Abraham-A Fascinating Template of Promises & Faith

Sermon Transcript

I have learned, like most of you, that marriage is full of surprises, particularly that first year. What some people call being newlyweds, others just call it a kind of an adjustment, adjustment of life. I mean, it’s one thing, as most of us know, to date your girlfriend and take her to Bob’s Big Boy on Saturday night. I’m revealing too much with that. But it’s another to be signing your contract for your new apartment and moving in together and trying to figure out who gets what drawer and what to put on the counter of the sink and what kind of things are going to hang in the wall on the wall and in the hallway. That’s an interesting year of adjustment.

I was 21 when I got married and I remember just waking up to all kinds of new realities. I grew up without a sister. I had a brother and for instance we had one small closet in our bedroom that we shared for 18 years of my life. It was three by two, maybe. I don’t know. Is that an exaggeration? Very small. And we shared that, and it seemed to work out just fine with about a three foot rod that hung there.

And then we moved into this little apartment, which was so modern. It was wonderful because it had this big closet, we thought. I mean, it was at least four and a half feet long. And I thought, wow, this is going to be just so roomy. What are we going to do with all this? And clothes, I remember, that I had never seen before. I dated her for five years. I’m thinking, what are those? Whose are those? I’ve never seen you wear those before.

I can safely say, too, that my brother and I between us probably had about four pairs of shoes. I mean, we would replace them when we needed to. We had one for school. We had one for church. Not one. We had a pair for school and church. We weren’t that poor. But I remember my wife bringing in the boxes of shoes. I just didn’t realize how that all worked.

I learned about shoe shopping, which I’d never experienced before, who gets which drawers in the kitchen or in the sink of the bathroom, morning ablutions, things I had never witnessed. It was a year of adjustment. Now, don’t get me wrong. I married a great gal. You know her. And of course, you know, I married up. She’s fantastic. I don’t deserve her. But not having ever done it before, I realized that it was a year of surprises.

I recognize that as Christians, we step into our relationship with God in a similar fashion, in that we have wonderful expectations, and we have wonderful expectations of the God that we’re stepping into this relationship with. He is obviously perfect. I mean, it couldn’t be a better arrangement, or so it seems, on paper. But it doesn’t take long to realize that the first year, if not the first 10, become a year of surprises, a decade of surprises.

A time of recognizing that God, who on paper would seem to be a wonderful person to relate to, has several ways of doing things that are completely foreign to the way that we would expect him to do things. We anticipate. Think about it. Go back to the first month of your Christian life. I mean, anticipating what it would be like after you had just freshly committed your life to follow Jesus, there’s that sense that, you know, church was always going to be this wonderful utopian community, that Bible study would always be this rich feast of edifying material. That’s your prayer life. You would ask, and this God who loves you and sent his son to die for you, I mean, he’s just going to respond quickly to every need and every request that you send his way.

Expectation after expectation, it proves to be a little different in reality. Oh, it’s not that God is not great. It’s not that he doesn’t love us. It’s just that the adjustment of trying to relate to a God in the real world here and now is a little different than I think some would sketch out in theory.

There are several who are pulled off the pages of the Scripture from the Old Testament and exalted as templates and examples in the new. We have wonderful heroes of the faith. As a matter of fact, when we get to the 11th chapter of Hebrews, we’re going to laundry list. I don’t know how long it’ll take to get through that chapter when we see name after name after name of people that the New Testament writers said, these are just incredible examples for us.

One of them, I think, that has to be up at the top is the personage of the early part of the book of Genesis named Abraham. Abraham is unique in that even James, the brother of Christ, calls him a friend of God. What an amazing thing. Can you imagine that? I mean, we know some godly people, some folks that try to walk the line and do what’s right, but to look at someone and say, now there is a friend of God. I mean, that’s the kind of person that hangs out with God. I mean, that’s on the level of Moses and David. This is a highly respected personage.

What’s interesting about Moses being called such a godly, faith-filled friend of God is that his life, when you look at it carefully in the Old Testament, is really not what we would expect for someone that’s so highly favored in God’s eyes. As a matter of fact, his life is filled with a lot of difficulties and trials and struggles and adjusting to the way that God treats him.

It’s no surprise then that the writer of Hebrews, when he’s trying to relate to the people who had stepped into this thing called the Christian life and then found themselves surrounded by the difficulty that that decision brought them, that the writer of Hebrews would bring to the forefront this man named Abraham and say, hey, if you want to know what it’s like to follow a God who is faithful, who makes good promises and loves us, but then doesn’t always work everything out the way we think it should go, look at Abraham, because there’s an example. There’s an example of not only a faith-filled servant of God, but an example of how God deals with his people, and sometimes in a confusing way that might leave the immature Christian, the immature Christian, thinking, well, maybe God doesn’t love me. Maybe God is not as good as he’s cracked up to be. And maybe God isn’t going to fulfill all the promises that I read about in the New Testament all the time.

Well, Abraham is a good example. And that’s why in the middle of this discussion about God’s fidelity and his promises, the writer of Hebrews brings them up. What you need to note as you turn to Hebrews chapter six, if you haven’t already, is that this is an emphasis on God’s dealing with Abraham. The other side of the coin is how Abraham responded to God. Now, we learn about it in this text, but that’s not the point. The point here is, look at how God dealt with Abraham.

The point in chapter 11, as we’ll see, as there’s lots of discussion about Abraham’s response to God, is that Abraham did a very good job in points in his life of responding the way that God expects. And in particular, he is a hero as it relates to faith. And so we have to pause in 11 to look at how Christians ought to respond to God. But in chapter 6, what we’re trying to figure out is, is God reliable? Is he faithful to his promises? Is God going to be a God who delivers and comes through? And the example of Abraham is brought up.

Here it is in verse number 13. We took an overview, a high view of this, and kind of got the big landscape of what’s going on in verses 13 through 20. But today let’s just look at the first three verses beginning in verse number 13 which is nothing more than recalling in the minds of these early Hebrew Christians what Abraham was which is where we’ll have to go and where we’ll have to settle where we find the story in Hebrews 12 but for now let’s read the text verse 13.

