Abraham

Again, if you're new, welcome.

Typically, what we do from a teaching perspective here at His Hands is we go straight through scripture.

And so in the last few years, we've gone entirely through the book of Matthew, through the book of Philippians.

We did that last year.

We've gone through the book of Ephesians and Romans.

Sometimes we'll take like a small section, even a chapter, and we'll go through it bit by bit, just deep dive, go through it, because I have a very strong conviction that God's word is revelation, meaning it is revealed truth.

It is a truth that we can't just stumble into ourselves.

It is so much greater than observation.

And when we get together on Sunday mornings, it is great for us to make observations about life and go, hey, haven't you ever noticed this and that?

And that's awesome.

And there's a lot of value there.

But when we open up God's word together, that is God's truth.

That is revelation, and we can learn from Him directly and learn truth that is strong enough to build our lives upon.

And so if you're part of His hands, uh, we hope that being part of this church means you learn Scripture.

We love God's Word.

And so that's our typical.

Sometimes we'll pause and we'll do like a topical study, kind of like we did in December last year.

We did a study called Life on Purpose, talking about how to live intentionally, still going to God's Word constantly in that.

To start this year, we're kind of we're sort of gonna do both at the same time.

We're going to do a long study on the life of a man in Scripture named Abraham.

We're gonna study the life and the story of Abraham.

And if you're familiar with your Bible, this is really early on.

This is the book of Genesis.

In fact, if you if we if you have a Bible with you, we put all the verses on the screens, that's become the norm now, obviously.

You can look at it on your phone, whatever.

But if you're one of those people that's like, I like to have it in hand, which I love that, it's almost gonna be hard for you to turn there because it's so at the front of the story that you know the Bible pages are so thin, you're gonna be like tearing them essentially just to get to it.

So we're talking early in the story, that's what I'm trying to say.

Abraham is such an incredible person in the history of our faith.

We learn so much through his story through his life.

In fact, listen to what the New Testament has to say about the life of Abraham.

This is Hebrews chapter 11.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance.

He went without knowing where he was going.

And even when he reached the land God promised him he lived there by faith, for he was like a foreigner living in tents.

And so did Isaac and Jacob, who inherited the same promise.

Abraham was confidently looking forward to a city with eternal foundations, a city designed and built by God.

It was by faith that even Sarah, who's Abraham's wife, was able to have a child, though she was barren and was too old.

She believed that God would keep his promise.

And so a whole nation came from this one man who was as good as dead.

A nation with so many people that, like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore, there is no way to count them.

All these people died still believing what God had promised them.

They did not receive what was promised.

They saw it all from a distance and welcomed it.

They agreed that they were foreigners and nomad here on earth.

Obviously, people who say such things are looking forward to a country they can call their own.

If they had longed for the country they came from, they could have gone back, but they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland.

That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

Abraham is a man of faith, a man of great faith.

He's a forefather truly for all of us who live by faith.

He's an incredibly special person.

In fact, in the in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul was writing to a group of believers, and there was kind of some division happening amongst them because obviously our faith in Jesus began through the Jewish community.

And there was a split that began to happen between those who were Jewish by birth and those who had given their lives to Jesus, and there was all kinds of infighting going on because the Jewish people had been taught that they were children of Abraham.

And that's what made them good in God's eyes.

It was just their heritage, their lineage, their ethnicity, that they were good with God because they could say, Yeah, I come from Abraham, and God was good with Abraham, so he's good with me.

And Paul challenges this idea a little bit.

He says in Galatians chapter 3, I ask you again, does God give you the Holy Spirit and work miracles among you because you obey the law?

Galatians 3 · chapter mention

Of course not.

It's not because it's because you believe the message you heard about Christ.

He says, in the same way, Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.

The real children of Abraham, then, are those who put their faith in God.

And this is not Paul dismissing the Jewish people at all or anything like that.

In fact, he writes in detail about the fact that God continues to work through that group of people.

That's the people that he used to bring Jesus into the world.

It's the people that began with Abraham.

And he still works through that, and there's promises of that even in the future.

But this is Paul saying if you really want to be called a child of Abraham, you live by faith.

That's the heritage that Abraham gives to all of us.

Is what does it look like to live by faith?

So we're gonna study his life.

And I'm gonna tell you guys just right off the bat, uh, man, there's some weird stuff in the story of Abraham.

There's some really hard stuff.

If you know the story, you can start thinking, like, yeah, oh, oh, oh, that's controversial.

Oh, that's gonna be a fun Sunday.

I should probably pray for Justin.

Yes, please.

Um I mean, I learned this.

I used to teach kids here at his hands.

I was I was the children's and youth guy for a long time.

And I remember being like, yeah, let's teach the kids the story of Abraham, and we'd start opening it up, and I'm like, ooh, let's, ooh, how do we probably need to figure out a different way to approach that just so the car ride home with the parents isn't awful.

Um and you have to do that with kids to a certain degree, right?

Like, that's just the way kids' church tends to go.

Great example of this, David, story of David, David and Goliath.

How does how does Goliath die in that story?

Just someone yell it out.

Yeah, so I'm hearing rocks, right?

Not the rock.

