The Story of the Tree(s) - Oaks at Mamre

Thanks for listening to the His Hands Church podcast.

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And thank you for being part of what God is doing at His Hands.

How are y'all doing?

Thank you, Nathan.

That was awesome.

Y'all can clap again.

It's good to clap again because I gotta get my water.

Well, let me start with a few announcements.

I've got four announcements.

Justin writes these for you, so I'm just gonna read right through these here.

We've got a couple important Sundays coming up that are great in the life of his hands any church.

We've got November 10th, which I guess is two weeks from today, is that right?

Uh is Baptism Sunday.

And you can sign up in the lobby for that.

If anything deserves clapping, that would be it.

You can sign up in the lobby as soon as we're done today.

And uh even if you show up on that morning and you just feel led that's something that God has for you, then we'll have everything you need.

And we just love doing that as a church.

And then the Sunday following that, Tailgate Sunday, is November 17th.

Uh food, football, games for the kids, um, and we'll have signups for a chili cook-off competition uh starting today, which is always awesome.

And you can sign up at the infodesk uh after the last song.

And then, number three, uh this Friday night, uh worship night for the college students and 20 somethings in the arena, 7 p.m.

Uh, it's that's a great night of worship, and there's free child care.

Uh, if you're a young couple with kids, then child care will be there.

There's also free child care if you have no children.

Um that's an actual joke.

He wrote a joke in here.

I appreciate that.

I'm just reading.

I've never had anybody write material for me.

It's just strange.

Do it doing this every every Friday, uh, first Friday of the month.

And then giving.

Okay.

See, he's writing this like I'm supposed to read it, and then it's giving.

He says, Thank people.

It's needed.

So I almost just said that.

Thank people.

Okay.

We do, we're very thankful for everything that you give.

And it's really, God blesses it here at his hands.

We love this facility, and you know, it costs money to keep everything running.

And uh, I promise you that it would be put to great use.

Uh, everything that we give here.

We give 50% of every dollar that's given uh back to the community, and that's a step of faith for us, uh all of us that give here, and we believe God's promises to bless that generosity.

Got four columns in the back.

We don't pass a plate or anything like that if you're new.

Uh so just take a little bit of initiative if you want to do that, or you can also give online uh the website, or we've got a His Hands app if you want to download that for your mobile phone.

So I think that's it.

Well, let's let's pray and we'll get started this morning.

God, we just thank you so much for uh what you have for us this morning and for your word.

We just thank you for the Bible and what a blessing it is to us.

And uh we just pray you would open our minds.

Just give me a clear mind this morning that I would speak only what you'd have me to speak.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

I think I'm gonna sit down here.

I was telling Jeff earlier, this is one of those weird messages where it's like, I had a really busy week and it got written, and so it's all here, but I have given no thought to actually saying this in front of people.

So I have this thought, like, what am I supposed to say here?

This is uh, if you haven't been here, we're doing, it's taking eight weeks and we're going through the Bible.

In eight weeks, which might sound like that's just crazy fast and kind of kind of ludicrous, but we're trying to take this fresh perspective on seeing the Bible.

Uh so we're dividing it in uh into eight chapters.

And I a couple weeks ago, if you were here, uh they had me on stage and I did this drawing that I've done a few times in the past that helps remind me of some of the major turns in the Bible.

And uh just kind of helps me to realize how they all fit together.

And so I did that, and each little dot in the drawing kind of corresponds to a tree that's in the Bible.

It's called the story of the trees.

And this is good because you know, there's the Bible begins and ends with a tree.

There's lots of trees in the middle.

And then in the end, you see that the whole drawing itself is a tree.

And so it reminds us that uh the Bible's one big story.

That uh uh God is doing something, it's not just a bunch of little stories that put are put together and uh we try to hang them to our lives and try to make that work for us.

But the Bible's one big story.

This is God's redemption of all creation.

So if you didn't see that and you're kind of disoriented, we have that online, and you could watch that in uh video format even uh through the website or the Facebook page and get caught up.

So we're dividing the Bible into eight big chapters.