When God made his promise to Abraham, now again what’s the point? Look back at verse number 12 if you got your Bibles open. He doesn’t want us to become lazy. He wants us to imitate those who, through faith and patience, inherit what has been promised. We should be like those people. Example number one, verse 13. Well, think about Abraham. But let’s talk about the fact that God is a God who keeps his promise. Note the way, for instance, God swears that he’s going to keep his promise.

Middle of verse 13. Since there was no one greater for him, that is, God, to swear by, God swore by himself, saying, I will surely bless you, and I will give you many descendants, an oft-repeated promise from God to Abraham. So after waiting patiently, Abraham received what was promised.

That’s really the gist of this text as it goes on to talk about the solemnity of God’s promises in verses 16, 17, 18. The point is Abraham got what God promised, at least the version of it that was at least satisfying enough for Abraham to know that ultimately God is a God who keeps all of his promises. God came through for Abraham.

But what we need to do is to recognize that the way he came through for Abraham is not the way you and I would write it out if we were to try and say, well, here’s the ideal template of God fulfilling his promises. As a matter of fact, let’s just survey real quickly a little bit of how God did this in Abraham’s life. And we’ll come away, I trust, this afternoon with four points, germane points to our Christian life.

So turn with me, if you would, to the story of Abraham beginning in the bottom of Genesis chapter 11. Genesis chapter 11. God makes a promise to Abraham and he swears that he’s going to carry it out and indeed he does. He carries out his promise to Abraham. Well, let’s look at how this all started.

Abraham. Abraham is lauded as a great Christian man among those who, I’m sorry, a great godly man among Christians. He’s lauded as a great man of faith among Jews. He’s even lauded as a wonderful and great prophet, second only to Muhammad in the Quran. He’s mentioned 188 times in the Quran. It seems like all the religious people who’ve ever intersected the text of Scripture think, well, no, there’s a great man.

What’s important for us to do, though, in beginning in chapter 11, though we’ll camp in chapter 12, where God makes a promise to Abraham, it’s important to recognize that when we meet him in the text of Scripture, the only thing great about Abraham is the greatness of the irony of his name. He is not at all great. As a matter of fact, when we meet him in the bottom of chapter 11, we learn something of his lineage and who he belongs to and who his father is, and all of this, we find out his name is Abram. That’s his name.

Now, in Hebrew, Abram means great father, great father. And in a culture, in an ancient time, in ancient Mesopotamia, where few things meant more than your progeny and your lineage and the people that you are raising in your clan and your family, Abraham was a real dramatic failure. Not only did he not have children, but his name was Great Father, and no one had ever called him that, because he was married to, if you’d look down in verse number 30, to Sarah, and Sarah was barren. She had no children.

We meet Abraham at age 75. All hope of children at this point was pretty much gone. He’s living in Ur of the Chaldees. He moves to Haran. It’s southern Iraq. It’s at the bottom of the Tigris in Euphrates River, and God is going to meet him here and say, okay, you, living far away from the future focus of God’s attention, you, great father who have no children, I’ve got a deal here for you. It’s a pretty one-sided deal. It’s a promise that I’m going to make to you about your future.

Now begin chapter 12, verse number one. Here comes the promise to Abraham. Yahweh had said to Abram, leave your country, your people, and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. Does that sound a little bit like Christ coming to the shores of the Sea of Galilee, pointing his finger in the chest of some Galilean fishermen and saying what? Leave your nets and come and follow me.

Typical crisis of are you going to make God your priority? Are you going to do what you want or are you going to do what I want? It’s the crisis that if you’re a Christian, we’ve all faced. It’s the place of beginning for the Christian life. It is the place of beginning for everyone who’s going to encounter God and come out on the side of, I trust, the James commentary of being a friend of God.

And the call goes out to this man, Abram, great father with no kids. Come, leave your country, your people, your father’s household, and go to the land I’ll show you. Now, that’s a great call, but look at verse number two. Here comes the promise. I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse. And all the peoples of the earth will be blessed through you. So Abram left as Yahweh had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he set out from Haran.

Now, this is an amazing statement for a 75-year-old man who’s married to an infertile wife, and he’s being told by God, you’re going to be great. You can search high and low throughout all of Scripture. You can read the rabbinic writings. You can look at all the Judaic commentaries. You can search high and low for a reason that God shows up and picks this guy to be a father of a great nation, and you’re going to come up empty-handed. There’s no revelatory reason for the choosing of Abram.

Abram would become Abraham and become the leader of Judaism and eventually the great genealogical father of Christ, the redeemer of the world. And he’s chosen without any discussion as to why he’s chosen. It sounds a lot like God. The point is this is a purely gracious choice of God.

God looks at him, not because he’s a winner. Does this sound like Paul in the New Testament of Book of First Corinthians. He doesn’t pick him because he’s a wonderful leader of a great clan and you seem to do well with lots of kids and grandkids around you. You seem like a fantastic leader of a future nation. I pick you. It’s for no reason other than that God shows up on the scene, looks for a guy in southern Iraq who has no kids, a barren wife, and wishes he had some children, a failure to his culture, has no progeny, no lineage, no clan, and he says, you, why don’t you come with me and come to this place and I’m going to make you a great nation.

The promise of God to Abraham is a promise of grace. It is a promise of grace that Abraham would stumble over. It’s a promise of grace that a lot of us stumble over. It’s a kind of grace that religious people today have stumbled over all over the country and around the world.

Number one on your outline, when you jot this down, I would like you to connect with the reality of how it relates to you and your Christian life. It’s important for us, just like Abram, to embrace, number one, these are long points, but they’re worth getting down, I believe, the hard-to-believe grace in God’s promises. Did you catch that? We need to embrace the hard-to-believe grace in God’s promises.

In Genesis 17, 17, it says that when Abraham pondered the promise as God retold it to him, as he did in Genesis 12, Genesis 15, Genesis 17, Genesis 22. In chapter 17, Abraham laughs. In chapter 18, Sarah laughs. They just think, this is unbelievable. It’s not going to happen. And you know the story. You know about Hagar. You know about Ishmael. You know about the handmaid. You know about these guys going, I don’t believe this is true. I don’t believe it can happen. They’re trying to short circuit God’s promises, all of this. They have a hard time believing it. And yet this guy ends up being the father of faith.