The rock did a lot of the work, but then David picked up Goliath's own sword, chopped Goliath's head off, and held Goliath's head up in front of all the Philistine soldiers.

We don't teach the kids that.

We're like, and then this rock happened, and then they won.

And the kids are like, yeah, you know, it's great.

Not a lot of decapitation stories in kids' church.

Um, you can know that.

We don't lie to them, it's just, you know, there's there's you gotta reveal things over time.

Um, but my point with that is that we're we're not gonna skip any of the hard stuff here.

All right?

We have a conviction that when we open scripture, we get to something challenging, something difficult, like when we get to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, we're just gonna deal with all of it.

Okay, so if if this is your church, I promise you that when we open up God's word and there's something controversial or hard or strange, we don't skip it.

We go through it, we trust God with it, and we grow.

Now, I said that we were kind of doing both a topical study and a straight through scripture study, and that's because there's a very specific lens that we're looking at the story of Abraham through.

And normally, this is where I would tell you what that is, and there'll be a little logo on the screen, and be like, this is what our focus is gonna be, but today I'm gonna do a little different.

We're gonna talk about that part at the end.

But let's just go ahead and open up God's word and be introduced to Abraham.

So here we go.

We're going Genesis chapter 11, verses 31 through 32.

Genesis 11:31–32

One day Terah took his son Abram, Abram will later be called Abraham.

I'm gonna mix that up a lot.

So just know that Abram, Abraham, same person, Sarai, Sarah, same person that have their names changed by God.

Just give me some grace on that.

It says that one day Terah took his son Abram, his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram's wife, and his grandson Lot, his son Haran's child, and moved away from Ur of the Chaldeans.

He was headed for the land of Canaan, but they stopped at Haran and settled there.

Terah lived for 205 years and died while still in Haran or Haran.

Now, let's just pause here, because I said we're not going to skip the weird hard stuff.

He said he lived 205 years.

Like, surely that's a mistake.

Surely that's uh an error.

Like if you got a text in today's culture and someone said, Hey, we're all meeting to celebrate this person's life, they've passed, and we just want to celebrate their 205 years here on this earth, you would immediately assume that's like a fat thumb moment, right?

Like we've all had those.

I have a friend named Ken, and I remember a couple years ago, he asked me if my wife Megan could help with something, and I responded, Yes, I have an amazing wife, but I did something wrong with amazing, and so autocorrect took took control and was like, I know what you're trying to say.

And the text I sent to my friend Ken was, I have an Amazon wife with a capital A.

It even capitalized it.

And he just responded with like this very, you know, question mark.

I was like, that's interesting.

Because that can mean really a couple of things.

It could mean she's from the Amazon, right?

Or I ordered him her from Amazon.

I guess it could be both.

Like she's from there and she came by way of Amazon.

And so I had to correct.

No, I meant amazing.

I do not have an Amazon wife.

I have an amazing wife.

Um you look at this and you're thinking this has to be one of those things.

It's got to be some heir.

205 years?

And again, we're gonna park here for just a second.

This is not the main gist of our focus today, but as I said, when we get to weird, strange, interesting, challenging, controversial stuff in scripture, we're gonna talk about it.

So if you read the book of Genesis, you open it up, you realize that people, according to the Bible, were living really long lives.

Like in the early historians, it's a thousand years, eight hundred years.

And obviously, a cynical mind, which is understandable, would look at me like that's fairy tale stuff.

That's so silly.

How in the world could that be true?

And the basic gist of it is this when God creates us in the Bible, it's clear that he does not create us to die.

That was not our our purpose.

Our purpose was not to be uh mortal.

God created us to live eternally with him.

We were meant to live forever.

Death did not come into the equation until sin entered the world through Adam and Eve's sin.

And so in Romans chapter 5, it says that when Adam sinned, sin entered the world.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

Adam's sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.

Death is a foreign thing to us.

And it's funny, I think we all know that that's true, or interesting, maybe a better word than funny.

Because in my role, I have I've been part of over a hundred funerals at this point in my life.

Like, and that's something I never thought about when I became a pastor, but I've I've done over a hundred funerals, and I do them very often.

I did two in the month of December.

I've been around a lot of death, and I've been with people in all types of situations, whether it's been a long life or a tragic short life, and I've been with many of you and your families in those situations.

And it doesn't matter if it's someone who died of natural causes at an old age, if it's someone who died tragically at a young age, every funeral without fail, there's this feeling that this isn't right.

This is not how it should be.

It's not like we've come to this place as human beings, we're like, yeah, we all live, we all die, we're we're used to that by now.

No, it's like every single time there's death, there's this moment of disbelief like this can't be.

And I believe that's because deep down inside we know.

We know that we're not supposed to die.

That death is a foreign thing.

I think that's why we have such a hard time wrestling with it, because something inside of us is hardwired by God to understand that this is not meant to be.

This death is an injustice.

And it's an injustice that Jesus has dealt with.

And so the Bible backs up that feeling because we were created not for death, but for life.

But sin enters the world and then people begin to die.

But originally they're they're dying after like a thousand years or 700 years, 800 years.

