Promise Believers: Abraham, Part 1

You can turn in your Bibles to Galatians chapter three.

As I wrote kind of in the emails throughout this week, can you hit the air AC?

I'm getting blasted with freedom cold air.

Romans chapter 4 and Galatians chapter 3 both talk about this idea of an inheritance, an inheritance that comes to us as followers of Jesus.

Romans 4 · chapter mention Galatians 3 · chapter mention

We've been in a series looking at the promises of God.

And this is the third week in that.

We're going to go a few more weeks in this series.

And I'll say what I've been saying from the very beginning of this series that Christians, many Christians, tend to relate to God and think that they trusted in Jesus, and now that they've trusted in Jesus, it's their job to clean up their act and make promises to God about how they're going to do what is good.

And what we actually see the Bible teaching us is that rather than making these lofty promises of God, I'm not going to lie anymore, or I'm not going to have a bad attitude, or I'm going to be a generous person, instead of saying those things to God, what the followers of Jesus are called to do is to listen to what God is promising and to respond back in faith.

We got saved because we heard a promise that was given that if you believe in Jesus, your sins will be forgiven and you'll be restored in your relationship to God.

We believed that promise and we were saved.

We were converted.

There was this spiritual work that occurred in our life.

But that was not the end of believing promises for each of us.

Instead, we go on and believe the next promise.

Have you ever watched the um show?

It was back on TV a while ago called How It's Made.

And it's basically like 30 minutes of watching like a factory making different things.

And it's just kind of mesmerizing to see these machines like whirring around and just seeing all how something is put together, whether it's like milk going into the milk jug and then the label going onto the onto it and then putting into the crates.

This series is kind of like how it's made in that when we talk about the promises of God and then how we interact with the promises of God, it's like how our Christian life is made.

I had a conversation a couple years ago with a young man that came to church, um, and he wasn't yet a Christian, but he was really into philosophy.

And he really wanted to discuss and talk about um uh why what is the philosophical basis for believing in the existence of God?

And so we talked about a little bit about apologetics and those kind of things, and um he wasn't really satisfied with my answers, and he said, Doesn't this bother you that that like we can't like know that God exists or that we can't like nail this down in this you know one coffee appointment?

And I said, you know what?

That's not what bothers me.

The thing that bothers me personally is the gap between what um I believe to be true and my practice.

That's that's more of who I am as an individual.

I don't sit around and struggle with does God exist and like who is he?

I am happy with what the Bible teaches.

My whole wrestling is this wrestling around obedience and living out like how does the Christian life work?

And so the promises of God tie into that concept.

What does it look like for tomorrow morning for us to wake up and to live out this idea of being a Christian?

So when you go and do a word study in the Bible of the word promise, you will end up in Galatians 3 or Romans 4.

There's this concentration of verses that are there.

If you did your homework, you saw that those, um the word promise is used over and over again.

And it's because in those sections, Paul is writing to these churches, he's addressing Christians who are tempted to do Christianity based on the old covenant, which we talked about last week.

They are followers of Jesus, but they feel like because Christianity is the full extension of Judaism, that the way to be a good Christian is to do the law.

And so Paul is writing to the Romans and the Galatians saying that's not how Christianity works.

That's not what it's supposed to look like.

Instead, he is encouraging these Christians to recognize how law righteousness is inconsistent with their own faith journey and biblical history.

In other words, he's saying, Did you become a Christian by doing the law of Moses?

And I would ask you that question.

Are you a follower of Jesus today because you were convinced that doing the Ten Commandments was how you could be closer to God?

Or are you a follower of Jesus?

Or maybe you're not yet, but is the gospel message a message about doing the Ten Commandments, or is it a message about following Jesus, placing your faith in Christ?

Following Jesus, that's right.

So Paul uses the life of Abraham from Genesis chapter 12 through Genesis 23, 24 as a package to convey the idea that those who follow God are to live their life according, they're called to live their life according to faith rather than live their life according to the law.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

Hey guys, good morning.

And so the the primary point, the primary point that Paul is trying to make for these Christians is to say, look, you need to not try to relate to God according to the law of Moses.

You need to recognize that Abraham, who is the father of us all, Abraham, he was counted righteous because of his faith.

So if you have your Bibles, look at Galatians chapter 3.

Galatians 3 · chapter mention

Galatians chapter 3, and what we're gonna do this morning is we're gonna walk through the book of Galatians.

Galatians 3 · chapter mention

Now, Galatians is a letter.