But in reality, it’s a tough thing to believe because it is such an amazing promise that some guy living in some clan in the bottom of the Mesopotamian Valley is going to be called out by God without a family, not a success, not a cultural winner. He’s a loser by all accounts when God meets him and says, I’m going to make you the greatest leader of the greatest nation, of the greatest lineage of spiritual people who believe me and trust me that the world has ever seen. It is a promise of grace.

And Abraham stumbled over it. He had a hard time embracing it, but eventually he does. And God wants to drive the point home so firmly. And again, I said that quickly, but it’s worth at least jotting down. He promises this to him in chapter 12. We call this the Abrahamic covenant. He reiterates it with a blood sacrifice in chapter 15. He does it again in chapter 18 and makes the promise to Abraham a third time and a fourth time in chapter 22. He says, I swear to you, I’m going to make you a great nation.

God makes promise after promise after promise, and even changes his name in the middle of this narrative. From great father, Abram, that’s what it means, great father, to Abraham, father of a great nation. And again, he’s building on a promise. He makes an oath of that promise, but there’s no sign of fulfillment yet. As a matter of fact, we go quite a few chapters before he even has his first child, let alone grandchildren or great-grandchildren.

Keep your finger here, if you would, and turn with me to Ephesians chapter 2. Ephesians chapter 2. In this dramatic text of the New Testament, we shouldn’t be able to miss the connection between what we’ve just read and what God is promising to us and saying about us as New Testament believers in Ephesians chapter 2. If we see Abraham from the perspective of prior to Genesis 12, you start to get a bit of the feel of what Paul is trying to get us to imagine about our own state in Ephesians chapter 2.

Look at verse number 1. Familiar verses to you I recognize, but read them again. As for you, here Paul looking to a Jew and Gentile connected composite of a church in a letter that probably went to all kinds of churches in Asia Minor, a circulatory letter to all kinds of churches. He says, listen, all of you throughout all of Asia Minor who are trusting in Christ, you need to recognize this. You were dead in your transgressions and sin.

I think about that statement, and I think about the statement that Jesus made to the church saying you have a reputation that you’re alive in this particular church where they weren’t converted, and he says, but you’re dead. I look at Abraham having a name, great father, but he’s not a great father. He is, in reality, a destitute of any lineage. He doesn’t have any. He has no kids, no future, nobody to give his inheritance to.

You look at us in the Bible, and the Bible says, you know, you feel very much alive. As a matter of fact, the next verse here says you lived, but it was a kind of living that really wasn’t living at all. It was a living where you followed the ways of the world, verse 2, and the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit that’s now at work, and those who are disobedient. And from God’s perspective, you’re dead. You’re nothing. You’re nothing from God’s perspective to warrant his love, to attract him, to give you his promises, his redemption, or a future place in the kingdom. You don’t have anything to make that a logical choice for God.

And yet God, in this text, it says, after all of this laundry list of terrible things that are the natural inclinations of our heart, sums it up in the bottom of verse 3, saying, we had nothing to look forward to but God’s death. But look at verse number four. But because of his great love for us, if you stopped right there, you’d say, well, no, why? Why would God love people who are following their own way and are from his perspective spiritually dead? Doesn’t give us an explanation. Much like the mystery of Abraham. Why would God choose Abraham? I don’t know. He just did.

In his sovereign choice, he set his love and his covenant promise on Abraham. If you don’t feel the same way, you don’t understand grace. That’s what this text is all about. Because of his great love, keep reading, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions. Now, here’s the phrase to underline, it is by grace that you’ve been saved.

The point of the choice of you being a part of the body of Christ is parallel to the promise God makes to Abraham. It is unwarranted. And I know sometimes as Christians from a very human perspective, we can start to think I’m a Christian because I was smarter than the next guy who couldn’t figure out he needed the gospel. And that’s not what the Bible teaches at all. Because God isn’t going through the hospital ward of life looking for someone to get healthy. He’s walking through the morgue. And in the morgue, nobody’s interested in being healthy.

I’ve been to the morgue. It’s just, it’s really dead. Sorry. In the morgue. Nobody wanting an aspirin. Nobody’s saying, hey, can you, you know, turn up my medication. Nobody wants to drink a water. Nobody’s calling out, crying out, or it sounds a lot like Romans chapter three, doesn’t it? No one is seeking after God.

It is a myth for us to imagine that we’re all here with a little inkling of God in our hearts and all of us have some level of craving for God. We don’t. According to a text like this, we are dead and God walks through in his sovereign plan and reaches out and places his sovereign love on people. And he says to folks, even though you’re dead, verse 4, because of my great love, my mercy, verse 5, I’m going to make you alive in Christ. And God, who raised Christ up, is going to raise us up and see this, verse 6 says, in heavenly places.

Verse 7, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace. Compare that statement to the promise of Abraham. Abraham, you’re 75 years old, you got no kids, but you are gonna be the father of a great nation and you’re gonna occupy this great land that I’m gonna take you to. And anybody who attacks that land and attacks you, I’m gonna turn my mind against and I’m gonna put my hand out there and I’m not gonna bless them. As a matter of fact, if they curse you, I’m gonna curse them. All of that, future, by and by. And he’s going, I don’t even have a kid yet.

Spiritually dead people, God places his love on them. He quickens them, if you will, raises them up to a place of spiritual awareness to God, grants them the ability to understand that God is God, they become alive in Christ. And the Bible here says one day in the coming ages, it’s going to be an incredible experience for you. Having the grace of God showered on your life, future salvation.

Verse number eight, the famous words from Sunday school, it is all by grace that you’ve been saved through faith. It’s not of yourself. All of this is a gift of God. It’s not by works. It’s not because you did a lot of great things. Not because of your reputation or your resume, so that no one can boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has prepared in advance for us to do. He’s got an agenda for us, great.

But the point is you got here by a pure, gracious, sovereign choice. We need to embrace that. We need to live with that concept that we are people who are privileged to have the promise and hope of heaven and forgiveness and all of our sins being nailed to the cross. And we should have the humility to say with Abraham, I was nothing living in the bottom of a God-forsaken place, but God set his sovereign love on me.

If for some reason you think it’s because of your intelligence, your spiritual insight, your sensitivity, your hunger for God that got you here, we don’t understand the Bible. God is a God who makes incredible promises to people who are spiritually dead. He brings them to life, and he brings them into the family.