And essentially what happens is God looks at people, and if you read through the story, and you'd think that, oh man, 700, 800 years, you could do a lot of good.

Just imagine how good you could become at everything you love if you had that long to work at it.

How much you could accomplish, how much good you could do.

Or the flip side is how selfish, how depraved, how evil someone could become.

And unfortunately, that's the way things were going.

People were not using their lifespans for good, they were using it for for evil.

And God looked at the world and he's like, this is going so terribly, I have to shorten their lifespan because if someone's truly evil, it's actually a grace that they're limited, that evil is limited by a lifespan like we have now.

That's sort of the story there.

But then even you might say, well, that's still cool, great, that's a good story, but like, how in the world does that make sense scientifically?

I didn't go to a Christian college, I went to a college where a lot of my professors really just hated my faith and uh and often brought it up in class.

And I've always been, this is hard to believe if you if you know me, but I've always been pretty argumentative and talkative.

And so my college experience was a lot of my professors just like taking shots at my faith and me being like, uh-uh, and not really having a good backup uh to that because I was young.

But I would go research and all this kind of stuff, and I remember just having this feelings like when I would read something like this in the Bible, and it seems so unbelievable, like, oh man, I don't, I'm I'm a I'm a person of faith, but I also have a mind, I have an intellect.

Like I don't believe in fairy tales.

And this is actually one of those that I wrestled with a little bit.

Like, how in the world can I honestly believe that people used to live this long?

But now I'm just gonna let you guys know I'm totally cool with this, like completely at peace with this.

And if this is helpful for you, take it and then we'll move on.

It's just helpful for me because I think it's important to know that you can be a person of faith and also be a person of reason.

Those two things are not exclusive.

So you take lifespans, for example.

We'll go fast through this.

All right, things live a long time.

Not everything.

Some creatures live really short lifespans.

Uh we we just got a dog, and our kids have never had one, and we were like, we got four kids, we need more to do.

So we got a dog.

And uh our kids are just there over the moon about it.

But you know, dogs don't live a long time.

I have a really good friend who has a turtle, and that turtle's lifespan is like 120 years, and he said, Yeah, we got that turtle so that we could teach the turtle about death, you know, as a family.

One day that turtle will understand mortality when his people die.

You know, that was a joke you made.

That was good.

Um yeah, some creatures live long.

In fact, there are certain species that live insanely long.

There's a species of shark.

It's called the Greenland shark, it live like 500 years.

That's crazy.

Five hundred years.

A shark.

That's wrong.

But there are certain creatures, like especially in the sea, that can live just centuries, almost a thousand years.

Certain types of trees can live a long time.

Point is living things can live a really long time.

But it's just that our lifespans are coded in.

It's actually a concept in science called programmed cell death.

You can look it up.

But here's what I'm trying to say on this.

This is super boring, I know, but like I said, we're gonna move on.

I promise.

There's a there's a really rare genetic disease mutation called progeria, and it's very, very rare.

You can look it up.

It causes people to age about 10 times faster.

It's really crazy.

And all that happens in those people is that one gene, one gene in their DNA is a little off.

And that accelerates their aging ten times.

And so, you know, when I look at this in 205 years, and there were people living a thousand, now we live a hundred, that's like a ten times difference.

I just got to the point where I would wrestle with that and go, okay, hold on.

If all it takes, if if creatures can live a really long time, and we can see that in the world now, that's not unscientific.

There are sharks that live centuries, okay?

That happens.

And if our lifespan is determined, it's coded into us in our DNA, and there can be mutations in DNA that can speed that up.

Do I believe that God is powerful enough to alter one gene in human DNA?

And if I don't, that's a really puny God.

Like, can we just admit that?

Like, oh, I believe in a God.

Now he's not He's not a very powerful God.

In fact, he's not even powerful enough to alter a single gene in the human DNA code.

Um, that's that's a very puny, powerless God.

Obviously, I believe that God is powerful.

And I do believe God is powerful enough to go, you know what?

Need to make a change here.

We're gonna speed this up a little bit.

And that's apparently what happened.

All right, you guys want to move on from this?

I know it's boring, but all right, cool.

Let's go.

Sorry about that.

Sidebar over.

Let's get to the main thing.

Let's jump right into the story of Abraham proper.

Like I said, over the course of this, we're gonna hit some weird stuff, some interesting stuff, and we'll just talk about it for a few seconds, and some of you will be like looking at your watches and going, why are we talking about this?

Some of you are interested, the rest of us will check out, and now we're back.

Here we go.

Are you with me?

Let's go.

Genesis chapter 12, verses 1 through 9.

Genesis 12:1–9

This is where it really gets good.

The Lord said to Abram, Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father's family, and go to the land that I will show you.

I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you and make you famous, and you'll be a blessing to others.

I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt.

All the families of the earth will be blessed through you, and that definitely happens through Jesus.

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

Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran.

He took his wife, Sarai, his nephew Lot, took all of his wealth, his livestock, all the people who he had taken into his household at Haran, and headed for the land of Canaan.

And when they arrived in Canaan, Abram traveled through the land as far as Shechem.

There he set up camp beside the oak of Morah.

And at that time this area was inhabited by Canaanites.

