Encountering God (Genesis 11:27-12:9)

Hi, I'm Pastor Creighton, and thank you for tuning into Newsong Churches Podcast.

We're a biblically faithful, gospel-centered Anglican church in Port Perry, Ontario, proclaiming the true and life-giving word of Jesus as we love and serve our neighbors.

You can learn more about us at Newsongportperry.ca.

May God bless you today through his life-giving word.

Now these are the generations of Terah.

Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the Chaldeans.

And Abram and Nahor took wives.

The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor's wife Milka, the daughter of Haron, the father of Milkah and Isca.

Now Sarai was barren, she had no child.

Terrah took Abram his son and Lot, and the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan.

But when they came to Haran, they settled there.

The days of Terah were two hundred and five years, and Terah died in Haran.

Now the Lord said to Abram, Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

So Abram went as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him.

Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran, and Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all the processions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan.

When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, to the oak of Moray.

At that time the Canaanites were in the land.

Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, To your offspring I will give this land.

So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east.

And there he built an altar to the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord.

And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Megap.

This is the word of the Lord.

And you, all the families of the earth, shall be blessed.

Let's pray.

Gracious Lord Jesus, you have promised us where two or three are gathered, there you are amongst us.

As we gather in your name, we pray that you would make your presence known.

That we would encounter you once again, Lord.

Perhaps there are those of us here who need to encounter you for the very first time.

Perhaps, Lord, there are those of us who need to encounter you again.

Lord, would you speak to us through your word?

Would you open up our hearts and our minds to know you as you desire us to know you?

Would we see you once again, Lord, through the eyes of faith and rest assured in your promises to us.

In your name, Lord Jesus, we pray.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Maybe it's an occupational hazard of mine, but I talk about faith a lot.

And I talk about uh faith with people who are interested in talking about faith, both Christians and non-Christians, and it leads to a lot of very interesting conversations.

That's why I spend a lot of time in coffee shops.

I enjoy these sorts of things.

If you ask some of the great thinkers of the last century what they think about faith, or the Christian faith perhaps uh specifically, you might be prepared for some of their answers.

If you ask some of the great thinkers like Bertrand Russell, who I uh referenced a couple of sermons ago, or Richard Dawkins, maybe that's more of a familiar name to us, they would tell us that faith is utterly irrational.

It is a complete overlooking, turning away from the facts as they stand, the inconvenient facts, so to speak.

If you asked Karl Marx or Sigmund Freud about faith, they would tell us it's nothing but delusion, wish fulfillment.

If you ask someone like Simone de Beauvoir or Foucault about the Christian faith, they would tell you it's utterly oppressive.

It's meant to keep people subjugated.

Despite a hangover of a relative century of intellectual snobbery about faith, and perhaps specifically the Christian faith, it's very interesting to me that interest in faith and spirituality is on the rise, not on the wane.

So in September 2025, uh Barna released a study that suggests that 74% of Gen Z, that is 1996, born in 1996 and later, uh 74% of Gen Z are spiritually open and curious about faith conversations.

And then I read a uh article from CTV News in published in November 2025.

Uh CTV reported that in Canada, 22% of youth aged 15 to 24 attend religious services monthly.

22% attend religious services monthly, and that outpaces any other demographic or age group.

So this is very exciting, right?

This should excite us as Christians.

There's real opportunity in communities like ours for conversations about faith.

But here's something to consider.

A conversation about faith is good, but it's only as good as the object of that faith.

Let me put it this way: if trust is a good synonym for faith, right?

We have faith in someone, we put our trust in someone.

Our trust is only as good as the person we trust in.

We can talk about trust in the abstract.

What really matters is who we put our trust in.

I trust my wife.

I trust an airline pilot.

You see what I mean?

So, what does this all mean for the life of faith?

What does it mean to live a life of faith that is concerned with who it is we've put our faith in?

This is why I want us to look at Abraham and his family this fall.

Abraham and the life of faith.

Through Abraham, we see that the life of faith demonstrates a thoughtfulness, a courage, a failure, a sense of restoration by God's grace that I think might surprise people like Russell or Dawkins, Marx, Freud, Bevoir, Foucault if they really took it seriously.

