Ep 459 | Hebrews 11 (Part 2) - Wade Branch

Good morning, everyone. It is great to be here together

with you. I'm glad to see you all who are

here. I know we have several visitors

today and I'm happy that we're able to worship with you

together. We do not love know how long we

have on Earth to be here and to give our lives to God.

But we're here today and is honored to be able to spend it

with you, and to direct our study today.

There's nothing, I'd rather be doing and then studying God's

word. With you today, we have Hebrews

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

chapter 11, we're going to do part, To and that's just where I

stopped last time around verse 16 or 17 of Hebrews chapter 11,

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

and we're going to pick up right there and move along.

I know we have a lot of a lot of visitors today and so this may

be a random pick up for you. You don't know where in the

world we are and all this. So a quick pick up the book of

Hebrews is written to Jewish Christians who are dealing with

the switch, from the transition, from the old, lots of the New

Covenant, Covenant. So, when Jesus came, he

fulfilled, the Old Testament, which is kind of that back,

two-thirds of your Bible. That's the Old Testament.

And the New Testament is, where Jesus came.

He died. He set up his church.

And now that's the Christian age.

We are Christians. The Old Law was Jews today.

We are Christians, because Jesus fulfilled, all the prophecies

that would happen in the Old Law and this book of the written to

the Hebrew Christians is called Hebrews.

Because that's who it's written to.

It's written to people. Who are trying to deal with this

transition of going into Christianity and really facing

challenges because they don't the writer does not want.

These new Christians to go back to Judaism.

And so what he has going through different arguments in this book

to a test. Why they should follow Jesus.

Because number one, he's even greater than Angels.

Jesus is deity. He is not some lower life form,

he is greater than Angels who did All these amazing things in

the Old Testament, he's greater than the prophets and the Old

Law. They revered their profits

because they gave them God's word.

They were that hand and sharing the truth of God's of the, the

Old Testament. They had all these things

delivered through them, but even Jesus is greater than their

profits, he's greater than everything that came before them

and more specifically where we're getting out in Hebrews 11

and he's trying to help connect them.

To these Heroes of Faith to show them that it took faith.

I love the Denny LED that song right before the study this

whole chapter is about by Faith by faith, all these things

happen, and the writers trying to show us how Faith was working

in these people in the Old Testament and faith has to be

working in us today as Christians, if we are going to

please God, we learned that without faith, it is impossible

to please him. We have to have faith in God.

That transcends? What?

We can see with our own eyes to please Our God.

So, we talked about a couple examples and Hebrews chapter 11

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

so far. We talked about Abel, Enoch,

Noah, Sarah, and we're going to pick up with Abraham and verse

17. So some people left on our list

to talk about, we're going to talk be talking about a

deceitful liar. We're going to be talking about

a murder and a prostitute who are all commended for having

faith. We might not get to all of them

today. But one of the things I wanted

to pull out as we go through this, study of faith, is how

these people weren't perfect. These people were commended for

having faith, but they had some past, they had some events going

around in their life that were not necessarily the best.

And, and many times were really bad.

So keep that in mind as we pick up this study, will be talking

about some of those mistakes with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Verse 17 says by faith, Abraham, when he was tested offered up

Isaac and he who had received the promises offered up, his

only begotten son of whom it was said and Isaac, your seed Shall

be Called concluding that God was able to raise him up even

from the dead from, which he also received him in a

figurative sense. Okay.

So we're going to go back and explain a little bit more eye of

Abraham in You're not familiar with who this guy is.

But here's a couple things that tells us in the verse in

Hebrews. It says, he this man was tested

by God. So he went through some kind of

trial by God, in which he was tested, and you're going to

learn to use tested to prove whether his faith was

illegitimate. He offered up, Isaac who was his

only begotten son, his only son, Isaac Abraham gave up, and he

who had received the promises, offered him up of whom, it was

said in Isaac, your seed shall be called.

So this is a quote to the Old Testament where this man Abraham

was told by God, you are going to have a lineage of people that

come after you, through this child, Isaac?