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

And Abraham built an altar there and dedicated it to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

After that, Abram traveled south and set up camp in the hill country with Bethel to the west and I to the east.

And there he built another altar and dedicated it to the Lord, and he worshiped the Lord.

Then Abram continued traveling south by stages toward the Negev.

This is the catalyst moment in Abram's life.

God calls him to leave the comfort of his home.

He has wealth, he is settled, he's really set.

And God says, I want you to leave and I want you to go somewhere, but I'm not going to tell you where you're going.

That takes a lot of faith because he can't just go on a quick trip and come back.

This is a permanent move.

He's going from being a settled person with wealth and an established life to becoming a nomad to just being a traveler.

But he goes.

Because God makes him a promise, and it's a big promise.

God says, Abram, I will give you descendants.

In fact, I'm going to give you so many descendants, they'll become a nation, and nations need land, so I'm going to give you a land for your descendants to live in.

This would have been deeply meaningful for Abram because at this point in his life, 75 years old, Abram doesn't have kids.

And even if you're going to live 200 years, that's kind of late to get started.

Abram is going to say in scripture we'll live 175 years.

But at 75, he has no children.

He and his wife Sarai have not been able to conceive.

And his name, Abram, means exalted father.

Exalted father.

Now, I don't know how you chose the names that you gave your kids.

Those of you who have kids, or if I mean all of us have a name, I'm not sure if you know why your parents gave you the name that you got.

My name is Justin, and I was born in 1983, and I think that there was a law passed in 1983 saying that every fifth child must be named Justin.

I moved a lot as a kid, and every single time I would go to a new school, I'd be like, hey, I'm Justin, and I would have to be Justin M because there would already be a Justin in my class.

That was just a popular name.

Sometimes we give names or we get names because they're just popular, they're in.

Sometimes we we have names and we think about it and we pick very deeply meaningful names.

But in the culture that Abram was part of, your name was kind of everything.

Names were deeply connected to meanings.

Names weren't just chosen arbitrarily, they had real meaning, and your name would often be your reputation.

So Abram's name means exalted father, and he has no kids.

He's 75 years old.

When he meets someone new and he says, My name is Abram, they say, Oh, what does that mean?

It means exalted father.

How many kids do you have?

None.

Huh.

That would have been like a shameful thing for Abram.

This constant reminder that he is not who he's supposed to be.

He is an exalted father who has no children.

But God says, I will give you children.

I will give you descendants.

I will give you so many descendants that they're going to become a nation and they're going to need land.

And this promise is everything to Abram.

So he goes, He leaves.

It's interesting.

I mentioned this earlier, but later God's going to change his name to Abraham.

We'll actually read this.

Genesis chapter 17.

Genesis 17 · chapter mention

When Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, I am El Shaddai, God Almighty.

Serve me faithfully and live a blameless life.

I will make a covenant with you, by which I will guarantee to give you countless descendants.

At this Abram fell face down on the ground, and then God said to him, This is my covenant with you.

I will make you the father of a multitude of nations.

What's more, I'm changing your name.

It will no longer be Abram, instead, you will be called Abraham, for you will be the father of many nations.

Now, in between the first promise and this next one, where he gets his new name, Abram does something interesting that we will explore as we go on in this study.

He and his wife, Sarai, they still can't have kids.

It's been many years since God made the promise.

It's not happening.

So they decide to take things into their own hands.

They're like, you know what, let's make this happen our way.

And so Abram does have a child, but not with Sarai.

But they essentially say, Well, that will be like ours, and this will be our way of fulfilling God's promise to us.

And so for the first time in Abram's life, he's able to go to people and say, Hey, I'm Abram.

Like, oh, what does that name mean?

It means father, exalted father.

They go, Oh, how many kids do you have?

They go, I have one son, and he's awesome.

And it makes sense.

He's now the exalted father, but right when that happens, God shows them, He's like, hey, whoa, that's not how this was supposed to happen.

I'm still gonna fulfill my promise through you and your wife, Sarai.

I know you've kind of done it your own way, so you know what?

We're gonna change your name.

Now it's Abraham, which means father of multitudes.

Multitudes or father of nations.

So now he's right back where he started.

Now he has to go tell people, hey, I'm Abraham.

They're like, oh, what does that mean?

Father of multitudes.

How many kids do you have?

One.

Like, as soon as he has the ability to have a name that fits, God's like, not doing it, changing it.

God definitely has a sense of humor, but there's obviously a lot more going on here than just God being playful.

And this is sort of our focus today.

And I think it's a really important focus at the outset of a year.

God knows who Abram or Abraham is.

He knows who he's meant to be.

He knows who he will become.

God knows Abram better than Abram knows himself.

This is a really powerful idea if you'll really think about it.

There are things about you that you don't even know.

You ever have someone reveal something to you about yourself that you did not know?

Usually it's a bad thing.

Usually it's someone who's like, Do you realize you do this?

You're like, I didn't, but now I do.

We used to tease Steve, who is our our you know founding pastor here at his hands, one of the top two pastors in the history of our church, for sure.

Uh we used to tease Steve.

Um some people say second, some first.

It really just depends on your preferences.

I'm fine either way.