Biblical faith is not an abstraction.

It's not a denial of the facts, not a choosing to believe a convenient narrative despite all of the obvious points pointing the other way.

No, it's a vital trust, a vital trust that is a result of encountering a living God, a living God who makes himself known, and in making himself known changes the circumstances of our lives, your life, and my life.

If that's the case, then faith is utterly reasonable if this God is in fact addressing you and I.

So as we open up this study, as we open up Genesis together, I want us to understand what the life of faith means.

And as we take our first look at Abram, who will later be renamed Abraham, we'll get to that.

Uh I want us to see that the life of faith means knowing God as we encounter him.

The life of faith means knowing God as we encounter him.

And in Abram's first encounter with God, here are three things we come to know about this God.

Number one, God calls unlikely people.

Number two, God blesses those he calls.

Number three, God will prove himself faithful to those he blesses.

Right?

The life of faith is not about increasing a spiritual feeling within us.

It's about taking a hard and real look at this God, who the claim is, is making himself known.

So whether you are just checking out the Christian faith, considering what it's all about, or whether you've been a Christian for a long time but feel like the engine is sputtering out, I want us to open up the scriptures and look with fresh eyes through the lens of faith to this God who we encounter.

So open up the scriptures if you would, Genesis chapter 11, verse 27, either in your uh order of service or in uh uh the Bibles just tucked in the chairs in front of you.

Genesis 11:27

Easy to find, it's on page eight, and let's look at the life of faith together.

What does it mean to live a life of faith?

Well, first we recognize that this God calls unlikely people.

Chapter 11, verse 27.

Here's an intro.

Now these are the generations of Terah.

Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran, and Haran fathered Lot.

Haran died in the presence of his father Terah, in the land of his kindred in Ur of the Chaldeans.

And Abram and Nahor took wives.

The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor's wife Milkah, and the daughter of Haran, the daughter of Milkah and Isca.

Now Sarai was barren.

She had no child.

Let's put a pause there.

For those reading Genesis from the beginning, from chapter one, this passage signals a big shift in the narrative.

Genesis 1 to 11 deals with God's God's work in a good creation, his respond to our fall into sin, our first parent's fall, the flood and God's justice, what it requires, and humanity's self-exaltation in the Tower of Babel, one chapter, well, earlier in chapter 11.

So far, this narrative has been a cosmic scale narrative.

It's been global.

And now the camera zooms in on this one family in particular.

By the way, for those listening online or whoever else, if you want to go back, we did a sermon series on Genesis 1 to 11 in summer 2023.

So if you want to fill in some gaps, feel free to check that out.

Just a little plug, just a little self-promotion.

Genesis is not merely a storybook full of vignettes, it is a prologue with a purpose.

It is written as God's people who have been freed from slavery in Egypt are encamped at Mount Sinai, prepared to receive God's law, which governs how they live as God's people, from Moses.

They're going to receive God's law from Moses.

Genesis provides a crucial theological foundation for knowing who God is and what he has done and how it is that we should relate to him.

It's these key concerns that include land and people and blessing and God's calling.

It introduces all of these themes that will run right through the story of Abraham and right through Genesis.

And all of this comes to focus right here in Abram and his family.

So we meet Abram and Sarai living in Ur of the Chaldeans.

And a few details are given to us, a few details stand out.

Abraham is just one of many people trying to make it in the big city.

Maybe some of us know the feeling.

But we are given one crucial detail about this family.

Sarai is barren.

They are childless.

Now, some of us know the pain of infertility for ourselves.

The hoping, the waiting, the disappointment.

But for this ancient Near Eastern family, their situation is not just emotionally painful, it is economically desperate.

Children provided care in old age, and they provided hope for the family's future.

Abraham and Sarai are left with no obvious prospects for themselves.

And they are not exactly obvious candidates for God's big world-changing plan.

What's more, in Joshua 24, we're told that Terah and his family served other gods.

So Abraham does not come from a long line of church-going folk.