Okay. Well, this is his only son and

it says that he was going to offer him up and sacrifice him

to God. Yes, it was by faith.

That did that that he did that verse 19.

He concluded Abraham was reasoning that God was able to

raise him up, even from the dead.

This Abraham was going to sacrifice his son.

And he had him from an old age. So Abraham was never supposed to

have this child. As we're going to see in a

minute. It was not by natural way, that

he had Isaac his son. He received him in a figurative

sense from the dead. And he was assuming, you know,

what, God gave him to me when I was 100 Year somewhere around,

100 years old, he can raise him up from the dead, if he wants to

and it was all by faith that faith that he did this.

Okay, so that's what we're given in Hebrews chapter 11, but I

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

want to go back just to kind of fill in this picture a little

bit more. So, we And Abraham who he is.

So in Genesis chapter 11, this is pretty close to the creation

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

of the world. Relatively, the world is not

that old at this point, and we read about this man named

Abraham. And God, basically calls him out

in chapter 11. We learn that he leaves this

town or the city of are right here.

So, the war in the Middle East, this is the Mediterranean Sea.

This is called the Fertile Crescent.

This is where a lot of the early civilization was developed in

the world. It was a real fur.

It'll area. Good growing good water supply

and it was surrounded by a lot of desert.

So people really settled in here.

So he starts out in chapter 11 right here or of chaldea and he

travels up to her on in chapter 12, verse 1, God calls him, out

of her on. So he gets his call from God.

He says you need to leave your family.

You need to leave, where you came from, you need to leave and

go out to this Promised Land. I'm going to give to you and I'm

going to give Descendants and I'm going to bless you and

you're going to be special and he calls him out.

There, we study about that last time we read it by faith.

Abraham went out, not knowing where he was going, he was

called out right there in chapter 12 of Genesis.

So once you leave is there, he gets in 12:5 to the promised

land. So it's in this region right

here. That is the promised land in

chapter 12. That's where he arrives from.

There he goes down to Egypt. So there's a famine in the land,

so he goes, Down to Egypt to get food and get some things to

provide for his family. And then in Chapter 13, he ends

up going back into the Promised Land.

I think when he was called out, I believe it said he was 75

years old. So this is an old guy getting

around. Getting God's promises.

Getting God's call to go. He is no spring chicken and I

can't imagine that the toil and the burden of doing all these

things to fulfill God's plan in chapter 14.

It's in here that he gets the blessing from Melchizedek.

We talked about Melchizedek and Hebrew, so there's a little kind

of pin in it. From what we said earlier, he

gets that blessing. And in that blessing,

Melchizedek. Basically he pronounces the the

special blessing that, you know, God will be with you and all

these things and in chapter 15 is we're going to read a couple

of verses 22 to zoom in on, in Genesis chapter 15 verse 1 after

Genesis 15:1

Melchizedek blessed it, blesses him, it says, after these

things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.

So his name is Abram. God changes his name later to

Abraham, but for now it's Abram. The Lord came to Abram in a

vision saying, do not be afraid a room.

I am your Shield, your exceedingly, great reward.

So this is a super important point that he calls that he,

that he addresses Abraham with, I'm your protector and I am your

reward. Okay.

We're going to come back to that but Abram said, Lord God, what

will you give me seeing? I go childless and the air of my

house as Eliezer of Damascus. This guy up and Damascus is.

We're down here. This guy have a Damascus is

going to be the are, what are you going to give me?

I'm an old man. Who's going to be the one who is

my descendants. You I was going to have this

great family and I was gonna have all this happen after me.

Where is it? It who my are the next person to

get? It's going to be this guy up in

Damascus. Then Abram said, look, you have

given me no Offspring. Indeed one born in my house is

my indeed. One born in my house is my are

so he's complaining to God right after God said, I'm your

exceedingly, great reward. So in his faith we're going to

see a Journey of Faith and the The first thing that happens

when God is assuring him that he is Abraham's reward.

He's trying to figure out the pieces, he's trying to get it

all straight. How is it going to happen, Okay?