God sets his love and his promises on us. What does he expect from us? He wants us to trust him. He expects us to say, I’ll believe you. I will believe you even though I am unworthy, even though I don’t deserve it, even though I can’t earn it, I’ll embrace it. That’s what the word embrace is all about in this point. We’ve got to adopt it, hold on to it, trust that God has made a decision that is in his plan and we embrace it. All we can do is believe it. The Bible says if we believe it, we’re right in the center of God’s will.

One more passage before we leave the New Testament. Go to Romans chapter 3 with me please, a text that is so helpful for us in tying together the trust of Abraham and the salvation of new covenant people. He says this in verse number 20, Romans chapter 3, verse 20. A Roman study not long ago, we camped on this verse in verse 20 that no one’s going to be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law. No one’s going to be embraced. No one’s going to be said, well, this guy’s on my team. This guy gets to go to heaven because he’s done what the law says. Rather, through the law, here’s what we become conscious of. We get conscious of sin. We recognize we can’t get into God’s team by merit.

Verse 21. But here’s the good news. A righteousness from God, apart from the law, apart from keeping the rules, it’s been made known, to which, by the way, the law and the prophets testify. And I can say clearly that in one early part of the law, it’s called Genesis chapter 11 and 12, God started to make it really clear. It’s not because of Abraham’s righteous deeds. We don’t know anything about Abraham other than he’s a cultural failure. That’s all we know.

And just like that, the Bible says here, a righteousness is coming from God that comes through, look at verse 22, faith. Faith in Christ Jesus from our perspective to all who believe. There’s no difference because we’ve all sinned and we all fall short of the glory of God. We’re all in the discard pile. We’re all in the sin pile. We’re all in the loser pile.

But the Bible says we can be freely justified by grace through the redemption that comes by Christ. God presents Christ as the sacrifice of atonement and through trusting in what he’s done, through just believing the promise of Christ in what Christ has accomplished for us. The Bible says we’re in, we’re declared righteous.

He did it, middle of verse 25, to demonstrate his justice because in his forbearance, he’d left sins committed beforehand unpunished. He did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time. And so to be the just and the one who justifies those who by faith in Christ have put their trust in him.

Where then’s the boasting, verse 27? Well, look how smart we were, no. Look how good we were, no. It’s excluded. On what principle? On observing the rules? No. But on faith, we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.

Is it God? Is God the God of Jews only? Is he not also the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, since there’s only one God who will justify the circumcised, the Jewish people by faith, and the uncircumcised, the Gentiles, through the same faith.

Do we then nullify the law by this faith? No, not at all. We uphold the law. The law is good. It taught us of our sin.

Chapter 4, verse 1. What then shall we say Abraham our forefather, what did he discover in this matter? Well in fact it’s the same way with him because if he was justified by works he could stand around and boast about it but we realize there was nothing on his resume that made God choose him not before God. What does Scripture say? The Bible says this: Abraham believed God and God then boom put all this righteousness on him. He credited it to him as righteousness. Just believe my promise. It’s all you got to do.

Tremendously humbling place to be. And I would say most modern Christians in evangelical America don’t understand the humility of that kind of choice from God, the grace of God that comes not by being better or smarter or more intuitive about God than others because the Bible says we’re dead. Nobody seeks after God. God sets his love and his promises on us. What does he want from us? He wants us to believe him, trust him. That trust is a gift from God. He grants it to us. And it’s important for us to embrace it.

And I’ll tell you what, if you think you got here by your good deeds, I guarantee you when you stub your spiritual toe and you trip into sin this week, you’re going to sit back and you’re going to doubt God and you’re going to doubt his promises. Because you don’t get it. We’ve got to get into this thing by pure grace. And we hang on to our position in Christ because of the promise of God, a unilateral covenant that he will save those who trust him. That’s the gospel. Embrace the hard-to-believe grace. That’s situated in the promises of God. The big ones that the book of Hebrews is concerned about demonstrated by template and example in the life of Abraham in Genesis.

Well, back to Genesis chapter 12. Genesis chapter 12, the promise comes. You’re going to be a great nation. I’m going to bless you. I’m going to take care of the land. I’m going to give you a place that is sprawling, and you’re going to fill it with people like sand on the seashore. Our promise. Hey, you’re going to be seated in heavenly places, you’re going to be walking into the kingdom, you’re going to be heirs with Christ. All of that is fantastic.

Well, look what happens. We don’t even get out of the 12th chapter of Genesis. Look at verse number 10. I mean, this is not a mistake that we go from this grand and huge promise to this. Verse number 10. Now there was a famine in the land. What? You just promised me you’re pulling me out of this place, you’re taking this great place. And the next verse says, now there’s a famine in the land. Wait a minute. You just said, I’m following you. I’m trusting you. I’m going to go your way. Great. I embrace your promise by faith. And the text says, next thing for you, Abraham, famine.

So Abraham has to run down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. It was bad. God does not send him from the promise into his wife’s tent and say, hey, how are you feeling? Well, I’m a little queasy. Wow, amazing. God just promised we were going to have a kid and have a great nation. Well, fantastic. Here it is. Isn’t it great? Now the paved highway to Canaan, here we come. Doesn’t happen like that. The next thing out of the gate for the faithful follower of God, believing the promise of God, is famine and difficulty.

As a matter of fact, I went through and I just chronicled from chapter 12 till chapter 21, when God finally gives him his child, which by the way, the promise comes at age 75. The promise isn’t delivered until age 100. We can read that in a sentence. We can read it in six chapters. But to live those 25 years with a promise, and every year you’re getting older and more wrinkly and more arthritis, it’s not, I mean, you’re struggling with this.

I chronicled the problems in Abraham’s life. You can skim your eyes through this. Look what happens next. Verses 11 and following, he has that little problem with Pharaoh and Sarah, his hot-looking wife. Remember that? Trouble. Chapter 13, skim your eyes through chapter 13. This is the my greedy nephew Lot problem, the land swap problem. He has another problem in chapter 14. It’s the Lot is captured. Now I got to go fight to get him back problem.