Now, the fancy term we give to it is it's an epistle, right?

But really what that means is it's a letter that Paul the Apostle, he wrote this letter to a church.

And in this church, both in Galatians and a similar, similar to the letter to the Romans, you have these legalistic Christians who are caught up in trying to like make themselves and experience the blessing of God through being moral.

Now, I'll start off with this.

God wants us to be immoral people, right?

He wants us to obey Him, but He doesn't want us to obey Him so that we can be blessed.

And Paul has to deal with the nuances of that.

Because you you read the Old Testament and you think, wait, this seems like this is how God works.

He lays out the law for Israel and he says, This is how you're blessed.

And then we get to Jesus and we get to Paul, and they're saying, like, that wasn't good enough.

There was a need for a better covenant.

And so Galatians chapter 3 is where we will start off with, and I'll go backwards here in my in my notes here.

Galatians 3 · chapter mention

Galatians 3 says this, you foolish Galatians, who has cast a spell on you before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?

I only want to learn this from you.

Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by believing what you heard?

Are you so foolish after beginning by the Spirit?

Are you now finishing by the flesh?

Did you experience so much for nothing, if in fact it was for nothing?

So then, does God give you the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law, or is it by believing what you heard?

Here is what is at stake for these Christians.

And you'll notice that he's using really strong language.

Here's a pastor saying to the people he loves, you are being foolish.

Now, I don't know about you, but there's a very few contexts where you can get away with that kind of thing and still have the relationship intact.

Maybe in your family, right, with your kids.

You can go, you are being foolish, right?

And Paul says that to these Christians.

He says, you're being foolish.

What's at stake is the fact that the Spirit has worked in their life.

He talks about the Spirit working in their life in verse 1 and in verse 5.

Here's the thing.

Um, we talked about this last week.

In the Old Testament, under Moses' law, if we were still Jewish, we couldn't have a personal relationship with God, with the Holy Spirit living inside of us.

Maybe if we were the king, maybe if we were the prophet, we would experience God's Spirit so that we could carry out this mission that God gave us that was unique to the time.

But this idea of every day waking up and having the Spirit of God living in you, helping you just to personally accomplish what you're designed for and to relate to God, that is a brand new concept as of the last 2,000 years.

It was only made possible through the work that Jesus Christ did on the cross.

And so Paul is saying, you church in Galatia, you have experienced the Spirit's work in you, and now you want to go and do the law.

In verse 3, he talks about continuing and finishing this new spiritual journey.

So they're on track with this work that is going on in their life.

And then in verse 4, in verse 4, we have experiencing so much, experiencing so much.

He talks about that in verse 4.

Let me show you that in context here.

Did you experience so much for nothing?

If you, in your own personal um, if you recall, your own conversion, that point at which you placed your faith in Christ, and then all that has occurred since that time of how the affections of your heart have been changed.

You've been able to forgive people that have hurt you.

You have your uh God is helping you become a generous person, a loving person.

He's given you wisdom.

Maybe he's opened up doors for you that were closed before.

When you begin a relationship with God, you begin to experience, as Paul says here, you experience so much.

And that's how these Christians were.

They had experienced so much.

In fact, in verse 5, he says that they had experienced miracles as a church.

And yet they have these things are on the line, these things are in jeopardy because of their turning towards legalism.

He's contrasting also in these first five verses, doing the law and trying to finish their spiritual journey in the flesh versus believing what you have heard and this beginning in the spirit.

Now we get, if we go to verse 6 here, we hear about we hear about Abraham.

But before we get to Abraham, let me just show you this contrast.

Doing the law, finishing your spiritual journey in the flesh, versus believing what you heard, beginning um beginning by the spirit.

Those are the just taking, lifting the phrases right out of the text.

Okay.

So again, what I want you to be considering, and what I want us to be considering tomorrow morning when we wake up and we face those four F's that you are fallen, finite, fragile, and what was the fourth one?

What?

Yes.

Yeah.

When you get there, you are you get there tomorrow morning, you and I need to be um in a position where we're um either relating to God according to the law of Moses, or we are doing what Paul wanted for the Galatian church to be bel hearing and believing.

Does that make sense?

Hearing and believing.

Um I think that there's somebody playing music.

Scott, you want to just check on and see if there's somebody.

I they probably don't recognize that we can hear their music from right there.

So let's go to verse six.

Verse six says this just like Abraham, who believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness.

So Paul has made, he's drawing out this contrast, and then he holds up Abraham and he says, he believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness.

