this course that He had called Abraham to.  We can read in Genesis 14 and 18-19:29 that the land that Lot saw wasn't exactly the way he pictured it.

The ability to choose the great over the good comes down to one thing: faith.  Do you trust God like you say you do?  We can say all we want that we trust in the Lord, but until we lay down our right to call the shots and let Him guide us along this journey called life, our "faith" is lacking.

My prayer today is that "I will show you my faith by what I do" (James 2:18 NIV).

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