He has no real knowledge, presumably, of the living God, and doesn't really show any signs of seeking after him.

So if piety were a prerequisite for being a candidate for God's plan, Abraham is not likely to make the cut.

Let's continue, verse 31.

Terah took Abram his son, and Lot, the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai, his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Shaldeans to go into the land of Canaan.

But when they came to Haran, they settled there.

The days of Terah were 205 years, and Terah died in Haran.

So Terah moves his family toward Canaan, but they settle halfway there where Terah dies.

Abram and Sarai are now newcomers in a foreign country.

They have no land, they have no roots, they have no people of their own, no prospects, or no obvious hope for their future.

Perhaps they must, or they feel they simply must make peace with the fact that their lives are rather forgotten and forsaken.

So it seems.

So all of this to say, this introduction to Abraham and his family in chapter 11, all of this is to make this clear.

God calls unlikely people to accomplish his promises.

Do we see that?

Because that's exactly what God's about to do for Abraham.

He's going to call Abram and his family.

What exactly is God's call?

One theologian puts it this way: God's call is the act by which God extends to humans an invitation to enter into a saving relationship.

Right?

It's God's invitation to us.

We see that Abraham has no particular accomplishments or notoriety to offer God, the sort of thing that would impress God.

But God nevertheless calls this man Abram, calls his family to himself.

See, it's very interesting to me that God characteristically works this way, subverts our expectations.

When we want to hire someone, we want to hire someone with the best qualifications.

God so often doesn't, or so it seems.

When Jesus calls his disciples, who does he go talk to?

The rich, the powerful, the famous?

He goes to fishermen, he goes to tax collectors, he goes to folks that people would spit on the ground in front of, you know?

What does he say to these folks?

He says, follow me.

Right?

This God is not impressed with our spiritual CVs.

Whatever we think is most impressive about us, right?

In fact, pride in our accomplishments, pride in our spiritual CVs is a liability to the gospel that we profess.

Right?

God's glory is often willfully revealed amongst the lowly.

Don't we see that in how Mary responds to the enunciation?

Right?

My soul magnifies the Lord.

He's exalted what's lowly and raised it up.

That is God's chosen modus operandi, right?

So here's the thing: don't brush God's calling off.

Don't brush it off.

Whatever your station in life may be, or whatever you think your station in life isn't, none of this disqualifies you from being called by God, for receiving God's personal invitation to you.

See, as a pastor, I have to say anecdotally, I talk to a lot of people, and the people I talk to sometimes are dismissive about this idea that God would actually call them.

Why?

Because God's, you know, he's a big God, he's a powerful God.

He's interested in the big and powerful people in the world.

He doesn't have time for little people like me.

And the Bible tells us again and again that is not the case with this God.

This God is powerful and sovereign enough that there is no detail which escapes his attention, no sparrow that drops to the ground without his being mindful of it.

Your life matters to God.

And you are not beyond God's calling.

Right?

Or we could be on the opposite end of that spectrum.

We could say, well, God only cares about important people, and I'm one of them, right?

Or I really want to be one of them.

I'm striving to be one of them.

Which really means we adopt a spiritual posture of who cares about the rest?

The important people matter, and I'm gonna be one of them.

All the other people are just backs I step on on my way up the mountain, right?

And we end up, we end up resenting, we end up what's the word I'm looking for?

Overlooking, condescending.

We end up completely overlooking what God wants to do in the life of our neighbors for their good and the good of the world.

See, God's call happens independently of any merits or qualifications that we think we have or don't have.

It's his sovereign will, and that's good news.

God calls unlikely people like Abram and like you and I.

Okay, point number two.

God blesses those he calls.

Let's look at chapter 12, verse 1.

Now the Lord said to Abram, no introduction, by the way.

No, like, let me tell you about myself, right?

The Lord said to Abram, Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great.

So says the Lord to Abraham.

Let's pause there.

What is God's call for Abraham?

What's his invitation?

Don't settle down in Haran, no matter how much you might want to.

I've got other plans for you.

I've got good plans for you and for the world that I want to accomplish through you.