Let's go a little bit further.

Verses 7 through 9.

You know then that those who have faith, these are Abraham's sons.

Do you know that?

Do you know that if you have faith that you're Abraham's sons?

Wait, now last week when I was here, y'all said you weren't Jewish.

And now you're like you say you are.

Now what's going on?

What's going on?

Last week we were, we, we, I asked you the question, how many of you are Gentiles?

It was like everybody in here was Gentiles.

Now y'all are saying that you're Jewish.

How?

Well, it's because of faith, right?

You know that those who have faith, these are Abraham's sons.

In fact, we call him the father of faith, right?

Verse 8 says this.

Now the scripture saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles.

Who's a Gentile?

Raise your hand.

Those that are Gentiles, he would justify them by faith and proclaimed the gospel ahead of time to Abraham, saying, All the nations will be blessed through you.

Isn't that an interesting that Jesus or that God gave the gospel to Abraham?

Now, if you read Genesis 12 through 17, you're like, well, I didn't see the gospel in there.

Well, Paul says that Abraham heard the gospel, the good news, when God said, Abraham, all the nations will be blessed through you.

And then verse 9.

Consequently, those who have faith are blessed with Abraham who had faith.

So Abraham is this incredible character who's just a human and has a lot of flaws.

Like God gives him these amazing promises and he turns around and fails God in an incredible way.

And yet God is demonstrating his grace and his power through the life of Abraham in an amazing way.

And if we go on to verse 10 and 11, he says, For all who rely, for all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, because it is written, everyone who does not do everything written in the book of the law is cursed.

In verse 11, now it is clear that no one is justified before God by the law, because the righteous will live by faith.

So he's explaining to the church.

Here we have this explanation from Paul about the life of faith.

Again, just going back here, everyone who does not do everything written in the book of the law is cursed.

That's why he's advocating for this life of faith.

Again, tomorrow morning, you're gonna wake up out of bed, you're gonna look yourself in the, you're gonna look at yourself in the mirror, you're gonna make your coffee, you're gonna brush your teeth, you're gonna be getting ready for work.

And you and I will have this decision.

Am I going to relate to God according to the law, or am I going to relate to him according to faith?

Am I going to be one who believes the promises of God?

What did Abraham do?

When you think back about Abraham, who is told by God to leave his family of origin and go to a promised land, how does Abraham respond?

He obeys, right?

He goes.

And God is making these promises.

Abraham, I'm going to make a nation of you.

Now, does Abraham have some challenges in his own life when it comes to believing that promise?

If you know the life of Abraham, you know that when he hears that, Abraham has no kids.

His wife is barren.

Sarah cannot have any children.

Right?

And so when God says, I'm going to make a nation out of you, that is pretty far-fetched.

If he went and told his best friends, listen, God is going to make a great nation out of me, what would have his friends have said to him?

Yeah, preach on, but you're crazy, right?

You're pretty nuts.

How are you going to be a great nation?

You don't even have any kids.

And you're going to be a great nation?

Look at Galatians 3.12.

But the law is not based on faith.

Instead, the one who does these things will live by them.

So Paul's saying, listen, listen to me.

The person who decides that they're going to do Moses' law, that person is not operating according to a faith in God.

Instead, they're just trying to perform with in God's audience.

They're not saying, God, I'm going to trust you to make me righteous before you.

Instead, I'm listening to these commands.

I'm going to try to do these commands and therefore earn your blessing.

I'm going to be a perfect person.

I'm going to relate to you based off of performance rather than faith.

When you are in your job setting or you're at school, and the person who you answer to, whether it's your teacher or your boss, you're either relating to that person according to your performance, or you're relating to them according to a system of mercy and grace, right?

And your boss or your teacher expects for you to achieve something.

Whether if it's a job, then you're supposed to be hitting these metrics or these markers, accomplishing projects.

If you're a student, you're trying to learn a particular subject.

But we know in that setting that it's hit and miss, right?

If you're a student taking tests, you're maybe you're scoring a perfect on your test, but probably not.

If you're at your work, maybe you're performing perfectly, but probably not, right?

We live in a we operate so oftentimes according to this idea of performance, but the problem is that when we relate to God.

According to performance or according to law, if we mess up in one area, then we are guilty and we're condemned, right?

And so while a boss can say, Hey, listen, I know you're busy, I know that you have this workload that's impossible, or I know that it's hard to figure out this aspect of geometry, or um, to divide fractions, which it is for me.