I mean, it's okay.

Uh I've been doing this longer than he did, but then he also started it, and so that's a big thing because this was a Kmart and I couldn't have done that.

So it's just really it's your preference, whatever.

Um, we used to we used to tease Steve because we would always, when he would give the message, we would go through and we had recordings, and this was a much more arduous process back in the day to take a recording and then like put it on a CD, if you remember those.

Um, and then people would be like, I'll buy that physical thing with this one message on it and I'll keep it forever.

Uh and so people used to buy CDs with messages and all that kind of stuff before we had podcasts.

Well, we would always go through the recordings, and we noticed that Steve would always do this one thing.

Every time he would give the message and he would say, Amen, at the very end, he would sniff.

Every time.

He would go, whatever, we pray, amen.

And then he'd walk off.

Every single time.

And like we just, those of us on staff, like one of us, like, have you ever noticed that Steve always sniffs when he says amen?

Like, no, I've never heard that.

But then once you were made aware of that, you could not not notice that, right?

It just was this thing.

It's like, amen.

And so we actually made a compilation for Steve of Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

It was great.

He loved it.

He was so grateful for that.

He loved it so much.

He was.

We've probably all had things like that, right?

Where someone someone knows something about you you don't know.

Like, okay, men, if you if you're willing just to be honest, how many of you did not know you snored until you got married?

And a woman was like, You snore, and you found that out.

Any, just just me?

Just four of us, five of us?

Okay, good.

Yeah, I I found out I snored in 2005 when I got married.

And I had a roommate before I got married, and he snored, and it drove me nuts.

And I would complain about it, like, oh, John snores, it is awful.

And then I got married, Megan and I moved into our apartment, and like day three, she's like, You snore.

I was like, I don't snore.

She's like, You do.

And I just had no idea.

I got to learn that about myself through someone else.

That was fun.

All right, ladies, how many of you found out that you snore when you got me?

No, no, I'm just teasing, don't raise your hand.

We're good.

We won't go there.

You're good.

It happens though.

I may have once recorded my wife snoring just to have it as a, you know, just in case I may maybe I'm not saying it, I'm not confirming that, but maybe I have that in my uh back pocket in case.

So usually it's a bad thing.

You find out something about yourself, but sometimes it can be really good.

Sometimes someone can show you something about yourself that you never would have seen.

And it's it's like a blessing.

It's a good thing.

In fact, this morning I was texting the parents of this boy named Pate, who plays on my fourth grade basketball team, currently three and one.

We lost one game by one point.

Really, it was a coaching issue.

So I we'll we'll get it back.

Don't worry, don't worry, we're gonna be good.

Um, but I got this boy on my team named Pate, and and I can tell Pate's been kind of frustrated because he hasn't scored as much as he he wants to, but I was going back and looking through film because I'm one of those dudes.

And we I was examining all the footage from the last few games over the break, and I noticed this thing about Pate.

He is like incredible at this one really specific thing that you would almost never notice.

He he throws inbound passes.

Okay, I know I'm talking basketball, sorry, I do that a lot.

Uh he throws inbound passes like we don't really have, we have plays.

If you've ever coached fourth graders, we have inbounds plays, but they don't ever do them.

No matter how many times you're like, you draw it, you good, you go to each kid, you know what to do, you know what you're like, yes.

Then you say, okay, go, and they just run in different directions.

And it has zero, like it looks, it doesn't matter.

It just I don't even practice them anymore.

I just go like, run.

And Pate, as I was going through the footage, seven times this year, Pate has just had the ball, and boom, he hits someone who's wide open at the exact right moment we've scored from it.

Seven times.

And I text his parents, I was like, hey, I just want you to know, I've coached basketball for a long time.

I have never seen a kid, I'm not, I'm not lying or exaggerating, I've never seen a kid who is as good at making reads and making the right pass from an inbounds play as Pate.

And it's turned into 14 points for us this season, and it's a big part of why we've won some games.

And I got to text him that this week.

And it's like a super small thing, but I just noticed it, and his parents sent me back, like, oh, that meant so much to him.

He he's beaming because he didn't realize that.

He never walked away being like, I'm really good at inbounds passes.

You know, it's not how fourth graders think.

But he is.

Right?

Sometimes people can reveal something to you about yourself that you didn't know, and it's a good thing, and it lifts you up a little bit.

Okay, there are things about you that you don't know.

That's what I'm trying to get to.

There are things about you that you do not know.

They are unknown to you, and they might be unknown to everyone around you.

You do not know what your future is, you do not know what truly you're meant for.

You do not know what's gonna happen to you later this year.

You that's why I don't believe I'm it's fine to have them, but every five-year plan I've ever had has been dumb.

I've had people come to the church and be like, what's the five-year plan for his?

I'm like, no idea.

And they might look at me and think I'm a bad leader, and maybe I am.

But I've had five-year plans before.

And every time I've had a five-year plan, five years later, I can look back at my five-year plan and laugh.

The year 2020?

Remember how that year went?

I started that year with a series called 2020 Vision.

I thought I was being so clever, and it was all about how at the start of the year, let's get our eyes clear on the future and what this year can be.