So what's the intended outcome of God's plan for Abraham?

Three things that we see here.

Number one, a great nation, right?

Which probably confused Abram quite a bit for reasons we'll discuss shortly.

But Abram, who right now has no people of his own, is being told that he'll be a founder of a great people.

That's very interesting.

Number two, God's plan involves a great blessing.

So Bible scholars Peter Gentry and Stephen Willem tell us that blessing is connected with life, just as cursing brings death.

It also connotes redemption, a relationship with God that transforms the beneficiary and provides security.

Blessings are the manifestation of a faithfulness, fidelity, solidarity in relationships, whereby one's natural and personal capacity to fulfill God's intention and purpose is advanced and furthered.

God's word to Abraham is powerful and enables, pardon me, enabling the calling to be fulfilled.

End quote.

Okay.

So Abram, whose prospects up to now have been really rather desperate, is being told that he is to receive God's powerful word of life and flourishing.

Do you see that?

That's God's blessing.

It's a word of life.

It's a word of flourishing.

A great nation, a great blessing.

Here's the third thing God's plan entails: a great name.

So just one chapter earlier, earlier in chapter 11, the people of Babel used the most advanced technology they have, the most advanced civilization uses the most advanced technology they have, which was called the brick.

Maybe you've heard of it.

You know, bricks we make things with.

Yeah, we've heard of them.

Good.

Okay.

They use this technology to build a monument, really, for their own self glorification, right?

And what do they say?

Let us build for ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, right?

So God answers this self-glorification by confusing and scattering this people.

But for Abraham, Abraham is told, God will make his name great, not through self-glorification, but through divine grace.

Do we see the difference?

Abram, who is otherwise rather unremarkable, will be renowned not for his greatness, but for God's through him.

But God's plan doesn't end with Abraham.

Why does God give him this promise of a great nation, blessing, and name?

Second half of verse 2.

Why does God do this?

So that you, Abram, will be a blessing.

I, God says, will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you, I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

In other words, Abraham is not to be a reservoir of God's blessing.

He's rather meant to be a conduit of it.

Right?

Through him, through Abram, people everywhere, all around the world, will come to know God's loving kindness and compassion and favor.

Right?

Think about it.

Since Genesis 3, generation after generation, every generation has felt the cumulative effects of sin and death.

They have seen the curse do nothing but advance.

God's promise to bless the world means that through Abraham, this curse, creation's bondage to sin and death, will begin to be reversed.

It will be rolled backward.

One of my favorite Bruce Coburn lyrics is this you've got to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight.

Right?

God's promise of blessing is God's commitment to do exactly that through Abram.

Do you see that?

God blesses those he calls so that the called will be a source of blessing.

Do you see that?

So maybe we need to think about what a blessing is for a moment, right?

Because for many of us, myself included, when I think of blessing, immediately what comes to mind is any number of material blessings, right?

The really cool car I would like, right?

The nice house that I see for sale down the street for me, right?

The bigger title, the bigger office.

Not really, I really like my office.

Any number of these things are material blessings, and they are blessings.

We can thank God for them, right?

We ought not to overlook them or undermine them.

But what are these blessings for?

That's the question.

Christopher Wright, who writes in just a wonderful book called The Mission of God, he argues that the purpose of God's blessing is itself missional.

It relates us to God's mission and work in the world.

He writes this, that Israel, right, the nation that will come from Abraham, Israel had a missional role in the midst of the nations, implying that they had an identity and a role connected to God's ultimate intention of blessing the nations.

He concludes this way: Israel had a missional reason for existence.

Right?

So God's covenant people exist to be a mission, a mission of blessing to the world.

God's people don't exist to absorb all God's blessing.

We exist to be a conduit of that blessing.

Do you see the difference?

That's a huge difference, isn't it?

Blessing is not merely for Abraham or for us about our comfort or our prosperity.

It is for God's mission to the world, right?

Which means we have to recognize our blessings in Christ, don't we?

We have to take them very seriously.