This is week two, and so it's really it's like seven historical chapters, and then uh one extra chapter is added in there for the wisdom of the prophets.

And those books in the Old Testament kind of wind through some of the history in the Old Testament.

And so think of it kind of like you know, if the Bible is planet Earth, then these are the seven big continents.

And uh the wisdom and prophecy is like the ocean or the waters that flow in between all these things.

So we're you know, we're so used to to hearing the Bible talked about on you know, like one verse level or maybe one chapter level type messages.

Or maybe we're used to going to Bible studies that do you know one small book of the Bible, and that's really great.

It's it's great to dig in at that level, you know, and there's it's probably a good reason why that's the normal kind of mode for how we do this.

But for just for a fresh perspective, we want to try to back up and see things a little bit wider.

So imagine those are like address level or city level type of uh of the ways for us to look at the Bible.

These weeks are like continent level of perspectives.

So the idea here is just that we want to uh gain some confidence coming back to the Bible.

And so each week we're gonna have a different week, different person present uh a different chapter.

Last week we had Justin do creation in the fall.

Today is Abraham and faith, and next week uh Bill Thrasher is gonna do Moses in the law.

So we just want to gain some confidence here.

So maybe on one hand, God will use this to remind you of some section of the Bible that you've read before and he wants you to go back there and just dig in.

Or if this is maybe your first time digging into the Bible, then we just want to build some confidence.

You know, this is the Bible is definitely for you.

And it's a great gift, it's something that brings us joy.

And so, at the very least, we don't want anyone to be discouraged by the structure of the Bible.

Because the structure is actually a great encouragement to us.

So, here, in less than two minutes, I'm gonna try to summarize this drawing to get us all back on the same page.

And I'm gonna read this to sync with the video here.

But chapter one, God creates everything, but creation falls.

And the promise is given through hope.

The hope that death will be defeated.

In chapter two, God comes to Abraham and promises that he'll be the father of a great nation.

And through his descendant, all the nations will be blessed.

The promise is given through faith that God is going to do exactly what he says.

In chapter three, God comes to Moses and gives his people the law to teach them how to live in his presence, how to love, and to convict them their need of a savior.

The promise is God's presence given through love.

In chapter four, God comes to David and promises that from his line one will rise that will be a perfect king forever.

The promise is a coming kingdom.

In chapter five, we have the wisdom of the prophecy books that wind through the past history of the Old Testament, and they remind us of God's presence in every aspect of our lives and in our history.

And they point like an arrow to a coming Savior.

In chapter six, Jesus comes.

That's the highlight, and that will be right at Thanksgiving with this year, which I love.

And Jesus fulfills and contains all the promises that came earlier: the hope that death will be defeated, the faith that the nations will be blessed, the love learned in the law and being God's presence, and the perfect kingdom that will last forever.

Jesus single-handedly accomplishes all of this.

In chapter 7, Jesus sends his spirit into us as believers and founds the church.

His spirit reminds us of his perfect life and eventually connects us to what Jesus is doing in New Creation.

And finally, in chapter 8, we see everything come together.

Jesus shares his every victory with us.

New creation is described with all the same themes noted already in the life of Jesus.

Death is defeated, the nations are blessed, God is present with us, and his kingdom is forever.

And then we realize the fullness of everything that he's been doing all along.

Our limited understanding is like a child's drawing, but the reality of what he's doing is so beautiful.

And when we read the Bible, we're honored to finally see the shape of what God's doing.

And everything he does is good.

So that's where we're headed with all this.

But rewind this real quick because today we're on chapter two.

That's impressive, the video people.

Today we're on chapter two, Abraham and Faith.

You know, it's really is I think it's appropriate that I'm I'm kind of in this mode of it's just simple this morning because this is not the kind of message to over-present or overthink.

This is faith.

Faith is what God does.

This is faith that God's just gonna speak this morning.

So the promise that it's given in this chapter is, like I just said, that uh God comes to Abram.

First his name is Abram, and then Abraham.

So if I get that wrong, about halfway into the story, he becomes Abraham.