Chapter 16, this is a disaster. We’re getting tired of waiting for God’s deliverance on the promise, so maybe the housekeeper make a good mother for our child problem. That wasn’t a good deal. Problems in chapter 17 and 18. Here they are caught laughing at God. Both of them. Both. In chapter 17, Abraham’s laughing. Chapter 18, Sarah’s laughing. They’re having a hard time believing this decades later.

Chapter 18, 19 problem. You got the nephew’s city destroyed because of sin. And if you look at that carefully from Abraham’s perspective, it’s the God won’t answer my prayer problem, right? Man of faith praying for Sodom, and God says, no, sorry, I’m going to burn it up.

Chapter 20, we’ve got another similar problem to the chapter 12 problem. We’ve got the Abimelech is trying to steal my wife problem. And I just hit the highlights. Bottom line is Abraham’s never going to stand up and preach a prosperity gospel to his friends about, hey, if you follow God, it’s going to be great. As a matter of fact, at every turn in Abraham’s life all we read is one challenge after the next. And it starts with, I’m going to make you great nation. Follow me. Okay, I’ll follow you. Great. Next verse, famine in the land. So scoot on down to Egypt. And then, oh by the way, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble there. And sure enough he did.

I turned on the TV this morning to watch a very fancy slick preacher tell me again how if I’m a follower of Christ my bank account should be overflowing, my car should be running well, my dog should never throw up, you know, whatever, my life should be great. Is anybody buying that for more than a year? I mean, I don’t understand how they fill those stadiums. I don’t get it. I mean, those people can’t come back year after year, because all you gotta do is live life, pray the prayers, send in the money, read the Bible verses, and guess what? The truth of Jesus’s promise comes true time and time again, and that is in this world you will have tribulation. You’ll have trouble.

Don’t think that the promise of God to bring you into the kingdom, to sit you in heavenly places, to march you into a place where everything is made right, means that somehow between here and there, the journey is going to be easy. The journey for Abraham is hard. And that’s what makes him a great template of faith for us. Because even when he wavered, even when he lied about his wife, calling his wife a sister, you know, the half-truth, trying to get around the Abimelech and Pharaoh problem, even in all of that, we recognize it was all predicated and instigated by trials, problem, famine, heartache, unanswered prayer.

So when you’re sitting around thinking, wow, God isn’t answering my prayer, I’m having trouble, there’s problems in my family, my bank account’s not overflowing, the doctor says I’m sick, I lost my job, I’ve been falsely accused, whatever your problem is, just remember you’re right in the middle of the example of faith in the life of Abraham. It’s exactly where he lived, chapter after chapter.

But what undergirded his life, which is what the writer of Hebrews is going to get to in chapter 11, is he still trusted God. And isn’t that the challenge? Isn’t that the challenge for my wife and I when they said, hey, your daughter here, she’s going to be paralyzed and retarded and she’s not going to be well. Why don’t you abort your daughter? All of those kinds of things that hit our lives. I remember thinking to myself, the challenge right here is, am I still going to believe God’s good?

When things go terribly wrong, you map out a plan and you say, here’s the 10-year plan. And in year number one, God says, no, sorry, door’s closed, slammed on your fingers. You know, you got a whole new plan for you and it’s not going to be pretty and it won’t be fun and it’s going to hurt for a while. The question is, am I still going to believe God is good? Am I still going to believe God’s promise to never leave me, never forsake me? Am I still going to consider myself a friend of God in the midst of all that? You got your own list, right?

Number two, which is closely related to observation number three. We need to prepare to be patient. To be patient as God delays fulfillment. Here’s the thing. God is going to give me a great and perfect life. It just isn’t going to be right now. Oh, there are some truths that will undergird my heart, that will give me a peace perhaps that surpasses all comprehension, but the circumstances of my life, just like yours, they promise to be hard.

As a matter of fact, Jesus said, if I had a hard time here and people persecuted me, what do you think they’re going to do to you? That’s not what I heard on the sermon this morning on channel five or nine or 11 or whatever it was. The reality though is going to be a hard road. The question is, are you going to trust God and still believe his promises amidst the fact that he’s not fulfilling them right now?

Can you imagine waiting 25 years? You’re way past the registry at Babies R Us, right, at 75. Nobody in there, but an occasional grandpa, great-grandpa. And Abraham had chalked it up to, I’m not going to have a kid. And God says, no, yeah, you will. 76th birthday. Yeah, you will. You’re still going to have a kid. 77th birthday. Yeah, you’re still going to have a kid. 78th. Yeah, still going to have a child. 79th. God, are you going to do this? Yes, I’m going to do this. Great nation. Lot of kids, a lot of kids. Birthday 80, birthday 81, birthday 82, birthday 83, 84, 85, 86. Around, around 97, I’m thinking it’s not going to happen, right? I’m about giving up. Decorated the baby’s room, but, you know, now you got your computer set up in there. There’s no baby coming. And God said, yeah, I’m gonna do it, just not right now.

Has God done that in your life too? I’m gonna bless you. Wow, you’re gonna bless me. And remember that that was true of Abraham. It wasn’t just that one day you’ll have a kid. The promise in chapter 12 was I will bless you. God’s promised the same for us. And I’m thinking, wow, the blessings seem delayed. The blessings come in strange packages. God, these blessings hurt. Yeah, because they’re not the blessings I’m talking about. And don’t let people try to twist it.

The Christian life is not about the here and now. We’re preparing for something better, and it’s somewhere else. You realize that, right? Forget the craziness, the plastic Christianity that wants to take all your pains and say, well, really, these are the blessings in disguise. No, they’re not. They’re really not. They’re tests of my faith. They’re exams to see whether or not I’m going to come out of this and say, God is still good, even though I’m hurting right now. They’re tests, but they’re not the blessings.

God is going to shower on me blessings in a place called the kingdom of God, ultimately the new Jerusalem, and that’ll be great. When he shows me the new digs in the new Jerusalem and says, all of this is for you, come in or into the joy prepared for you before the foundation of the world, that’s going to be the blessings. See, right now we’re having trouble. Can we manage those with a good attitude? We’d better. God told us to. That’s what faith does. Faith, it bolsters up my attitude. Circumstances are hard. Trials come. Tears come. But I got to be patient.

