Faith, Hope, Love - Generational Faith

Good morning.

If you're new with us here this morning, we want to welcome you here.

Thank you for being a part of what's going on this morning.

We do have a connect card in the seat back in front of you if you have time, if you'd fill that out with as much information as you feel comfortable with during the service.

And then you can put those in the giving kiosks at the back of the of the church.

We appreciate it.

Also, uh one other thing is we we're thankful not only for the hands and feet offering, but for your giving in general.

The reason that we're able to continue to do the work of ministry here at Trinity is because of, first of all, the faithfulness of God, and then the faithfulness of you as individuals and people who are willing to give.

And uh so we thank you for doing that.

All right.

Are you ready for the word of God?

Amen.

It's ready for you as well.

So let's get ready for that.

We're going to be looking at Hebrews chapter 11, verses 17 through 22.

Hebrews 11:17–22

Um, we're in a sermon series called Faith, Hope, and Love.

It's all about the fact that believers in Jesus are called to live by faith.

We're called to place our hope in Jesus Christ completely, and we are called to love God.

And the way that we love God and love people well is by first understanding how much God loves us.

Amen.

And 1 Corinthians 13, 13 is our key verse for this whole section, and it says, And now these three remain faith, hope, and love.

But the greatest of these is love.

Last week, Mark, Pastor Mark did an amazing job of showing us the main lesson of Abraham and Sarah's story.

Remember the story of Abraham and Sarah last week and Isaac, their firstborn child, uh, is neither our faith, it's the lesson that we learned is that neither our faith nor our obedience, but rather relationship with God that comes in the process of believing and the blessing that comes through us to others.

That was the whole message of Abraham and Sarah and what we were taught last week.

So we're gonna pick up on that theme today as we look at the direct descendants of Abraham and Sarah and the legacy of faith that was continued through them.

So the title of today's message is Generational Faith.

Generational faith.

Are you interested?

Okay.

If you're not now, hopefully by the end of this you'll be extremely interested.

Let's read verses 17 through 22 out of Hebrews chapter 11.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.

He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.

By faith, Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau, and by faith, Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff.

By faith, Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the Exodus of the Israelites and gave directions concerning his bones.

Let us pray together.

Father, we thank you for this passage from your word.

We thank you for everything that you've already accomplished here this morning.

We thank you, Lord, that the Holy Spirit is moving in us and among us and through us.

And we ask that you would illuminate your word this morning so that we would understand what it is that the Spirit of God is saying to Trinity Community Church and all of those who are watching online this day.

This day, Lord God, help us to have ears to hear, open our hearts, change our minds when they need to be changed.

Help us to serve you in the way that you deserve.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

So this last week I went to visit somebody in the hospital, and this person is uh is dealing with a very serious diagnosis, and so I went to encourage them and pray for them.

At least that's what I thought I was going to do.

And as I was there, all of a sudden this person began to switch over from dialogue into having a moment of praise and worship laying in the hospital bed.

And so as she began to have praise and worship with the father there in the hospital bed, I was flipping through Facebook.

I'm only kidding.

I'm only kidding.

What did I do?

I joined in with her.

I joined in with her and I began to praise and worship God.

And all of a sudden, she stopped that and she began to pray.

And as she began to pray, she did not pray for herself, for her health, for her healing.

She didn't pray about any of those things.

You know what she prayed about?

She prayed about her children and her grandchildren.

She asked that the same God that had been faithful to her through all of her life, through all of the experiences that she had been through, that had faithfully saved her and helped her and her husband to live as faithful saints of God.

She was praying that that same God would show Himself real to each and every one of her children and grandchildren and on and on and on.

She was concerned with the spiritual legacy, with the spiritual inheritance that could come from a person who truly believes that God is the God of generations.

Amen.

She then turned her attention to Trinity Community Church and began to pray for us.

And I won't go into all the details of that, but let's just say it was a powerful time of prayer.

I didn't even get to pray.

She looked at me at the end of her prayer, and it was obvious to me that she was finished and that she was ready for me to leave.

And so I said, I love you.

I gave her a hug and I made my way out of the out of the room.

Again, always it's amazing to me.

There's something about, especially senior saints who have been in the Lord for a long time.