But he comes to Abraham and tells him he's living in Haran, which is off to the east, uh, Mesopotamia, and he tells him that he's gonna be the father of a great nation.

And through him, all the nations are gonna be blessed.

And so he tells him he needs to move.

You need to get on the move, pack up your family, and go live in the promised land.

And Abraham believes God and he does this.

So already, this is really remarkable, I think.

I mean, Abraham has no idea where he's going.

God just says, You need to go to the promised land.

But, you know, back in this day, there's no, you know, you don't go online, you can't Google this and look at travel photos and go, it looks like a decent place, you know.

Uh we could do that.

I can maybe move my family there.

He just said, go that way, and I'll tell you when you get there.

And Abraham says, I'm gonna do it.

And so he arrives in the promised land, and oh I'm sorry, already so lost here.

Don't think what I what I've already forgotten here.

So he arrives in the land, and it's so easy to read these chapters.

This is like uh Genesis 12 through the end of Genesis, Genesis 50.

And, you know, so two weeks into this, we're only one book of the Bible into the end of the Bible.

Don't worry, it's gonna get a lot a lot faster next week.

But when we read this story, you know, that's the promise that starts at the very beginning, Genesis 12.

You go, you're gonna become the father of a great nation, all the nations of the world are gonna be blessed.

But then you read these 39 chapters, and it can so easily feel like uh these are 39 ways to easily screw up the planting of a nation.

Because it's it's like, well, where's this nation?

You know, this God is so so sure of this promise he gives to Abraham, and Abraham believes this.

He's a man of faith.

And there's some wavering that goes on, and his kids, you know, some odd family dynamics.

But faith is what we'll see as the gem in this whole story.

That's what really shines from all from the story that otherwise would be sound pretty crazy.

So Abram goes and he moved, he lives in the Promised Land, and he makes his home there.

But when he gets there, you know, he doesn't have any land to call his own.

There's already people that are living there.

And so he lives in a tent.

His whole life, he lives in a tent.

Eventually he has a little small plot of land that he buys to bury his wife and himself and his ancestors, but he lives in a tent.

That is his life of faith.

Uh so there's a famine that comes next in the story, and Abraham has to flee to Egypt with his family.

And here we see, like, you know, step number one on how to screw up: starting a country.

Because he goes to Egypt and then he's afraid for his life.

So he tries to pass off his wife, who's uh apparently exceedingly beautiful, pass her off as his sister.

And so, you know, if your wife is supposed to, you know, through that relationship, be the father of this great nation, don't put her in a position where she would potentially be pulled into Pharaoh's harem.

And uh, but eventually, you know, Pharaoh finds out about this, has them kicked out of the country.

But even in that, I mean, God absolutely honors his promise.

And he comes in and protects Pharaoh from doing anything at all.

So, despite all of these crazy missteps, even in Abraham, God's gonna honor his promise.

He's not gonna honor just the good choices, he's gonna honor the promise that he's made.

So then Abram and his nephew Lot that came with him from Haran, they decide they've grown too big with all their uh their sheep and herds, and they need to divide up.

So uh Lot picks the plains, the fertile plains of the Jordan Valley, and he goes that direction, and Abram goes into Canaan.

And God tells Abraham, or Abram at this point, that he needs to walk through the land, north, south, east, and west.

He needs to walk the whole perimeter of it, and know that I'm gonna give you this land, which is it's like his walk of faith.

And I really love that part of the story.

He just needs to know this is not yours yet, but it is, it will be.

And and that's kind of uh that's my prayer, even for these eight weeks as we go through the Bible, that this will be you taking a walk through the length and breadth of God's promises, his love for us, and just know this is for you.

This is what God has done.

So as he makes this walk uh through the land, he's able to kind of see all the different parts and meet the different people, and there's different kings, and people own different parts of the land.

And so he's able to pick the perfect place.

And uh the place that he picks uh is the tree for this week.

You know, each week has a good tree landmark, and so he picks this oak grove belonging to a man named Mamreh.

And Mamreh was one of these leaders.

And uh these leaders have these feuds, and sometimes Abraham has to come to defend some of these kings.