Um, and that teacher can say, it's okay.

God, thank goodness, is just and holy and perfect.

He cannot say, hey, it's okay.

I'm gonna just let you off the hook.

His holiness and his justice demands of us a perfect performance.

Otherwise, we are under his wrath.

That's what it says over in Romans, the parallel passage.

And so the law, he's here in verse 12, he says, the law is not based on faith.

Instead, the one who does these things will live by them.

In other words, look, you want to do your relationship with God according to the law, you're gonna do law and performance, and that's all it is.

Now, the person who is relating to God according to performance is always beating themselves up, and they're left completely vulnerable to Satan's accusations because we all fail.

But not only that are we completely vulnerable and a failure when it comes to the law, but we're also not accessing or giving place to the resource of God's power in our life.

And that's what Paul's upset about with his church.

He's like, look, Jesus died on the cross to fulfill the law on your behalf.

He dealt, Jesus dealt with the justice of God on our behalf.

He took away the punishment on our behalf so that we could stand before God as righteous, and now God's paved the way for Monday morning for us to live out the power of God and to actually perform in this way that doesn't relate to the law, but is this beautiful performance for this church that they had they had experienced something that Paul can point to.

He's like, hey, you've had a spiritual experience, and he's talking about miracles, he's talking about them actively, like he's like, you know what it's like to have the spirit in your life.

So he's able to point to that, point to some kind of like human experience in their history that must have been beautiful.

And he's saying you're jeopardizing it by trying to relate to God based off the law and not realizing that all that the law does is condemn and bring in a condemnation.

We are all cursed.

We are all cursed because we cannot live up to the perfect standard of the law.

Galatians 3, 13 through 14 says this Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.

So when Moses came and delivered the Ten Commandments and the 613 commands related to worship practice and personal holiness to the children of Israel, that was not in vain.

It was a revelation of the holiness of God.

But all that unfolded was the imperfect fallen nature of Israel over the next 1,500 years and how much they had failed.

And it was all that much more clear that there is a need for somebody to pay for human guilt, somebody to take away the curse that had been there since Adam.

And so Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

The purpose was that, and I love when the Bible comes along and says there is a purpose.

The purpose was that the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles by Christ Jesus, so that we could receive the promised Spirit through faith.

So God is working with this guy, Abraham, 2,000 years before Jesus, saying, I'm gonna work in your life and I'm going to make a nation out of you, and through your lineage is gonna come a worldwide blessing, which Paul says, Hey, by the way, that was Jesus.

Abraham, but the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles by Christ Jesus so that we could receive the promised spirit through faith.

Listen, brothers and sisters, this morning you and I are gathered here worshiping Jesus because God made a promise to Abraham two thousand, no, four thousand years ago, right?

And said, I am going to work through your lineage to bring about a worldwide blessing.

That's a pretty so when we talk about promises, that's pretty powerful.

Going back for a second to this justice idea, the verdict has come down because of the law.

It's condemned us and said we're all guilty, but Jesus took the curse by dying on the cross for us.

And then in verse 14, we see that Jesus has redeemed us from the curse of the law.

This was the blessing for Gentiles that was promised to Abraham, and it's because of the work of God we can receive the promised, there's that word, the promised spirit through faith.

The promised spirit through faith.

Abraham believed God for a promise that we would benefit from.

Isn't that crazy?

That Abraham related to God, listened to God.

Like he didn't get up in the morning, Monday morning, and be like, God, I'm gonna be really good so that the world can be blessed through me.

Abraham's like got up and he's like, I'm freaking out, there's a famine.

I better go to Egypt and then lie about my wife, right?

And God's like forgiving him.

And then like a little bit later, he's like, God, but there's no children.

And they scheme and they're like, well, let's have children through Hagar, right?

God, if if Abraham, if the blessing, worldwide blessing through God was based off of Abraham's performance, would we be blessed right now?

No, we would not.

But God demonstrated through Abraham's life that on a Monday morning, he wants to come and say, My promises are for you.

These promises are for you to be a blessed people.

Let's look at verses 15 through 17.

Brothers and sisters, I'm using human illustration, a human illustration.

No one sets or makes additions to a validated human will.

So he's gonna talk for a second about this idea of writing up a will or um putting something into a trust, which for us culturally is a legal document, right?

That legal document, once the person dies, that will is validated, right?

It goes to court, um, probate court, and those what is put into the will is executed.

The will is executed on behalf of the person who has died.

And so Paul says there's no additions to that will once it is validated.