You get in and around them, and especially even when they're going through difficult circumstances like this, and it's like you just realize, man, they have a faith.

There's something real about their relationship with God that I want to emulate, that I want to make sure is in my life as well.

Amen.

So here we go.

So beautiful and sincere.

Uh, am I concerned primarily with just my own journey?

Ask yourself that question.

This person was not just concerned with their own journey, or maybe what may be what may come to each of us, the Lord tarries, the end of the journey here on this life.

Or am I deeply devoted to the outcome of future generations?

Is that something that's in my heart?

Is that something that I'm concerned about?

In our short passage today from the book of Hebrews, chapter 11, we see five generations represented.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

Five generations, each one of them building upon the faith foundation of the former generation, the generation that laid a foundation of faith before them that they could then walk on and choose to walk on in their own generation.

So as we look at this text together this morning, I want us to ask three questions of ourselves.

And hopefully the answers are gonna be in the affirmative.

But let's ask three questions of ourselves as we go through this passage and try to answer them together.

So, number one, here's our first question: Do we trust God with the outcome of future generations?

Okay.

Hopefully that's gonna get louder as time moves on here through the service.

Do we trust God with the outcome of future generations?

Do we really believe that God is concerned about the future?

That God is concerned not just about our lives and our time and our season and our generation, but he's also concerned about that which comes next.

Now, if we're honest with each other this morning, we can admit that it's difficult at times to look at the future generation and to be uh, you know, completely optimistic.

Am I right?

And we have to understand that there's an ever-increasing pressure placed upon future generations to conform to the ways of this world, to conform to the ways that the devil wants them to live.

I never would have imagined in a million years that my children would face the kinds of things that they face on a regular basis.

I never would have imagined it when I was a little kid that we would be seeing the types of things in our culture that we would be carrying around in our hands in the forms of cell phones, the ability to help in so many ways, and also to see destruction come in so many ways.

I never would have imagined Amy and I understanding that now our five grandchildren and two more on the way, which will make seven what they face and what they will face as time goes on.

My friends, it is time for us to understand that God is concerned about future generations, and we should be as well.

And we shouldn't just be concerned about them from the standpoint of pointing out their faults and their weaknesses.

We should be concerned about them in the sense of desiring that they find their way to the walk of faith.

Faith is what matters in the end.

Without faith, it is impossible to please God.

I am so grateful in my own life.

I am a second generation Christian.

God sovereignly, and this was in the middle of losing my oldest brother who died.

My mother was miraculously saved.

God encountered her in a powerful way that was undeniable.

And just a couple of years later, my dad would follow suit, and then myself and my brother.

And I'm so grateful for that.

And then just a couple of years after God did that in our lives, not only is he concerned about future generations, he's also concerned about former generations.

I had the privilege as an eight-year-old boy of leading my grandfather to know Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.

And all of my grandparents came to know Jesus.

So, in that regard, I'm a third-generation Christian.

And now, thanks be to God, all of my four children are serving the Lord.

And the two of them that are married, their spouses are serving the Lord.

Our oldest grandson has just recently gotten saved and was baptized.

And our young, our four-year-old girls are very close.

I mean, they're they are believers to the greatest, to as much as they can be at this age, right?

It's amazing to me.

So within our family dynamic, we we actually now are looking at five generations of believers.

And it's only by the grace of God, it's by the grace of God and us being willing to be obedient when it came to sharing the faith that God has given us.

So Abraham gives us a great example of how to pass the tests that we face when it comes to putting our complete trust in God concerning future generations, our trust that he will save them, that he will transform them, that he will keep them, that they are his own.

Amen.

So we're gonna look back at Genesis chapter 22 in order to really understand this passage well.

Genesis 22 · chapter mention

We're gonna read a few verses starting in verse 1.

After these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, Listen to this and think about it as we're reading it.

And he said to Abraham, Abraham, and he said, Here I am.

He said, Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.

So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac.

And he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.

And on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar.

And then Abraham said to his young men, Stay here with the donkey.

I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.

And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife.

So they went both of them together.

And Isaac said to his father, Abraham, My father, and he said, Here I am, my son.

He said, Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?

Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.

So they went both of them together.