And is that not, are you there with your worksheet? Look at that column again where I printed the text. What does verse 15 say? Abraham received the promise after what? Waiting how? Patiently. That’s the thing. And I’ll tell you this, if Abraham’s reading those words this morning or this afternoon with us, he’s going, well, it wasn’t all the time. Because you know what? It wasn’t all the time for him. But overall, undergirding his bad and difficult trials was the fact that he still said, but God’s going to come through. I think God’s still going to come through. I still trust him. He’s going to fulfill his promises. Patience. That’s the key.

I know this is a sub-sermon. This is totally bad homiletics, but let me give you four things real quick that’ll help you cultivate patience in the midst of this wait. Okay? This is totally wrong. You aspiring preachers don’t do what I’m doing right now. Here’s a little sub-sermon. And I don’t have time to develop this, but four things.

Love Christ more. Duh. That doesn’t sound… What? Here’s the thing. You printed it on your reception napkins. First Corinthians 13.4. Love is what? Patience. First thing on the list. See? If I really love Christ, I’ll wait for him. Does that sound weird? I’ll wait for him. I’ll learn to be patient. The more I love Christ, the more my patience grows about him coming through on the promise. And I’m thinking birthday 97, I’m starting to get frustrated with God. And yet he had to continue to love God. And the more he loved God, the more patient he could be in waiting for God to do what he said he would do.

Secondly, ask Christ for help. These sound very esoteric, but jot the reference down. Revelation chapter 1, verse number 9. John said, as he sits exiled on an island in Patmos, he says this. He says, I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom, and the patient endurance that are ours in Jesus Christ. Goes on to give the rest of the salutation. That’s an interesting phrase. The patient endurance that are ours in Jesus Christ.

What’s the point? I know there’s something about me reaching out to Christ and saying I am struggling with my faith. God, I need your patience. I gotta love him more. I gotta ask him more.

Thirdly, I gotta get more involved with other Christians. Second Corinthians chapter one, verse six. I’ve got to get involved. I gotta get more involved with other Christians. Second Corinthians chapter one, verse six. Paul said if we were distressed it’s for your comfort and salvation and if we’re comforted it’s for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. Is that a tongue twister? What? Got to read it slow.

If we’re distressed, Paul said, ultimately we’re learning to comfort you. It’s for your comfort. And if we’re comforted, you know what? It’s ultimately for your comfort. We’re learning to comfort you. And when we comfort you as brothers and sisters in Christ, it produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings that we suffer. Did you track all that? That’s the coconut game at the Angel game, right? But the point is, if you get involved with other Christians, those other Christians go through hard times and when they learn to comfort you, all of a sudden now the things that I’m going through, I begin to develop patient endurance because of the mutual support of other Christians.

If this is all that that church is to you is coming at a big group meeting where you listen to me blab at you on the weekend for an hour, this is not enough. There’s got to be a second level involvement. I mean, let’s just start. We’re gearing up this fall with our small group ministry. It’s going to be big and it’s going to be better than ever. It’s going to be more organized than ever geographically. And I’m telling you, it’s time for you to say, I got to get involved. When that thing hits the bulletin, I need to sign up for a small group. I got to get involved and let people know the struggles that I struggle with because when I share mine with them and they share theirs with mine and together we try to draw close to Christ, to love Christ more, and ask Christ for more help, then all of a sudden my interaction with those Christians, guess what it does for me? It develops according to Scripture, 2 Corinthians 1, 6, more patient endurance. And that’s what we need.

Fourthly, just jot down Luke chapter 12, the latter half of the chapter. I mean, you really get to the punchline in verse 43, but we need to do more ministry. Jesus told parables about the fact that if you want to wait patiently for the return of Christ, get busy serving the king. If you get busy serving the king, guess what? You’ll stay on track. And the coming of Christ, your mind and your heart will be set with a patient endurance and a tenacity that you won’t have if you sit around and say, well, I don’t know, he’s coming back a long time from now, so I don’t have to do much.

The point is, if you have the eminent return of Christ in your mind, you’ll get to work in doing the work of the church. And if you get to work in doing the work of the church, the Bible says, you’ll be okay. You won’t sit around and struggle with patience. Love Christ more. Ask for more help from Christ. Get more involved with other Christians. Get busy in ministry. Do more ministry. Be patient. God is going to delay his fulfillment, even in the subsets of his promises. God is going to come through, but it’s always on his timetable, and I guarantee you it’s a lot more, I should say it’s a lot less urgent than ours. Our little microwave minds, he’s doing it the old-fashioned way.

This is closely related, point number three. Almost didn’t separate them, but I had to separate them because of the great test that Abraham went through in chapter 22. Back to Genesis 22. You still with me? A few of you, 10%. Genesis 22.

The wait for God’s deliverance of the promise, that was certainly a test. But God is not content with that. He wants to bring people to points of crisis to get them to have their faith, as the New Testament says, tried, like with fire, refined by fire, so that it can come out sterling. So just the wait, and God is going to make you wait. That’s why all the whole how long, O Lord, wait on the Lord, all of that is such a theme of the Bible. But he’s going to bring you to the point of crisis. And that’s the harder part.

It’s this kind of thing. The completely, seemingly, rationally, antithetical moments and crises of life. And here’s an example, and I’m sure you have examples in your own life. I got my list. Look at verse 1. Just read the story and try and get into this historical context. Sometime later, which is what certainly Abraham is used to. A lot of waiting. Genesis 21, Isaac is born. He’s probably a teenager at this point.

Look at these words. God tested Abraham. Which, by the way, it’s not because God is ignorant or he’s not omniscient or he doesn’t know Abraham’s heart. This is all for Abraham and those who are looking at Abraham’s life. He says to him, Abraham. Abraham says, yeah, what? Here I am. God says hey take your son your only son Isaac yeah that one the one that you love what what are you doing I mean this is an amazing way to set this up take your son that’s the only one he’s got it’s the one he waited for for 25 years your only son yeah we know Isaac got that one the one you love couldn’t love him anymore and that was part of the problem perhaps part of the test and go to the region of Moriah and sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.