Genesis 15 verse 4 and behold the word of the Lord came to him

Genesis 15:4

saying, this one shall not be your Heir.

It's not going to be Eliezer but one he'll come from your own

body shall be your Heir. So it's not going to be somebody

else's kid. It's going to be yours who's

going to be your heir. verse 5, then he brought him outside and

said, look now toward heaven And count the Stars.

If you're able to number them. Go outside and try to count all

those stars out there. He said, now the city disrupts,

our view of a lot of the stars and he was out in the

wilderness, where there would have been no lights, he could

have seen countless Stars, if you go up into the mountains

it's unbelievable. How many you can see, sometimes

they look like clouds of white because you there's so many of

them. He said, if you can count on go

out there Abraham try to count them.

And he says and he said them. So shall your descendants be

somewhere around 80 year old man is being told by God who this

man has no kids, you are going to have descendants that look

like the stars in number. And he, so Abraham's response

and he believed in the Lord and He accounted it to him for

righteousness. So God, I counted to Abraham

righteousness, because he believed in the Lord, in this

promise, that I'm going to take care of you, I'm going to give

you this great nation behind you.

But what goes on the happen. He gives him this promise, but

then it doesn't happen, right away.

And So, eventually Abraham's wife is like, I can't give you

any kids. Take my servant Hagar and have a

child with her. So your descendants can happen

because obviously, something's not working here.

So, Abraham goes and okay. And he has, he has a baby with

his servant, with his lights, with his wife's servant.

Out of this comes Ishmael. Now this is not the way God

intended it to happen. Ishmael is not the child of

Faith Ishmael is going to be the child that comes out of Isaac

and sitar Abraham and Sarah going.

We got to figure this out because we're not having any

kids and so we're going to make our own way of doing this.

And Ishmael is the firstborn son of Abraham.

Now, eventually when, when Ishmael gets older, they send

Ishmael and Hagar away because it becomes a problem in their

house because eventually, Isaac, or Abraham does have a kid.

God says, okay, now it's time, you're going to have a child.

That's what we talked about last time.

Sarah laugh, like, you gotta be kidding me.

I'm gonna have a baby. This old God made it happen.

God made from a reproductively dead, man.

And woman, he gave them a child. And his name was Isaac.

And it was Sarah's faith, that has committed for being able to

have this baby. Okay, so there is now two on the

scene, there's Ishmael the first born who was the result of them

being like, we got to figure this out.

We gotta, we gotta make sure you have a descendant and an

afterword. God says, no.

Now I'm going to give you a baby to you old to people.

You're going to have this child and in their faith.

They had that child. That was the child of faith and

that's a big thing. In the Bible, the child of

Faith, the child of Promise who come through.

Okay. So now we've got these two and

then becomes a conflict. There's an issue between Hagar,

and and Sarah, because ishmael's the older son, and the Old

Testament, that was a big deal. You are the older son, you got

bigger Birthright, you've got more inheritance.

It was all part of the superiority.

And So eventually Sarah's like you got to, you got to get her

out of here. So Abraham goes along with it

and, and Sarah or Hagar and Ishmael are sent out into the

wilderness. They're sent out into the

Wilderness and they go near death.

At one point Hagar goes away from her son and says I can't

watch my son die they were so close to death that the Lord had

to miraculously provide water. The god of heard Hagar and her

suffering, even though it wasn't the The Chosen lineage to go

through Hagar and to go through. Ishmael God, heard them and he

provided for them and he cared for them.

Our God is so good. And so, Before.

Little pause right here. Did you know that?

This is where Islam started? Then in the Old Testament, we

read about these two people. Isaac is the child of promise

and all the Jews come through, Isaac, that's the promise

lineage. And so they come through Isaac,

Christianity and zip coming through Isaac's lineage, but

the, but the Muslims say, no, Ishmael was the first born son.

He should have been given the air and so he is the one that

all their descendants follow through.

And that's where Islam all started.

God said that this Always going to be a warring people and that

he was going to be a violent man.

And, you know, That was no small mistake, Abraham, and Sarah, did

they were supposed to have faith in God and have faith that he

would provide in his time. But they took matters into their

own hands and not ended up being a big mistake today.