But in this oak grove at Mamreh, this is where he plants his tent, and this is where a God has me.

And eventually that's where he he buys one of these caves, a small plot of land where he's gonna be buried.

And so God comes to him a second time, and he reconfirms his promise to him.

And this time God makes a covenant with Abram.

So, a covenant, you know, that we don't immediately understand that in our our culture, but Abram would have known what that means.

Uh having a covenant, it was the most solemn type of oath that you could take.

It was like a blood oath.

So they would take uh a sacrificial animal and kill it and literally cut it in two.

And they'd place it on the ground, the two halves, and then the parties would walk between these two bloody halves of the sacrifice to symbolize what should happen to either of them if they uh neglect the terms of this agreement.

But when God makes this covenant with Abraham, God is the one that walks through these two halves of this bloody sacrifice.

Uh so God is the one saying, This is what's gonna happen to me, how that could even happen if I ever go back on my promise to you.

God is the one that's gonna do this.

And it's it's right before this ceremony that uh we're told that Abraham, like in Genesis 15, it says, Abraham believed God and he credited it to him as righteousness.

Abram believed God and he credited it to him as righteousness.

So make a mental note right there.

We're gonna come back to that really, really important verse.

Already we've hit kind of the meat of it.

So, what is this connection between faith and righteousness?

You know, you would think that the message coming up next week, uh, Bill's gonna do, you know, Moses and the law, that that would be the message on righteousness.

But really, in terms that's the message on Jesus' righteousness, and that will become ours, but this is the message today about how we come into our righteousness, because it is through faith.

So please, as you listen to the other parts of the Bible later on, don't ever forget, because that's what people did for generations and generations before Jesus.

They had forgotten about this promise to Abraham.

So they would read the law and all these rules, and they totally forgot that God had originally shown up and just made this promise to Abraham.

And Abraham believed it, and that was it.

It was settled.

It was credited to him as righteousness.

So Abram and Sarah are getting old at this point, and they're starting to get impatient.

They don't have any kids yet, much less, you know, an entire nation around them.

And so Sarah sells Abram on this great idea that we're gonna start a family through our servant, Hagar.

And you gotta wonder, you know, what's going through Abram's head?

He thinks, he probably rationalized himself at night, you know, my wife's setting me up with somebody else.

How could this possibly not go well?

And uh, but he agrees to this, and so Abram has a son through Hagar, and this is Ishmael.

And Ishmael's is a blessing to him, and but immediately this relationship causes strife between uh Hagar and between Sarah.

And so they become jealous and contentious, and it's so bad that Hagar wants to leave and takes Ishmael, and God comes to her and says, You need to go back, and I'm gonna make Ishmael into a great nation also.

And so uh that's the next part of the story.

So at this point, uh Abram is 86 years old.

So 13 years after that, God comes to Abram again.

He's 99 years old, and he again reconfirms his promise to Abram.

So it's over and over he's gonna keep doing this, and they're developing this friendship.

So at age 99, God gives Abram uh the covenant of circumcision, which is amazing.

And it when God does this, he reconfirms his covenant, and Abraham laughs at him.

Uh he doesn't laugh specifically about the circumcision part, which I think would be understandable, but he laughs at God when God reminds him that he's gonna become the father of a great nation.

He's 99 years old.

Uh but you gotta think, being circumcised at age 99, you know, non-anesthetic, 99, that that's really pretty impressive.

So God had to be like, you know, I know you just laughed at me, but fist bump, that's pretty, that's pretty amazing.

So he has his entire family circumcised also.

And so they are all in.

This is this is who we are, the identity that God's God's giving to us.

And it is at this moment that God renames Abram to Abraham.

So then God appears to Abraham again.

He's 99 years old.

He's still, this is when this within the same year, and he comes to him.

This is like the fourth time, I think, now, and he reconfirms his promise to Abraham.

And this time he meets him.

Uh, it describes three visitors that come to his tents that are planted there by the oaks at Mamrah.

So we don't quite know, is this the Trinity that comes?

I've always thought of it like that.

But it might have just been God with two angels, uh, because in the next story it says two angels uh continue traveling to Sodom and Gomorrah.