Now, I don’t know how this was given. I don’t know if it was fax, email, cell phone, text message, you know, audible voice, angel, whatever, but I’m checking it three or four times. How about you? Do what? That son that you waited for for 25 years and I finally came through with, you’re over 100 now, you got your cane, you’re changing diapers, you’ve done all that. Now he’s a teenager, you’re watching your boy grow up, you couldn’t be prouder, you couldn’t love him more. Oh, by the way, I’d like you to take that son, the son of promise, the one I said through whom I blessed the world, kill him. Amazing. What?

Now again, maybe it’s too soon to make the connection, but have there not been times in your Christian life where God has led you down a path that seemed completely antithetical to the path you thought you should go down if God was going to have you follow his plan for your life? I can tell you stories. It’s amazing. And God says, yeah, I know it looks like this is the way to go, but I’m going to tell you to go that way. And I know it looks like you’re going to go in the completely opposite direction of what I told you to do, but I want you to go there. Trust me. See, that’s the whole point. Trust me.

Here’s what makes Abraham a hero. Verse 3. Early the next morning Abraham got up, he saddled his donkey, he took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. And when he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place that God had told him about. That’s why he is the father of faith. Because when his faith was tested, he said, okay.

Did it take faith to leave Ur of the Chaldees, Haran, and southern Iraq? It took a lot of faith to do that. Did it take faith to wait on God and continue to trust him when you were getting older every year and you still thought you were going to have a baby? Yeah, that took faith. But this took more faith than anything else. It was the leap into an area that seemed completely illogical but he said, okay, I’ll go.

Which by the way was not, there was rational things going on in his mind. I hate to break away but break away. Keep your finger here, we’re coming back to this. Go to Hebrews chapter 11. Man, I shouldn’t do this but let’s do it. Hebrews chapter 11 because we’re going to preach this text one day when you’re 75. We’re going to preach this text. No, it was before that.

Look at what was going on in his mind. His faith drove him through this with spectacular thoughts of, God, it’s going to do something amazing here. Look at what the text says, verse 17. Hebrews 11, 17. Heroes of faith, right? By faith, Abraham. This comes in a laundry list of the great heroes of faith. When God tested him, he offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son. Didn’t make any sense. Even though God had said it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. Not Ishmael, but Isaac.

Now, here’s the logic. Abraham’s doing something in his mind. Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead. And figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from the dead. I’m not showing you. I’m not revealing anything. You know how the story goes. But the point is, isn’t that amazing? He’s thinking, if I trust God and do this, who knows? Maybe it’s going to be some spectacular story of Isaac rising from the dead. And guess how many people Abraham had seen rise from the dead? I’m thinking zero, right? Same number as you. That seemed highly unlikely. That took an amazing amount of faith.

You still got your finger in Genesis 22? Back to this dramatic story. That was a commercial. Picture the music wafting back into the images of Genesis 22.

On the third day, verse 4, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He says to his servants, stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then come back to you. Was he wimping out? No. Insert Hebrews 11. He thought, I’m going to do it, but maybe God’s going to raise him from the dead. I don’t know. God promised, and if God promised, I know he’s going to do it. Even if he’s going to lead me down a path that seems antithetical to the promise.

Verse 6, Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering, and he placed it on his son Isaac. And he said to his father, Abraham, father. Yes, my son, Abraham replied. The fire, the wood, got all that, Isaac said, but missing the sacrifice, where’s the lamb? Abraham answered, God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.

Can you imagine saying that? You know what’s coming. You don’t know what’s coming after that, but you know what’s coming. And the two of them went on together. When he reached the place that God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there. He arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac. Can you imagine that? Laid him on the altar on top of the wood. He reached out his hand. He took the knife to slay his son.

I’m following you. I think you’re going to bless me. You promised you’d bless me. I trust you’re going to bless me. You promised the nation to come through this kid. Okay, I’ll do whatever you say.

God is going to bring you to a place of letting go of something that you thought was part of his plan to bless your life and utilize you for the kingdom and he’s going to tear it out of your hand. He’s done it to me multiple times. I go back to one that was so poignant and obvious. The beginning of my Christian life I was dating Carlin. We’d been dating all through high school or half of it at least, dating in college. I thought for sure God is blessing me with a wife. I mean I saw all the passages. I’d studied all the text. Here’s a wonderful person. This is God’s choice for me. This is a wonderful gift.

We hit a crisis. Going through a mission study, thinking about God’s calling. We talked about where we were headed. I said, I think God’s calling me to the mission field. I think I’m going to end up in a hut with big insects and cockroaches and no dishwashers. And are you ready? And suburban girl who grew up in the same city I did said, I don’t think God’s calling me to that. And I said, I didn’t think so either. But I think that’s where he’s taken me.

Now, I’m thinking to myself, God, we invested in this relationship for years. This is the gal. I think this is it. God, I didn’t have any text messages from God, but this, I think, is the gal. And right now, I remember at the bottom lounge of that dorm, I said, this is it. Then we’re done. I guess that’s all. It was nice knowing you. And I took the knife to kill the relationship because I was trusting God that God would work something out. And my heart was set on this.

I felt the confirmation of God’s Spirit. I had all the confirmation of the pastors in my life. I had everybody saying, this is the girl for you. And God said, okay, are you ready to give it up? Have you been there before? Now, sometimes God wants to change the plan and maybe you misunderstood him on the way or whatever, but maybe like Isaac and Abraham or me and my girlfriend, God’s saying, I just want to see, are you trusting me?

And it didn’t take too long until God turned some hearts around and there we were sitting there going, okay. She says, great. I’m ready for the cockroaches in the hut in Africa. And I said, well, I think Orange County is more like where God’s taking me. I didn’t know that then. We were both surprised at God’s plan for our lives.

But sometimes God just wants to bring you to that place of crisis. Have you been there? God will keep you there. You’ll hit those times. And just remember this text, 1 Peter 1. We don’t have time to look at it. The world’s longest sermon, I know. But 1 Peter 1, just jot it down and study it. Start in verse 3 and read until the topic is over. Verse 9 and 10 is about where it ends. God is doing this to test your faith. And when your faith is tested, it will come out resilient. It will come out stronger. It won’t make a lot of sense at first. But in the end, it will be something that brings glory to God and confirms the path that you’re on and ultimately brings you to the place of saying God is good. God keeps his promises. God is faithful.