There is a lot of people, I'm sure there's a lot of good

people. I know of Muslims that are very

very good people. That's not the claim on making

that they're not. But because of Abraham's mistake

it led to a whole lineage of people who would be led away

from God and serving the true God and his plan through faith.

That's the difference between Isaac and Ishmael one is the

child of faith. And whole point of our religion

is to have faith in a God who will provide and Ishmael was the

product of going away from God without faith.

Okay. So as we consider Abraham, this

is the guy who in verse 17, who made all these mistakes, this is

the guy who it says by faith Abraham.

So let's consider his perspective.

He had a long life and he had trouble having kids.

He had a he lived a rigorous life, he went out, he was called

out, you follow God, he had made mistakes, And then eventually,

like I said, he had that Miracle happen where he was able to have

a son through his old wife. So in chapter 22, this is where

we build up to how great of Faith.

He had to have to do this. The verse that we read in

Genesis chapter 22 now it came to pass after these things.

Genesis 22 · chapter mention

So after God had given him this child Isaac.

He said to him Abraham and he said, here I am then he said,

take now your son, your only son, Isaac whom you love and go

to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on

one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.

So we're going back to when Isaac was a lad.

The word lad can be anywhere from a kind of a younger boy all

the way up to somewhere in his 30s.

And many commentators believe he might have he was probably in

his 30s, it tells us Clues. Like when he went up to this

mountain, Isaac are Abraham. Put the wood that he was going

to burn. His son all on on the back of

Isaac. Isaac was strong enough to carry

enough wood, to make a burnt sacrifice of himself.

What in the world this this guy's about to sacrifice his son

and Berman burn him altar. Well, what happens is God ends

up when Isaac has the altar prepared or in Abraham as the

ultra prepared? His son, Isaac is laid on that

altar. He's got the wood, he's got

everything ready. He lifts up his knife to do it

and Hebrews 11 doesn't say he was waiting around for God to

stop him. No, Hebrews 11 says he was gonna

do it because he believed that God, if he promised him that he

was going to rate that he was going to have lineage through

Isaac. He promised him that so he

believed that, even if he killed him and sacrifice him, God was

going to raise him up from the dead.

So Abraham had enough Faith to sacrifice his own son and give

up his hope to God. But what happens we do know is

when he was about to sacrifice him, God says stop.

Don't do it for now. I know that you would give up

your only son for me. Now, side note, we should be

hearing, we should seeing pictures of Jesus and what God

did for us as he laid his son down to be sacrificed for our

sins on the altar, of all of our mistakes.

But there was no one to stop God's hand.

There was no one to say, no, I'm going to cover for you.

God, sacrificed his son on the cross, his only son who is

somewhere around 30 years old. And his son died willingly.

So we could be saved. There's so many pictures here

that are drawn from the Old Testament so we can see the

gravity of God's love. Above All Else.

But even, but regardless of the picture we have a, we have God's

stopping Abraham's hand from sacrificing Isaac.

And God says, now there's a, there's an animal to sacrifice

over here. Go ahead and sacrifice it

instead and so Isaac does not end up being sacrificed, okay?

And in this process, we see a journey of faith for Abraham and

starts out that he had enough Faith to go out.

He's commended by his faith, to leave his father's house to go

and get the promised land when he didn't know where he was

going, and maybe for you today. Maybe you feel like you need to

make changes that are going to disrupt what you are comfortable

with what you are used to, because it will take, that's

what faith requires of you. Do you have the faith to step

out of your comfort zone and follow God in the way he asks?

So Abraham did that and in chapter 15 God affirms I

highlight that verse it. God said I am your reward but

you remember Abraham kind of What past that I said, but what

are you going to give me? His Hope was in Isaac, his

future was in Isaac. His descendants were in Isaac.

That's why it is such a big deal in chapter 22.

When he lays Isaac down. That was his hope.

That was everything to him. And the beauty of his faith when

he didn't did that is he was surrendering everything to God

and God was his reward. God was Abraham's reward when he

trusted God enough to give him everything that's when God,

truly was his reward and his inheritance.