And then late January, it was like, never mind, forget all of that.

You know?

Like, we don't know.

Here we are at the start of a year.

You don't know what 2026 is going to look like.

You don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow.

Now you can plan for it, predict, and that's great.

And some of you are more gifted at that than others, but even if that's your you're bent and you're good at sort of looking at the future and and you have areas of expertise that allow you to make educated guesses, you also know that those can change in a heartbeat.

But God knows.

He is never caught off guard, he is never surprised, he knows what's going to happen, he knows what you're truly meant for, he knows what you're good at.

There are things that, I don't care if you're 20 or or 75 like Abram, there are things that you don't even know about yourself.

Gifts, abilities, roles that you get to play in people's lives and you have no idea, but God does.

He knows you.

That's why he was able to make promises to Abram and give Abram a new name because he knew things about Abram that Abram didn't know.

Abram thought of himself as a failure.

Abram thought of himself at least as a failure in terms of his ability to have children.

And God's like, I know that you are an exalted father.

I know that you're gonna be the father of not just an ethnicity and a nation, you're gonna be a father in many ways of a faith.

God knew things about Abram that Abram did not know about himself and could not have known, and God revealed those things to him.

God brought those things out of him.

Psalm 139, verse 16.

Psalms 139:16

The psalmist wrote, You saw me before I was even born.

Every day of my life was recorded in your book.

Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.

We have countless stories in scripture where God knows something about someone that they don't know.

We can look at the story of Gideon.

Judges chapter 6.

Judges 6 · chapter mention

Gideon is a man who at this time is part of a really unimportant family.

The nation of Israel is kind of besieged and oppressed by a group of people called the Midianites.

And it says in Judges 6, then the angel of the Lord came and sat beneath the great tree at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash, the clan of Abizar.

Gideon, son of Joash, was threshing wheat at the bottom of a wine press to hide the grain from the Midianites.

That's that's he's hiding food.

He's eating in secret so that his food doesn't get taken.

It's really, really brave action.

Then the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, Mighty hero, the Lord is with you.

And if you read the rest of the story, Gideon's like, You got the wrong guy.

I am not, I am hiding in a hole in the ground, trying to thresh a little bit of wheat in a wine press.

That's not what you use wine presses for.

Like, I'm literally filled with fear right now.

And the angel addresses him as mighty hero.

He didn't have the wrong guy.

Gideon was a mighty hero, and he would become that.

He would ultimately lead the entire nation of Israel, and he would lead them to freedom from the Midianite people.

And there's countless stories of that in the Bible.

There's David.

A prophet shows up to David's home.

His father's name is Jesse, and he's like, one of your sons is the next king of Israel.

Bring him to me.

And so the father invites all the sons that he has except for David.

David's a little shepherd boy.

He's like, Yeah, it's not David.

And the prophet, he's looking around.

His name's Samuel, and he's like, It's Do you have any other kids?

Because these guys, I mean, they kind of look the part.

Some of them are really impressive looking, but God's not telling me it's these guys.

And Jesse's like, Well, there's David.

I mean, but all right, I'll get David.

And David walks in, and Sam is like, that's the one.

God knew things about David that David could never have known.

You can look at Moses, you can look at countless stories in the Bible where God says, Hey, you, you're the one, you're the one that's going to do this really important thing.

You're the one I'm going to use in this mighty way.

And they're all like, I don't know.

Take the disciples.

I mean, in many ways, the disciples would have been viewed as kind of rejects in their culture because their jobs were not the jobs that the best and the brightest were chosen to do.

They were doing the jobs that you did when you didn't get picked for the important stuff.

And Jesus shows up and he looks at him and he says, Hey, from now on, you are fishers of men.

He knew something about them that they didn't know.

And he called them into that and he lifted them out of where they were into this entire new identity, this entire new place.

This is really powerful.

It's really powerful.

In fact, it's it's even more powerful than the idea of God knowing everything that you've ever done.

There's a story of Jesus in John chapter 4.

John 4 · chapter mention

If we read John chapter 4, Jesus has this conversation with a woman at a well, she's a Samaritan woman, and he ends up revealing that he's the Messiah to her.

John 4 · chapter mention

He tells her, I'm the Messiah.

He hasn't said this to anyone at this point, and she doesn't believe him.

And he says, Okay, well, let's talk about this.

And he basically tells her everything she's ever done.

He just lays out her whole life story.

And she's blown away, she believes in him, and she runs into her village, and it says in John chapter 4 that she starts telling everyone, come, I've met the Messiah.

John 4 · chapter mention

He told me everything I ever did.

That's pretty amazing to be able to tell someone everything they've ever done, to know all the things they've done, all the things in the past.

That's powerful.

I mean, because of our phones and their surveillance state that we live in, there's probably a file on all of us out there somewhere where they can at least tell us everything we've ever looked at the internet on, right?

That's why when you say a word around your phone two days later, you get an ad for that very thing you said.

You're like, what in the world?

We'll just try it.

If I'll say sponges right now, sponges.

Let's see if we all get ads for sponges in the next couple of days.

Here you're looking for a new sponge, right?

I'm sure there's there's a history out there for each and every one of us of all the things we've done.