Did I give you a verbiage to point through yet? No. Number three, power through God’s tests of your faith. Power through him. Put your head down and trust him and go wherever that trust and godly biblical counsel takes you, no matter what it costs. And that’s a tough place to live, but it’s the right place to live. Power through God’s tests of your faith.

We don’t have time for this either. But the bottom of chapter 22 in Genesis, echoing the sentiment of verse 15 in Hebrews chapter 6, Abraham received what was promised. What did he receive? Well, he received Isaac back as though from the dead. Oh, he didn’t die on that altar, but he thought he was going to die, but he got him back. And God said, no, I’ll give that back to you. I just want to see if you really trusted me.

That may sound cruel, but it’s not because God lacked the knowledge. It was because Abraham needed the resilient faith even to face the things that he and his son would face in the future. Was this the promise? It’s one kid. He didn’t even live to see his grandkids. Esau and Jacob. Didn’t even live to see that. Was it a nation? No, but it was a foretaste. It was a down payment. It was what I like to call it. It was the divine appetizer before the meal.

The real meal would come from heaven’s perspective as Abraham looked down and watched the nation develop, watched Joshua occupy the land, watched Moses give the law, watched Elijah and Elisha establish the revelation of the middle monarchy and the early monarchy and received the revelation through the prophets. It came through the rebuilding of the temple. It came through the coming of John the Baptist. It came through the birth of Christ through a virgin named Mary in a little dusty place called Bethlehem. And Abraham watched.

As a matter of fact, Jesus put it this way. Abraham, he longed to see my day. He rejoiced to see my day. And he did. He saw the king be born, and even yet what God had promised, that all the nations of the world would be blessed through him, he hadn’t even quite seen that yet. The day when we all gather from every tongue, tribe, and nation, and we stand in the presence of the great king, Jesus Christ, the God-man, and we worship him that day. And Abraham says, wow, you fulfill Genesis chapter 12. It’s coming. It’s going to happen.

But what he got was his son, his teenager back. And you can guarantee that these words in verses 11 through 18 ultimately left him with a sense of worship and gratitude that God had provided. He provided the lamb, the ram caught in the thickets. You know the story. It was a time to celebrate. The burnt offering had been sacrificed. They had worshiped and they had returned.

Number four on your outline, let’s quickly jot this down. We need to celebrate every foretaste of God’s ultimate fulfillment. Every foretaste of it. Every foretaste of God’s ultimate fulfillment. None of us have seen the fulfillment of his promise. None of us. You’ve not even seen Jesus face to face yet. What are you talking about? You’re not… I mean, I’m in his kingdom. Well yeah, you’re in his kingdom, but where’s Christ? Seated at the right hand of the Father. He’s waiting for all his enemies. He’s to be made a footstool for his feet. We haven’t even seen him. We don’t even know the color of his eyes.

But we’ll see him one day face to face. We’ll bow down before him. We’ll be a part of his kingdom. So what about the promises? Did Abraham get his nation? He did, but he had to see it from heaven’s perspective. But you can guarantee that he celebrated the fact that he had a son named Isaac. And you know what? For all the many victories that we experience, just consider them divine appetizers. The main course is coming. But if we don’t stop to celebrate every installment of God’s fulfillment to the promises, then we’re missing out.

God wants to fuel our faith, not just by the test, but by the celebrations that follow. That’s why this building, I forced you to eat chocolate cake. I’m thinking to myself, this building is not the new Jerusalem, okay? I’ve toured it. I know it’s not. I realize that we’re a long way from heaven. But you know what? It’s a mini victory. It’s a victory on the side of God doing for his people what he said he would do, blessing them. And so I want to celebrate it.

Ultimately, the celebration of the Lord’s Supper is just that. It is a reminder, as Paul said, of the coming of Christ’s kingdom. As a matter of fact, he said, every time you take this in one sense, you’re proclaiming Christ until he comes.

We’re going to take this real quick as the next service congregation is coming in to sit next to you. We’ll keep them locked out for a little while. But we’re going to pass a piece of bread and a little plastic cup with grape juice in it. That doesn’t sound like the upper room, and I know we’re a long way from it. But you’re going to have to use your imagination here. Picture us together in someone’s bonus room. And there’s a loaf of bread. And there’s one cup that we all share. We pass it around and we break pieces off the bread. And we listen again to the words of Christ saying, this is representative. It is a picture, an example. It is a reminder. It is a proclamation of the Lord’s death and all that he’s done for us until he comes.

Pray with me for a second as we prepare our hearts for this.

God, we’re about to take a piece of bread and a sip of grape juice as symbolic reminders of what you’ve done for us. And God, much like Abraham, sacrificing that ram on Mount Moriah, it was only a picture of the ultimate provision that would come through Isaac’s lineage. And yet it was a time of celebration. It was a time of thanksgiving. It was a time to say, Yahweh Rocha, he has provided.

And God, we want to say here you’ve provided for us too. You’ve provided for us by giving us your son to take away our sin, but the culmination, the fulfillment of the kingdom, it hasn’t happened yet. We’re looking forward to it. And God, it’s poetic that this morning we study Abraham, who brought his son Isaac as a willing, sacrificial participant on a Mount Moriah that would one day become the site for Solomon’s temple, where sacrifices year after year would be made, looking forward to the ultimate sacrifice that took place just outside the city walls of Jerusalem, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

God, for those that are Christians here today, I pray we can celebrate this with a real sense of sobriety, that you have for us in the future prepared something fantastic. And in the meantime, it’s our calling to trust you and to still believe you’re good even when you make us wait, to still believe you’re good when our heart cries out with the psalmist, how long, oh Lord, how long for us to still believe you’re a God who is faithful to his promises even when we hit the crisis of faith.

God, help us fortify our faith, bolster our confidence in you, even as we remember the payment that has been made that should always remind us that you’ve proven to us your covenant love. God, we love you very much, and I pray this would be a time when every Christian, as Paul had exhorted the Corinthians. It will be a time for introspection and reflection.

God, please free the non-Christians in their hearts that don’t know where they stand with you from any obligation or pressure to take this. I pray they wouldn’t. I pray they’d let the cup and the bread pass by. It’s just a time for those who are sure about their relationship with you, and I pray that would be the way this works out this afternoon.

God, thanks for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Prepare our hearts now as these elements are passed. In Jesus’ name, amen.