Now, the beauty is our God is so good that even when we sacrifice

everything when we surrender everything and said, God, I

don't know what all you're going to require me, but I'm going to

give it all to you. Whatever you ask, whenever we do

that, we glorify God. And we put him first in our

lives, and when we do that, the beauty is God provides Better.

It's like when a parent has something for their child that

they want them to hand over. Maybe it's something that

shouldn't be eating. Maybe it's a piece of glass that

they don't want them to throw in their mouth and they said, him

me that I've got something else for you.

Just trust me give it to me when they really they have a piece of

candy to give back. I don't know if that that

analogy lands with you, but the idea is God will always ask us

to do something. He will ask great measures of

faith. Some times where we have to

submit and just trust him but we can be assured.

God's way will always be better and even if we Handover

something we think is what we want.

God will provide better and God ends up.

Providing a sacrifice in place of Isaac.

And a lineage that is innumerable as the Sand by the

seashore, in the stars, in the sky comes after through this

process. Our God will always provide

better. And if you're wondering today,

you know what? I'm starting to see that.

God is calling me up. God is asking things of me and

some people might lead you to believe that.

That's an easy thing. That's a simple thing, just

believe, God. But that's not the god that of

the Bible. The god of the Bible says, I

want everything you have. If I'm not first in your life,

I'm nothing. I'm not really God until you

trust me with everything and until you're willing to

surrender. To me belief, the Bible says,

even the demons believe in God demons, understand God, but

they're opposed to him or they don't follow him.

So even if the demons believe, that doesn't mean there, there

are Servants of him. But when we fully surrender to

God, That is when our faith becomes real, that is where God

becomes the first, our life. And for you today, it will be

worth it. You may give things up But I

believe with all my heart, you will get back better really in

this life. And the next, I believe, God

will replace the challenges with nobody challenges, but victory's

challenges with no hope to challenges with a victory so you

can have faith. You can surrender to a God who

will bless you beyond what you could ever imagine giving

yourself if you were to keep and hold back for him.

So how did he do this? Well, one of the few things we

know is that God told him it was going to happen.

So he must have just been grounded in the promises of God.

He was grounded to the point that, you know, maybe he could

have feared, he could have feared thinking I'm gonna have

to sacrifice my son because of sins that I committed and we

learned in the Old Testament. This was a problem and the Old

Law people saw as like, if you messed up, God, punished you.

And if you did good, God bless you.

So he could have seen this as God's way of punishing him by

sacrificing his son, but he didn't.

He had Faith so strong and God's promises.

That he knew God was going to do what he said.

Do you believe in God's promises?

He believed in the Lord and it was accounted to him for

righteousness. Okay, so that was Abraham.

We don't have a ton more time so we're going to step into Isaac

is the next verse and chapter and verse 20 of chapter 11

Hebrews. So Isaac is his son by faith.

Isaac blessed. Jacob, and Esau concerning

things to come. So Isaac has two sons, Jacob,

and Esau in the Old Testament, they are twins.

They come out of the womb together, but Esau is the

firstborn on Esau's way out. He grabs on Jacob grabs onto the

foot of his brother to where they both come out basically

together. But Jacob is the heel snatcher.

And that is now an idiom and Judaism to describe someone

who's deceitful, someone who trip someone else up.

Jacob his whole life turns out to be this guy, who's always

deceitful to get ahead. He makes these moves.

These sly pieces of trickery to get his way to get his

Birthright and so In there, when they are going to get their

blessing these are the two guys. It's coming to Jacob.

And Esau now, we learn that. We learned that Jacob is a guy

who's a little more delicate. He's a little more of a mama's

boy, but Esau is a man's man. He's hairy, he comes out red,

he's a hunter, he likes all those things.

And so his father, Isaac, like, seesaw better.

It's just it's carnal and might not be like a very admirable

thing for him to have a preference.