But no one can tell you who you will become.

No one can tell you your future.

No one can tell you who you're meant to be.

Yes, it's impressive that God can look at us and go, I know everything you've ever done.

It was impressive when Jesus did that to the woman at the well, but it's so much more powerful for God to go, I know who you are, I know who you're going to become.

I know who you're meant to be, and God knows you.

He knew Abram.

He knew Abram better than Abram knew himself.

And we'll see this countless times in the story that every time Abram's about to give up, every time Abram has a failure and he's gonna have many, he's gonna do some dumb stuff.

Okay?

The Bible records all the stuff, not just the good, it's it is honest.

But God constantly reminds Abram, I know who you are and who I've called you to be.

And here we are at the start of a year.

And God knows, God knows who you're meant to be this year.

He knows what your purpose is, he knows He knows your year, He knows you better than you know yourself.

And if you seek Him, if He's your greatest priority, you have the chance to discover all of that.

In fact, we're told in Jeremiah 29, 13, if you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me.

That's what Matt shared a little bit earlier.

If you don't know Jesus, keep looking, keep searching, you'll find him.

He'll show up.

Proverbs 8.17, I love all who love me, those who search will surely find me.

Worship team, you can make your way back up.

We're gonna take Lord's Supper together here in just a moment.

But I guess here we are at the start of a year, and I just want to ask a simple question.

Do you want to know the one who knows you?

Do you want to know the God who knows you?

Because you can know him.

You can know him better than you know him now.

Guys, I'm gonna be totally honest with you.

I I had a great 2025.

It was great.

I'm really grateful for it.

I think I'll look back on it with a lot of good memories, but I definitely came into this year super distracted.

I mean, we're just at a season of life with our kids and it's crazy.

And I'm sure many of you can relate to this.

I would say that like my wife, she wakes up and she's told me this before.

She's like, I wake up and the first thing I think about is like, oh God.

And I was like, that's great.

Yep.

Obviously, as a pastor, same for me.

I don't ever wake up going, how am I gonna pay for all this stuff?

I don't ever wake up thinking that.

I don't ever wake up worried about all the things that are going on or how we're gonna get this done or how we're gonna get that done.

Because I've just been in this stage of life that's kind of crazy.

Many of you have been in the same stage I'm in, and you've made it, you've escaped, you've got you great.

Help me, pray for me, right?

It's a good and life's good, it's not bad, it's just busy.

And I get obsessed about things.

I'm hyper-focused in in weird ways where if I get if I get focused on something, I can like lock in and drive everyone around me crazy.

Just insane.

And especially if I get an idea.

I'm like, ooh.

And then it's just everything, just constantly.

And I've had a bunch of stuff like that, like things that are good, but they're not God.

Does that make sense?

Like, there's a difference between good and God.

And I've been really distracted for the last few months on some really good things, but so focused on those good things that I'm I'm just being honest, less focused on God.

And I just don't want that to be the story of my 2026.

Because none of that stuff really matters compared to him.

All that stuff will fade.

And I want to know God better at the end of this year than I know him right now.

I really do.

Because he knows me.

He knows you, he knows you better than you know you, he knows who you're going to become.

That's incredible.

There's a version of you that you are not right now, and he knows that version of you.

He knows who you are.

That's why Jesus could look at people and pick them.

And everyone's like, huh, that one?

Why?

Because they were looking at who that person was, and Jesus was seeing who that person would be.

He knows you like that.

And if you will, if you will seek him, if you will devote yourself to him, if you will submit yourself to him, if you will make him your obsession this year, if you will say that whatever your New Year's resolutions are, great, but there is nothing I am focused on more than my God.

2026 will be the year that I know him better than I've ever known him before.

I'm gonna get closer to him than I've ever been before.

If that is your focus, this will be the greatest year of your life.

That's actually the theme of our study on Abraham.

It's called getting to know God.

Getting to know God.

Because Abram is actually not the main character of his story.

Like we're gonna get to know Abram for sure.

And he's he's interesting.

You'll get to know him really well.

He does some interesting things, some smart things, some really dumb things, some really dumb things over and over again.

We're gonna get to know Abram, but but actually, through the story of Abram, we get to know who God is.

We get to know the Father, we get to know his nature, his character, and that's that's the unique thing about Abram.

Bit by bit in his story, God is showing him who he actually is.

And Abram has all these misconceptions, all these ideas about God that aren't accurate, like many of us do.

And just slowly but surely, over time, over the course of a century following God, God reveals his nature, his character, his heart to Abram.

And through Abram's story, we get to know God.

That is my biggest prayer this year for all of us, that we would just know him better, that we would be closer to him, that we would talk to him more, that we would listen for him more often, that we would spend more time thinking about him, just thinking about him, that you'd be sitting at home and you throw your phone to the side and you put it away and you turn off the screen and you just sit and think about the Lord.

And say, Lord, do you have anything for me?

You, God who knows me, God who knows me better than I know myself, you know all my days, they're all laid out before you.

Nothing is a mystery to you.

So, Lord, here I am and I am open to you.

You know me.

If you have anything you want to say to me, say it.

I'm yours.