So maybe that that was the dynamic here.

But either way, these three travelers come, and uh Abram and Sarah prepare a meal for them underneath these oak trees.

And this is a great picture.

I'm kind of pausing here.

I always had this picture at home, my wife bought me, and uh I had seen it, it was it's like this icon.

It's such a beautiful picture of the Trinity underneath this tree uh eating with Abraham because that it's this table, and the way the picture is drawn, uh the table is kind of in reverse perspective and invites you to sort of sit at the table.

And it's this great picture of what it is to be the Trinity.

In like Eastern Orthodox, they would use this to.

Picture to try to teach the concept of the Trinity, but it's the same picture that they use to teach the concept of hospitality.

It's the same thing.

And the idea is the Trinity comes and sits at this table, and we rush off to try to serve God and make this meal and come back, but he comes back and sitting already at the table is the wine and is the bread or the sacrifice, which is reminds us of communion.

So it's like who's serving who here?

You know, God's really the one that's serving us.

So it's at this meal, God shows up and has meals with people a lot too, that God tells Abram and Sarah again that you are going to be the father of a great nation.

And this time, Sarah laughs at God.

And I love this part in the story too.

Sarah laughs at God, and God says, Why'd you just laugh at me?

And God says, Is there anything too hard for me?

And Sarah immediately gets defensive and she tries to cover and she says, Yeah, I didn't laugh.

And then God in the story says, No, I I you laughed.

Pretty sure you laughed.

I love that part.

Like, you know, that's not really the funny part.

Me, God, showing up and telling you what I'm about to do, that's not funny.

But you laughing at me, telling me apparently what I can't do, that's pretty funny.

So this is 99 years old, and they say, within a year, you're gonna have uh a son.

His name's gonna be Isaac, and he's gonna be the one that threw this great nation.

And so it's at this point these these two angels leave and they go down the road and they say, We've heard the cries coming from Sodom and Gomorrah, the cries of the victims there, and we're gonna see this firsthand and probably destroy the city.

And Abraham uh argues because he knows his nephew Lot is there with his family, and he says, you know, what if there's 50 righteous people or 45 or 40?

So he has this long conversation with God, trying to talk him down.

He's like negotiating.

And eventually he says, What if there's 10 righteous people?

Will you not destroy the town?

And God says, if there's ten righteous people, I won't do it.

But in the end, there's not.

There's not ten righteous people, and Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed, but but Lot is saved.

So just as promised, uh within a year, Abram and Sarah, Abraham and Sarah have a child, and they have Isaac.

And 100 years old.

Sarah is 90 years old.

That would absolutely be a world record now.

I actually Googled that, the Guinness book.

You know, like in vitro fertilization, maybe like 60s, late 50s.

But I have no concept for that.

4,000 years ago, uh, 90 years old, having a son.

But it so you have to keep that in mind, because it's right on the heels of this story when Isaac is still fairly young, that we have this amazing story of God coming to Abraham and telling him to take Isaac up to Mount Moriah, where he's gonna lead him.

It's like a three-day journey, and sacrifice Isaac as a burnt offering.

And that's a really, really difficult story.

I think it's an amazing story.

Uh it's, it's, it's one I even pause to even talk about at all.

There's so much that you could say there.

But I think the main point for us to take away from this story, maybe a couple things, is that when Abraham walks with Isaac up this mountain, he learns more about who God really is.

I think God, this is all really new.

This is how God is starting his big story, teaching us faith.

So he was revealing himself to Abraham.

And he and Abraham knows, even as Isaac asks him, where's this sacrifice?

And Abraham says, God will provide the sacrifice.

And sure enough, that is exactly what God does.

And caught in the thicket, there is this ram that God provides for the sacrifice.

And that's even the new name of the mountain that's given to that spot on the story, that God provides the sacrifice.

So Abraham knows on a deeper level here, this is the God that I serve.

This is the real God, not these fake gods, these pagan gods that made a common practice of actually sacrificing their firstborn just to try to make the gods happy with them.

But the real God, you'll know your God is real when he provides the sacrifice himself.