But the Bible tells us, I think like you saw better but his mom

likes Jacob better. Okay, so we're just Setting the

scene here, we are told here that the faith before I get into

some of the Weeds on about these guys, I want to be clear that we

are told that by faith. He blesses them concerning

things to come. So when Isaac is about to die,

he pronounces a blessing on his children.

Okay? And so we know that he has faith

in God's trustworthiness and a heart that would look to the

future of his descendants in God's sight.

So that's kind of the first layer of this we know Isaac had

Faith to bless his children. In God's sight cave.

Let's give a little more into the story with Jacob and Esau

because It's an interesting time to say that Isaac had Faith

because of all the issues surrounding this family, they

had a lot of issues. So we talked about how he was

the one who snatched the heel, the difference in the two

children, and there's an event, where they're both old enough to

be taken care of themselves. Where Jacob is making some stew.

His brother comes in from the field.

He didn't get her anything on his hunt.

And so, he basically says, Esau says, hey man, give me some of

that stew. And Jacob says, we'll give me

your Birthright. Give me your inheritance.

And he says, like if I'm gonna die from Hunger, who cares about

my inheritance and so he gives him this.

You in exchange for his Birthright.

We learned later that that was just a foolish Mistake by Esau.

He was always concerned about what do you got now.

Now now and that learn it led him to trade in his inheritance.

Okay. This is a fast version of a lot

of events in the Old Testament so when it comes time after the

birthright to get the blessing, what happens is his mom says I

want you to get the blessing Jacob, instead of your older

brother, the older brother is Posed to get this special

blessing but I want you to get it instead and he was like, how

is this going to work? When my father?

My father has bad eyesight. He's getting old and so he's

gonna but he'll still be able to feel me.

You can tell that I'm a maybe Jacob was a scrawny man.

He wasn't quite so hairy as his brother and manly and so she

said he said how am I going to make this work?

How can I convince him to give me the blessing?

And so his mom says we're going to do this when it killed goat.

We're gonna put his fur around your arms.

So that your father thinks it's your brother.

He must have been hairy. Dude.

To think that was that was his brother, so that's what happens.

He goes gets the goat, kills it. They provide a meal out of that

goat and she wraps him up in his fur.

And so he comes in with this costume of fur, to speak to his

father. His father is in bed.

He is near death, he's old, and he's dead.

Is not old enough to see that, it's not his, the Sonny thinks

it is. And so, he gives him the meal of

the goat that he cooked and he says, come here, let me feel

your skin. He's like, sure enough, it's as

hairy as Esau and zillions up blessing.

Jacob. So He blesses Jacob, then Jacob

leaves with this blessing. He's all happy.

Now he got this blessing. Now I'm going to be the one who

has Authority in the family, Esau comes in, and he's like,

father, I'm ready to get my blessing.

See. He's like, what are you talking

about? I just gave you your blessing,

and eventually Esau realizes and Jo and Isaac.

Realizes, he blessed the wrong guy.

Esau, was supposed to get the first blessing, the older

sibling but Jacob was the tricks your though, he was he was the

heel snatcher from the beginning and he pulled ahead and he took

the blessing from him. Okay, so in all of this, we're

told that Isaac had faith and blessed his children to come.

It's a weird time to me to pronounce a blessing.

But there's a couple things in here that we already said, he

had Faith to bless his descendants and once he realizes

God, either wanted to bless him or God.

However, it happened. Jacob got the blessing and and

Isaac is trembling. And he says, you know, that's

going to be it. If it's God's will that's going

to be what happens. And I cannot change that, but I

have faith and God's promises. So he had faith in blessing his

children. But what's a little bit?

Not clear. As we don't know, all the

details. Now one commentator I was

reading after I will explain to you what he thinks on this and

you can decide for yourself. I think I'm willing to go into

it because I think the application regardless is true

that we're going to draw. We know that he wanted, Isaac

wanted to give the blessing to Esau.

And it was contrary to, you might call it the promise or the

prophecy, or both that the older Shall Serve the younger.

There was a prophecy made that the older sibling is going to

serve the younger one. So, Jason Jacob was all along.