Like I want this to be a year where my kids walk down the stairs, and instead of seeing their dad on his phone and working on something because he's got some idea or calling someone on the phone or watching some game on TV, I would love for my kids just to walk downstairs and see their father sitting quietly.

And I know they will interrupt me.

That's what they do.

And they're like, Dad, what are you doing?

I'm just thinking about the Lord.

I'm not choked up and emotional.

I just swallow some air.

I can fake it.

I can be, oh God, I just want to have a year.

We're gone.

No, I literally just oh, that was funny.

Okay.

Fred, I almost cried.

I almost cried.

Fred, Fred's the king of the almost cry.

Fred does that when he teaches.

He always gets to that line where he's like, and God, and he just, he's all you're like, he's gonna cry.

Nope.

At the last second, pulls it back in because he's a man.

So I want to have a year where even my children, I'm just being honest.

I want to have a year where my children go, my dad is focused on the Lord, not his church.

Those aren't the same thing.

Not, oh, dad's busy, he's working on the message.

I'm always working on the message.

Because it has to be good every week, or everyone gets mad.

I hope.

No, I just want to have a year where I'm focused on him, where I'm obsessed with him.

I want to get to know him better.

Anyone with me?

You want to get to know God better?

All right, well, let's do it.

So here's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna study the life of this man named Abraham, Abram, whatever you want to call him.

And it's interesting, guys, it's crazy in many ways.

There's gonna be some challenging conversations, but it's inspiring and it's powerful, and it's so unique.

And I promise you this: if you're here, if if you dedicate yourself, not just to being here on Sundays, but I know sometimes we're out of town, we can't, whatever, but if you'll just dedicate yourself to like this is your priority, knowing God, knowing him better, that in December you can say, Man, I am so much closer to him than I was in January.

I've never been this close.

There's nothing that will bless your year more.

And so, with that in mind, we're gonna take Lord's Supper.

And if you're new, by the way, we do this every Sunday.

This is a little meal that Jesus asked his followers to take with him.

And it's bread and juice, and it represents his body and his blood.

And we have these at tables in the back.

And if you missed it on your way in, you can go grab one now.

You're free to take part in this with us.

And if you don't want to do that, you can always do it next week.

Jesus himself said this in Matthew chapter 6.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

Don't worry about these things, saying, What will we eat, what will we drink, what will we wear?

These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers.

But your Heavenly Father already knows all your needs, right?

He knows you.

This is like Jesus saying, Hey, January, don't be like, oh, what's gonna happen this year, and what's gonna happen with my job, and what about my kids, and where are they gonna do this, and what if this goes wrong, and and How many don't worry about all the things?

That's what everybody does.

So it dominates everybody's mind.

You're not like that.

And Jesus says, seek the kingdom of God above all else and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.

Seek God.

Put him first.

Make him the most important.

Make him your obsession.

Make him your priority.

Get to know him better.

And he'll take care of all that stuff.

He'll give you what you need.

He's good for that.

Jesus knew that, Jesus lived that.

And so can we.

And so with that in mind, let's take the bread.

We're going to pray for it.

This bread represents the body of Jesus given as a sacrifice on the cross for us to pay the price for our sin.

But it didn't just cover our mistakes and failures.

What Jesus did on the cross opened up a way for us to know our God.

You can know him.

Jesus has made that possible.

You can know him and know him better than you've ever thought possible.

So let's pray.

Father, we thank you for this bread.

Jesus, we thank you for this sacrifice that you made.

Spirit, we ask that you open our hearts, that you stir within us a desire, a greater desire than we have ever had before to seek you, to submit to you, to follow you, to know you, to love you, that we would be people this year who would be able to say with a straight face, with nothing but honesty, I am after God.

I want to know the one who knows me.

Jesus, you've made God known to us.

You've made our Father known to us.

Help us desire to know him more.

And thank you, Lord, for making that possible.

Let's take the bread.

Now the Jews.

Jesus, this is your blood.

You shed your blood for us.

You bled for us, you died for us.

You didn't do that so that we could have a new religion.

You didn't do that so that we could move church from Saturday to Sunday, so that we could do things a little bit different.

You did this so that we could know our God.

We could know our Father.

We could know our Creator.

You said in John 17 that this is eternal life.

To know God and the one He sent, Jesus Christ, to know you.

Lord, we want to know you.

We don't just want to believe in you.

We don't just want to know about you.

We want to know you.

So fill us with that desire.

Give us a burning desire, Jesus, to know you more, to seek you with our whole heart.

And to find you and maybe find you in ways we've never found you before.

We pray this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.

Let's take the juice.

One last verse.

Psalm 27.

Hear me as I pray, O Lord.

Be merciful and answer me.

My heart has heard you say, Come and talk with me.

And my heart responds, Lord, I am coming.

I believe for every one of us, God is saying, Come and talk with me.

Come and get to know me better.

I believe today is an invitation for all of us that the Lord is saying, I want to know you more.

And if you'll respond, Lord, I'm coming.

Lord, I want to know you more too.

Who knows what this year could be?

Guys, before we go and undecorate some trees, we got somebody going on with Jesus, someone who definitely wants to know him more.

So let's celebrate this together.