It's set.

So he's using this human illustration, and then he says, now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.

He does not say, and to seeds, as though referring to many, but referring to one and to your seed, who is Christ.

And then in verse 17, he says, My point is this.

Don't you love Paul?

He's like, here's my purpose.

Now he says, here's the point.

The law, which came 430 years later from the promise, I put the promise in there, it does not validate a covenant previously established by God and then cancel out the promise.

So here's the question, right?

This is the question that comes up is does the law that came after the promise to Abraham, does is the law like the new update to the app, right?

And did the app like version one expire, right?

I have one of those apps that's like the icon on my phone.

It's like very confusing, and then I it gets like lost off my phone, I gotta re-download it.

And sometimes I accidentally download version one and I open up version one, and it's like, no, you need to upgrade to version two, you know?

And so the question for these Christians is like, well, the work that God did with Abraham was at like version one, and then now we have version two with Moses, and we just relate to God according to the law.

And Paul's like, no, no, no, no, no.

If if that were the case, um, then we would be invalidating the will, the human will that was made to Abraham.

Like, there's an inheritance that God promised to Abraham uh that would continue on, right?

That's the will that's spoken of in verse 15.

And Abraham has died.

It's not gonna, there's not gonna be an addition, there's not gonna be a change to the inheritance.

It still keeps going, and it's not going to be manipulated or changed, even though there was this covenant made by Moses 430 years later.

I know it's it's kind of weird, kind of technical, but you're tracking.

I see you guys, I see the wheels turning.

Verse 18, we're almost done here.

Verse 18, for if the inheritance is based on the law, it is no longer based on promise.

This is the point, right?

I'm gonna have to like wrap it up pretty much here with this verse.

If the inheritance, right, the inheritance that's for you and me, if the inheritance is based on the law, it is no longer based on promise.

But God has graciously given it to Abraham through promise.

This is the thing.

This is the thing that Paul wanted for these Christians.

He wants them to be on guard from a Pharisaical legalism in their life where they begin to relate to God according to Moses' law, and they do not recognize that they are inheritors of the blessing promised to Abraham.

And it is so easy to slip and to put morality into the wrong category.

The weird thing is that the legalist life looks like the spirit-filled life.

It's both are performing, both are very active.

Paul was not out sinning it up.

Paul was a righteous man, right?

He wanted this church to be a people that were separated from paganism, who looked like a different people, who were loving, who were holy, but they were doing those things not to earn the favor of God, but as an overflow of the work of the Spirit in their life.

As they're listening to God and the promises of God, there is this obedience and just this beautiful relationship that is unfolding.

The thing the where we're gonna pick this up next week is this idea of inheritance.

Because as I'm looking at this and studying for this, I'm like, we gotta, we're gonna have to spend like just a little bit more time unpacking this idea of um inheritance and how these promises are that's like he started with Abraham, but we've got to get to like to 329, and we're not gonna get there this morning.

Um and yet there's like the life that God wants us to live is there.

I just gotta say, for those of you that are just kind of hearing this for the first time, when it comes to the law, and it's confusing because they're like, wait, did God want Moses to give the children of Israel the law or not?

And how does it work?

Does the Bible want us to obey rules?

The answer is yes, but my obedience is imperfect to the standard of God's perfection.

All that the law can do is show us that we're imperfect.

Have you ever gone to an amusement park where they have those like measurement things of like you have to be this tall to get on the ride?

You've done that?

Yeah, okay.

Yeah.

And that's the standard, right?

So if let's say that the the standard was like this tall to get onto the roller coaster, right?

And I walk up and I'm like, oh man, I'm not tall enough.

That's like the law.

Like the law says, Josh, you're not tall enough.

But what if I took that measuring, you know, that yardstick and the little wood piece that goes across the top, and I broke it off and ate it to try to make myself tall enough.

Would that work?

No, it wouldn't.

It wouldn't work.

It wouldn't get me tall enough, right?

But that is the problem with these Christians in Galatia.

They're trying to treat the law as if it's the remedy, as if it is the way to achieve what God wanted.

And that's just not the purpose of the law.

This past week I was online with um 14 other students in a seminary class, um, and we had a malfunction with Zoom.

I think it was like a nationwide outage on Zoom, or they had like just updated the app right before the class started.

And no matter how hard we tried with the um link that had been sent out to get on, nobody could get online.

Nobody was able to access the class for the first 15 minutes.

And finally, somebody sent out a message and was like, We have to update the app.