Paul is reflecting on all of this narrative in Galatians chapter 3, and he writes this those who are of faith, those who trust in the living God, just as Abram did, are blessed, he writes, along with Abraham, the man of faith.

Galatians 3 · chapter mention

And he goes on to describe God's purpose in redemption, so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, to non-Jews, to all the world, all the nations, so that we, right, if we're not Jewish, we're included, we're included in the whole world, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.

And he concludes this chapter this way: if you are Christ's, then you are Abram's offspring, heirs according to promise.

God promises Abram what?

A nation, a blessing, and a name.

In Christ we are made citizens of the kingdom of God.

In Christ we have redemption from sin and death through the cross and resurrection.

What greater blessing could there be?

And in Christ, we know our true identity, our true name, and we know our true glory in the name above every other name, and that's Jesus.

We have been abundantly blessed in Christ, haven't we?

But here's the question: Do I consider myself a reservoir of God's blessing or a conduit of it?

Don't get me wrong, we ought to revel in all of the blessings that God has so abundantly given to us.

We should thank God for those.

We should delight ourselves in those, but we should not expect to be a stagnant pool of God's blessing.

God intends to bless us so that we participate in his mission to bless the world chiefly through Christ.

Right?

All of these promises anticipate Christ, and we in Christ exist to bless the world and to bear witness to the blessing of the world that God has done through the cross and the resurrection.

In fact, some scholars suggest that when God says you will be a blessing, that isn't just descriptive, it's actually imperative, right?

Abraham, you will be a blessing.

That's God's purpose for his people.

See, pastorally, friends, I've seen unmet expectations become such a source of callousness and resentment towards God.

If what we expected of the Christian life is an unending source of blessings and resources and material prosperity, we will be disappointed.

If Abram expected that, God's blessing to mean that, he would have been sorely disappointed.

God's blessing is way wilder and way better than that, right?

He is inviting us to know life and true life in him.

We get resentful when we feel like we expect God's blessing to occur in a certain way at a certain time and it didn't come, right?

What we expect is to be a reservoir of blessing, that God will increase our reservoir in all the ways that we want.

But what God is asking us to be is a source of blessing to others, right?

So when we go on mission, right?

When we open up our doors for a community dinner, when we show up at the farmer's market, we are not going as if to accumulate God's blessings for us because we're doing all the things that He loves us doing.

We're going to be a blessing, because that's who we're called to be.

Because God's blessing is meant to be a, we are meant to be a conduit out to the world, not a wet reservoir within it, right?

Do we see that difference?

Because boy, that makes the difference in the church's mission, doesn't it?

And its sense of identity, in its sense of rootedness.

God promises to call Abraham, God promises to bless Abraham, make of him a great nation.

But here's the question: how is he going to do that?

Because the one thing we know about this family for sure is this family is given up on the hope of children, right?

They have no realistic hope for that.

So how is this going to take place?

I wonder if Abraham walked away scratching his head.

But he does walk away.

Here's point number three God will prove himself faithful to those he blesses.

Verse 4.

So Abram went as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him.

Abram was 75 years old when he departed Haran, and Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan.

Okay, so notice this.

Notice Abram's immediate obedience.

God calls him to go with his promise and with his blessing, and Abram gets up and goes without delay, right?

Not so much with asking a, not without even asking for a destination.

Where am I going?

He just gets up and goes.

Now the cost of this obedience shouldn't be lost on us, right?

By going the way he does, by going at God's command, Abram leaves behind everything familiar and any semblance of comfort or control in his life.

He is completely dependent on God's direction, isn't he?

And these facts are certainly not lost on the author of the book of Hebrews.

In chapter 11, the author writes, By faith, Abram obeyed when he was called to go to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance.

And he went out, not knowing where he was going, right?

Abram's faith is his trust in this God who calls and blesses him.

It is not contingent on knowing where he is going or what he might face along the way.

It is entirely dependent on this God's character and trustworthiness.

And I have to confess, if I were in Abram's place, it's hard to imagine not hedging at this point, right?

I don't think I'm alone in that.

I like my comfortable life, right?

I really like my comfort zone.

I like feeling in control, right?