Got to be the one who got this. So, This commentator is reading

after said that was God's promise, and Isaac should have

taken heed to that, or paid attention to that and not try to

give the blessing to Esau instead.

We don't know for sure if he was contrary to God in this, but we

do know that he liked, you saw better and that's what he was

wanting to do for his own reasons.

And we learned that afterward, he comes, he's trembling when he

realizes what happened. Now, some people think that he

was trembling, because he realized he was in opposition to

God's will. I don't know if that's the case

but I'm going to draw some application.

Sometimes our faith is in its greatest moment, even kind of

surrounded by a lot of mistakes. Sometimes in war against God,

when we have a change of heart and turn around and go the other

way, we have our one of our greatest most admirable moments

of Faith so that you might be in a bad situation, you might have

a pattern of Disobedience, but that moment where you take where

you are going and you shift direction that takes That takes

faith and it takes. It takes faith in submission to

God's word. So even though you might not be

in a spot that you're proud of right now or even at times in

your life where you weren't proud of where you're at.

Any time, you submit to God and you turn from your way to his

way that is Faith, and that is commendable by God.

Now, I don't know if that's the point of why Isaac was commended

here was for his turning to God and Faith to say, you know what,

this is God's will. It's going to happen, I don't

know, but the point stands. Maybe you're a place where you

don't feel like you're living out God's will.

You can show Faith to b day that is commendable to God by turning

your life, to live for him. The way he wants you to live.

The last one we'll talk about and we'll close by faith.

Jacob. So it's tracing down the lineage

Now by faith Jacob, when he was dying.

So he's kind of in the same situation as father was in when

he was dying. Blessed each of the sons of

Joseph and worshipped leaning on the top of his staff.

So he had very little strength. He was old enough to where he

was probably bedridden. And he leaned on the top of his

staff to worship God. Now, I see two main things, I

see number one, someone who's so old, and an example of faith,

and we have people in this building who were old and you

were a week and physically, but they will still continue to

worship and praise God. And I get that picture.

Sometimes in my head, when I see some of our older folks here

worshipping or doing what they can Services, I see Isaac, Jacob

leaning on the top of his staff. But his admirable as this is.

I think the second point is to remember maybe why he's leaning

so heavily on his staff. We lead about, we read about all

these deceit that Jacob had the difficult life he had and how he

was often in opposition. And we learn about a situation

in Genesis 32, where he wrestled with God or a wrestled with the

man that says there, whatever. That necessarily means I don't

have it all figured out but we know that he wrestled with

either an angel or something or something with God.

And in that fight, that being touched his hip and knocked it

out of socket. Kind of a strange situation, but

maybe that's why he was leaning so heavily when he was

worshipping. that he's leaning on hip from his life of

opposition to God opposition to people and the problems that he

created in his family and with God, And he worshipped leaning

over that hip Maybe. Sometimes our past isn't always

what we want it to be but wherever you're at you can

worship God. You can praise God and we know

regardless that his worship was a demonstration of faith in

God's goodness. And he blessed the sons of

Joseph because he had faith in the security of his descendants

that God was going to bless his descendants and that they would

be. All right, going forward.

So we're going to stop there for today, and a couple just

conclusions to summarize so far. We've talked about people who

have who have fought the long fight for God and Noah and so

sometimes you just need to hold on through whatever you're going

through and hold on to your faith.

We learn about people who have not always been faithful but who

had moments of faith and today wherever you're at you can start

your walk, you can reaffirm your walk, you can get back on the

right track in faith to our God. If you Started that walk you can

come believing in him. We cannot have faith in God

without Understanding God's word and believing him changing our

life. Living a practically submissive

life to God. And saying, God, I'll do what

you want me to do repenting changing our life confessing

that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and being baptized for the

remission of our sins and water. And if you've already done that,

and you want to be, you need some help, getting back on the

right track. You need the prayers, whatever

you need, we can take care of anything of this. nature this

morning while we stand in, seeing the song of invitation We

thank you for listening to our podcast, put on by the Church of

Christ at 22:15 plans. Road in Bakersfield, if you

would like any additional information or you would like to

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