You gotta update the app.

As soon as we updated the app, all of a sudden everybody started to come online.

That's what the new covenant is.

When Jesus came and he held up the cup and he said, This is the blood of the new covenant, the covenant of better promises.

It's like the app was updated, but so much more, right?

It works now.

All of a sudden, we have this vibrant relationship with God, a living relationship with God, where God has made these promises to us that we can believe.

So we need, we desperately need for the Lord to work in our life.

So, going forward here, this is your homework for this week, okay?

The first thing I want you to do is I want you to just spend some time at some point, probably early in the week, I want you to list out three to five conditions where you're either fallen, finite, fragile, or faltering.

This is really important because tomorrow morning you're gonna feel it, and you're gonna at least you're gonna sense it in your emotions.

But what I want you to do is I want you to connect the anxiety, the fear, the anger, the bitterness, whatever it is, the bad attitude, whatever it is that you're struggling with tomorrow morning, I want you to connect it with one of these four words.

Okay?

Is it f is this me experiencing my fallenness that I'm just sinful?

Is this my finite nature that I just don't know the future?

Is it my fruit uh fragility?

Or is it faltering?

Fragile, other people sinning against me, faltering.

Faltering is like that gap, right?

I'm just living in the tension between what I wish I could be and what I am not yet.

And then I want you to ask, am I trying to overcome this condition through the law, through law obedience or through faith in God's promises?

I want you to think just for a second, at some point this week, am I facing this condition, this fear, this anger, am I facing this and trying to remedy it and experience God's blessing in my life through some kind of works, righteousness?

Or am I listening to what God has promised and believing those promises in my life?

This last week the homework was to go and find three uh promises.

Didn't anybody find three promises?

Did you find what was what was one?

You have it?

I made a book.

Did you make a book?

We don't have time for a book, but what was like a you did?

You didn't?

Oh my gosh.

God's promises that touch me.

That's awesome.

Uh do we get to all look at this later on?

Yeah, okay, go ahead, read one.

Okay, yeah, go ahead.

That was mine too.

That was one of mine.

That was mine.

Amen.

Amen.

Anybody else read any um promise?

So in the email that I sent out to the church a couple weeks ago, and then um I think I sent it out again at the beginning of this week, there's this cheesy little PDF booklet that somebody made with the promise, like they just went and identified a bunch of promises that relate to different scenarios in our life.

And um, so being the teacher, I did the I did also did the homework, and I looked at three promises, Isaiah 41 being one of them, that relate to fear, because I've got underlying fears in my life, and I had this amazing week, this week, relating to God based off of my fears and these promises.

It was a fascinating um experience of God not just taking away fears, but like in a surgical way, relating to God around fears.

Norman, did you have one?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That that's awesome that you read that.

And to see God's faithfulness, right?

To Abraham, that's that's what Paul wants, is Paul wants us, and this is where you've gotta like, I would challenge you.

What is your spiritual life like?

Because some people read the Old and New Testament and say, well, that was nice for them, but they build a kind of a theology that the way that God works is that he works through just a few.

Like Abraham, that was that guy was special.

David, he was special, Moses was special, but but we shouldn't expect something similar in our own life.

Now, is God gonna make you a nation out of you?

No, I don't think that that's what he's necessarily going to do.

But is he going to give you personalized promises and speak to you?

Yeah, I do think that's how he wants to work in our life.

I think that he wants to take his word and apply it right to our life, and he holds up Abraham as a working example to say, look, I did it with Abraham.

I did it with Abraham, I want to do that in your life.

That's awesome.

So this week, what I want you to do is I want you to think through those four F's, and then I want you to wrestle through are you relating to God according to the law?

Do you expect God's blessing in your life because you do good stuff?

Like me last week, talking about stealing my roommate's shampoo, and thinking, well, because I didn't steal his shampoo, God's gotta bless me now, right?

Or do you relate to God totally separately through the person of Jesus Christ?

Does that make sense?

All right.

Um, Lord, we thank you for your word.

And God, we would ask that you um would teach us how to do life according to the new covenant, grace of God, um, and where we are bent toward.

Legalism and fall short of this new covenant relationship with you, we ask for your forgiveness and that you would teach us.

That we would just step into this life of faith that opens up the door to a whole spiritual experience, not just conversion, but daily supply.

And uh so God help us.

These things are technical, especially once we start bouncing ideas off of Abraham's life.

And so we ask that you teach us this week and prepare hearts as we take communion together.

And we ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.