And obviously, this is a really perfect picture of Jesus, because Jesus is the one that willingly offers himself as the sacrifice.

And in the story, it says that Abraham, as they're walking up the mountain, Abraham takes the wood for the burnt offering and places it on the shoulders of Isaac.

And Isaac carries it up the mountain.

So that reminds us of Jesus, you know, carrying the cross up the hill.

Or when the sacrifice, the ram is found miraculously in the thicket, uh, he's caught in the thorns there.

And that's like Jesus with his crown of thorns that he willingly bears for us.

But you know, there's a second important thing in that story, and that's you know, as Abraham is making this his way up to Mount Moriah there, he's thinking through all this.

And how could this possibly be?

Now, how could I possibly lose this son that I've had at age 100?

And God has specifically named him as being the one through whom this great nation is going to be founded.

And it's at this moment, and the New Testament talks about this a lot, so we can be confident about this, but it's at this moment that Abraham knows.

He just knows by faith that I serve a God who could raise the dead.

And he knows that.

And that's that's an important point of conviction there.

Um here.

The uh Hebrews 11, it gives us uh this description of faith.

It says faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen.

It gives us assurance about things we cannot see.

So if you remember, last week's chapter was about hope, the hope that death will be defeated.

And so hope is important because hope hope anchors us back to what the real problem is.

You know, when hope is given to us as a gift.

So that's that's what God was doing in the last chapter: creation and fall.

Creation falls, but God immediately gives this promise, this hint that death is going to be defeated.

And he wants to remind us that that's the real problem.

That cannot be obscured.

Death is the elephant in the room.

And so having hope reminds us what the real problem is and anchors us there.

But faith is what anchors us into God's reality, his eternal reality, of he's gonna do something.

And the only solution is when God is gonna show up and make good on his promise.

And that's what Abraham knows.

If God's made this promise and Isaac is here with me, then he must be able to raise the dead.

And so faith is not something, when we say that word, it's not just a generic word like we want to have faith.

Like it would be cool if God would show up every once in a while and give me some nice hints on how to make my life work a little bit better.

That's nice and all, but that's not really faith.

I mean, we have to start with faith, where you have faith in the thing that we hope for.

And hope is what anchors us to what's really wrong.

What's really wrong with our lives, my life, everyone, is this death thing.

And faith, we have to start like Abraham.

We have faith that God can raise the dead.

It tells us in Romans 4 so the promise is received by faith.

It's given as a free gift, and we are all certain to receive it, whether or not we live according to the law of Moses, if we have faith like Abraham's.

For Abraham is the father of all who believe.

And that's what scriptures mean when God told him, I've made you the father of many nations.

And this happened because Abraham believed in God who brings the dead back to life and who creates new things out of nothing.

So Abraham is our father of faith.

You know, it's faith is not something that we just kind of we try to make our lives work a little bit better right now, and then maybe hedge our bets for eternity.

Faith is anchored into eternity.

Uh, 1 Corinthians 15 says, if our hope in Christ is only for this life, then we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world.

Wow.

And that now that's an indictment of how most of us live a lot of our Christian lives.

You know, I just want some hope for right now.

That's not really what you want.

That's not what you're really made for.

You are made, like we said a few weeks ago, with eternity in your heart.

And only the Spirit can help us to understand what that is.

And you've got to deal with this death thing.

And faith is what does that.

So our hope is bound to eternity.

Uh, and that victory has to go right through death, and so we're left with faith.

And so once we see the importance of faith in the life of Abraham, then we start seeing this faith.

It really jumps off the pages in the rest of the stories in the book of Genesis.

And so it's like four generations that happened, starting with Abraham.

And so you see, it's just one after another, once Abraham founds this faith.

You know, in faith, Abraham sends his servant back to his homeland to find a wife for Isaac.

And miraculously, uh, Rebekah comes.

And Isaac and Rebekah have a couple twins, Jacob and Esau, and Esau uh surrenders his birthright just casually.

And then Jacob deceives everyone and gets Jacob's blessing.

But in faith, Jacob still blesses.