I resonate with the church reformer John Calvin, who writes that it is an extreme, uh, pardon me, an extremely severe trial to give up what we have in order to seek after what is afar off and unknown to us.

See, faith is not always easy when God asks us to step out into the unknown.

It requires courage and humility to trust God to do what we cannot do for ourselves or even what we cannot imagine for ourselves.

But at the Lord's direction, Abram and his family go.

And they arrive in Canaan.

Let's pick it up in verse 7.

Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, To your offspring I will give this land.

So he, Abram, built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east.

And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord.

And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.

This is where we're going to leave Abraham for now, on the journey, with an unknown destination, trusting God.

But before we leave him, let's notice this the God who calls and blesses is the same God who appears to Abram on the way.

To wandering and childless Abram, God promises, to your offspring I will give this land.

God has promised a great nation, and that requires both land and at least a child.

God tells Abram, I will supply both.

Abram might have thought this is all too much.

He might have said, I'm out, and walked away.

But instead we see he builds two altars to the Lord, expressions of his devotion, trust, and worship.

No longer is Abram serving the gods of his father Terah.

This is the God whom Abraham serves and follows.

Abram responds to God's word to him with faith.

Faith.

Trust.

Faith that God will prove himself faithful to him.

Very interesting, this building an altar.

For other ancient religions, as for many religions in our day, altars are where the offering of our gifts and sacrifices is presented before the divine, before the gods, so that we might, you know, receive their conditional favor.

I'm going to give you this thing that I really like, so that you might, you know, see fit to give me the thing that I'm after.

Modern altars may be less physical, but they're no less transactional.

We have altars in all our ambitions.

We have altars of our career, altars of our family, altars of all these good things that we make, ultimate things that we think will curry God's favor.

However, notice that Abram builds his altar not before God shows him his grace.

He builds an altar after God makes his unconditional promises to him.

A biblical understanding of an altar is not a place where our gifts and offerings curry God's favor.

It's where God's favor is made known to us, and we respond in thanksgiving and praise.

See, when we come to the Lord's table, we often refer to the Lord's table as the altar.

We need to think not of our sacrifices going up to God, we need to think of God's gifts and promises coming to us.

That's the direction of a biblical understanding of an altar.

This is where God's grace and mercy and forgiveness is being made known.

The Lord's table, this altar is a witness that God has proven himself faithful in Christ and will prove himself faithful to us.

So what does it mean to live a life of faith?

We live the life of faith, knowing God as we encounter him, knowing that he calls unlikely people, that he blesses those he calls, that he proves himself faithful to those that he blesses.

Is God calling you?

Yes, he is.

What's he calling you to do?

To trust him.

Trust him with what?

Everything.

Your life, your story, your control, your security, so that you may know his blessing and you may be a blessing to others.

Martin Luther remarked that Abram followed the naked voice of God.

He left all and followed the Almighty, preferring the word of God to everything else and loving it above all things.

What about you and I?

You and I don't follow the naked voice of God, do we?

We follow the voice of God who speaks to us in Christ.

God called Abram to go because, in some sense, the fulfillment of his promises was in the future for Abraham.

But for us, he calls us to come to Him.

Come to Jesus, where His promises have been fulfilled.

Come to me, all who labor and are all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

Friends, right now, don't miss God's calling.

God's calling might seem unremarkable.

I wonder if it seemed unremarkable to Abraham.

Don't miss God's calling.

He is calling you to himself, to know his blessing, to know his faithfulness for yourself.

And when we look at the cross and when we look with the eyes of faith to Jesus, we see all the families of the earth.

And we are surely blessed.

Amen.

We hope that you've been blessed by God's word today.

If you live in the area, we hope that you'll come and worship with us in person on Sunday at 10 a.m.

If you'd like to learn more about Newsong Church, we'd love to connect with you.

Please find our contact information at newsongportperry.ca and reach out to us.

Newsong's ministry is entirely funded by the generous giving of those who worship and journey with us.

If you feel called to support our ministry with a financial gift, please go to newsongportperry.ca slash giving to make your contribution.

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.