And he knows that despite even this deception that's going on that he doesn't know about, despite all that, God is going to make good on his promise.

And so Jacob blesses.

Not for right now, what I can see, but sometime in the future, this is what's going to happen.

So Jacob flees with his nephew, or to his nephew Laban's and Mary's, Leah and Rachel.

And in faith, he works for 15 years in Laban's household.

Finally, he leaves with his family and journeys to be reunited with his brother Esau, who earlier had sworn to kill him when he stole his blessing.

And so, in faith, as Jacob is leaving and he's about to be reunited with Esau for the first time in 15 years or more.

So, in faith at this moment, Jacob wrestles with God.

God comes and visits Jacob on the night before he's about to be reunited, which is this amazing story in the Bible.

So it's, Jacob probably thinks, I believe, that he's gonna die the next day.

Esau's probably gonna kill me.

He's sworn to kill me, he should kill me, I'm in the wrong.

And so he knows God's my only hope to defeat death.

And so God shows up before him and he wrestles him and he demands his blessing, and God gives it to him.

But from that point on, Jacob walks with a limp.

And I suspect that was probably a much better approach to his brother the next day, this humble limping approach, rather than this proud, deceiving kind of man that he used to be when he was younger.

But in faith, so there's all this crazy dynamics in the family going on, but then again, this gym of you know what?

There's one thing I know.

My only hope to defeat death is God, and I'm gonna wrestle him, grab him by the shoulders, and demand that from him.

So Jacob has 12 sons, and Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers.

He's one of the younger boys.

But in faith, Joseph endures slavery and imprisonment, even being falsely accused of rape.

And he's convinced that everything that his brothers meant for harm, God will use for good.

In faith, Joseph rises to prominence in Egypt and stores up grain for seven years in advance of a great famine, and so he saves his family and the entire nation.

And then Jacob and his family move to Egypt to escape the famine, and in faith, Jacob instructs that his body be carried back to the promised land and buried next to his father, Isaac, and his grandfather Abraham, in that cave that's close to the oaks of Mamreh, because he knows by faith this promise is going to happen, and this is where I want to be.

And so then the family is later enslaved in Egypt for 400 years, but by faith, Joseph requests that his bones be brought about, brought out of Egypt when the deliverance comes.

So faith is taking root generation after generation.

Hebrews 11, a little bit later in that same chapter, it tells us it's impossible to please God without faith.

Anyone who wants to come to Him must believe that God exists and He rewards those who sincerely seek Him.

You know, we have to take that to heart.

It is impossible to please God without faith.

You are not going to be the first person in all of creation to crack that code and figure out a way to do it.

That's the way it is.

All of us have screwed things up in so many different ways.

And the only way we're going to get to righteousness is by faith.

But and faith is this.

Faith is knowing that God exists and that he rewards those who diligently seek him.

It's that simple.

Faith is there is a God and He's good.

And you might think, well, that's way too simple.

But no, this is faith.

That's not you figuring that out, rationalizing that.

That is faith.

There is a God and He's good.

And you stop right there.

And if you really knew that, you knew that with every fiber of your being.

There is a God and He's good.

Then let everything else in your day come from that.

And that really changes everything.

That's changed everything for Abraham.

If there is a God and He's good, I'm gonna have Isaac.

God raises the dead.

If there's a God and He's good, and I'm 99 years old, I'm gonna have a kid.

I'm at a hundred.

If there is a God and He's good, we're going to have this promised land that I could walk through and it's already filled with all these different peoples.

But God is gonna do exactly what he promised.

It's like that question that he gave to Sarah in the tents there.

You have to ask this of yourself.

Is there anything too hard for God?

Anything at all.

And if it if there's nothing too hard, then everything that he says is gonna happen.

So through faith, through the exercise of our faith, it's credited to us as righteousness.

There's uh in in John 8, it describes the faith that Abraham had.

It says, Abram your father, this is Jesus talking, Abraham your father, with jubilant faith, looked down the corridors of history and saw my day coming, and he saw it and cheered.

That's what Abraham did.

That's how strong faith is.

Abraham looked through the corridors of history and saw the day of Jesus.

It has to be.

If God's gonna make this great nation, because Joseph lived, or Abraham lived among these people, they were sacrificing their children, and it was, this is brutal, 4,000 years ago.

And so he worked this out in his mind.

By faith I know this.

And so he looked down the corridors of history and knew God's gonna show up.

God's just gonna show up and do this.

Because that's what he trusted.

Not all this craziness in his stories, but that man that he kept meeting with that walked through that covenant that he made with him.

Luke 17 says, Well, let me give you the background here.

This uh worship team, if you want to start coming back up here.

Uh Jesus says in Luke, Luke 17, he's talking to his disciples, and uh he just told them that he they need to be forgiving, and you need to forgive up to seven times a day if that's required of you.

And his disciples say, I don't understand how we could do this.

How could we possibly be that forgiving?

Uh and they say, Master, give us more faith.

Which seems really reasonable to me.

And there's lots of other verses that talk about increasing your faith.

And so it seems like for the for one time in the Gospels, you would think Jesus would say, Hey, that's great.

I mean, finally something healthy coming from you guys.

But instead, this is Jesus' response.

He says, If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, then you can say to this mulberry tree, be uprooted and plant it in the sea, and it will obey you.

So I don't think Jesus is talking about just some weird feat of strength there.

Apparently the mulberry tree can be this big tree, but these mulberry trees, uh, his disciples would understand this context immediately.

These trees were famous for being just easily infected.

Like these, there's just gross trees, and it's worm-infested type trees when they got that old.

And there's also this like common superstition that that evil, like you know, this infested tree like that would represent evil, and that evil couldn't survive in the presence of water.

You know, it's a common kind of superstition.

And so Jesus was keying in on that.

And so I think he's saying, you know, what you guys are describing when you say you want more faith, it's not really faith you're describing.

You, it's more like calculating and reasoning, and you're calling that faith.

And you want more of that because that's what you really depend on.

But what I see, what I'm talking about, is Abraham kind of faith.

And if you had just faith as small as a mustard seed like that, then you could say to that rotten, worm-infested tree of a life that you have, you could say, be uprooted and planted in the sea.

Planted in the one place.

I mean, it's a weird uh picture that Jesus is giving, but if you actually were able to plant a mulberry tree in the ocean, then it would be a healthy mulberry tree for the first time.

It'd be like the only one you could see.

It would be in the perfect environment to just be healthy.

And Jesus said, if you had Abraham faith, the smallest amount, then you would look at your own life and you would speak to it, because you have the authority to do that.

And you would speak to your life, be uprooted and planted in the sea of my forgiveness.

Plant yourself right there at the foot of Jesus, and then you will grow healthy.

You know that.

You know that.

You walked with me as my disciples, and Jesus knows that they know.

And so that's what faith does.

It causes us with boldness to just say, you know what?

I'm moving.

Me and my family, we are moving to this perfect place, wherever God tells us, I'm going to camp out and pitch my tent right where Jesus is.

And I want to know what he has because every promise that he gives, he's going to make good on.

That's what faith does.

Each one of these weeks, uh, Marlon's is doing a painting that's that matches kind of the tree in the story.

And this is the one that he has for this week.

I think this is this is great because this reminds me also of this.

This is the tree at the Oaks of Mamreh.

And also reminds me of this single solitary tree, like that's planted in just the right place, like Jesus was describing with that mulberry tree.

That's what faith does to us.

It puts us on the move.

Wherever we've been living, God says, you go and you plant yourself next to me, and I will make good on my promises.

Let's pray.

God, we thank you so much that uh that you love us like this, that our righteousness comes by faith.

We have faith that you are gonna do everything that you said you're gonna do, and you love us, and because of Jesus, later in the story, we're gonna see.

Jesus is the one that shows up and accomplishes everything that we can't.

And so every bit of the righteousness that we have, we want to have because of Jesus.

And we want to trust you, and God give us give us faith, just faith as small as a mustard seed, to know that you are there and you are good, and you reward those who diligently seek you.

Thank you.

In Jesus' name, amen.