And when they came to the place of which God had told them, Abraham built the altar there, laid the wood in order, bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood.

And then Abraham reached out his hand, took his knife to slaughter his son.

But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham! And he said, Here I am.

He said, Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.

And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns.

And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.

So Abraham called the name of that place, the Lord will provide, as it is said to this day, on the mount of the Lord, it shall be provided.

What a story! What an example of extreme faith that Abraham shows us.

You remember from last week how involved the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham and Sarah about the son of promise that Isaac would be born.

Can you imagine after all that they went through, all that they experienced, the impossible request that God asked Abraham to perform?

He was testing him, he was challenging him.

Listen to the sliding scale of emotion when it comes to the description of what was being asked.

It said, take your son, then take your only son, Isaac, then take your son whom you love, and place him on the altar as a sacrifice.

Abraham proved that he trusted God with the outcome of future generations.

He proved that he trusted God, and he did this in several ways.

So we're going to look at just a few.

Number one, Abraham obeyed God.

It says in Hebrews 11 again, by faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promise was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.

Now don't for a minute think that this was easy.

This had to have been one of the most difficult things that was ever asked of anyone, but especially of Abraham.

Immediately when God spoke to him, the next morning he arose and he started on this three-day journey with Isaac.

And it seemed to be leading to what?

To the death of Isaac.

He went as far as tying his own son onto the altar and raising his knife over his head to prove his willingness to obey.

Now, thankfully, thankfully, God's not going to ask of us that we do that.

But how many of you know we are required to place our children on the altar in the sense of saying, God, we trust you with the outcome of our children.

We trust you with the outcome of our children.

And that's the second thing that Abraham did.

He trusted God.

It says that he considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.

It made no sense in the natural for Abraham to trust God.

It made no sense.

He was faced with the truest test that anyone could be faced with.

Abraham believed that even if he was required by God to sacrifice his son, that God would make a way for him to live again.

That is faith, my friends.

Now, if you were listening carefully as we read through the passage in Genesis, you might have picked up on a couple of clues that showed Abraham's faith and the fact that he trusted in God.

Listen to this one.

He said to his servants, I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.

Who is he speaking about there?

Himself and Isaac.

We're gonna go to worship and we're gonna come back to you, right?

That's faith.

He said to Isaac, his son, when he inquired about where the sacrifice was, God will provide for himself the lamb.

And actually, if you read the original Hebrew, you can even say it like this: God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering, my son.

And how many of you know that because Abraham trusted God and because he was obedient, God honored his faithfulness.

God honored his faithfulness.

An angel of the Lord stopped Abraham as his knife was in mid-air and told him not to harm his son.

Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.

And as they looked down the hill, there was a ram whose horns were caught in a thicket.

The Lord had provided himself a sacrifice.

How many of you know that this was a shadow of things to come?

There would be another lamb, another firstborn son, another child of promise, who would himself find his head wrapped in a crown of thorns, and who would be laid on the altar of a wooden cross and sacrificed for each and every one of us.

In this passage, we get the term Jehovah Jirah, the Lord our provider.

The Lord is our provider.

He's our heavenly Father, and He cares about us.

My question to all of us again: do we trust God with the outcome of future generations?

Amen.

The second question I have for us this morning is Are we intentional about blessing future generations?

Are we intentional about blessing future generations?

It says in Hebrews 11, by faith, Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau by faith.

Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph.

How often do we catch ourselves cursing the next generation instead of blessing them?

Come on, can we be honest with each other this morning?

Did you come to church to put on a fake face and to pretend, or did you come to be real and to receive the help that we all need?

Let's be real, let's be authentic with each other.

So many times we find ourselves cursing the next generation.

Some of us may even say things like, those young whippersnappers, they don't know what they're doing, you know?

We have our own terms of endearment, although they're not, it's not endearing at all.

We have our own ways of describing the failings or the difficulties of the next generation.

It's the easiest thing in the world to point out the perceived failings of others, isn't it?

And to be pessimistic concerning the future, even when it comes to our own families.

My friends, can I beg you?

You this morning.

Do not give up on your own families.

Do not say that they've gone too far, that it's too late, that there's no hope.

Would you please, by God's grace, would you please allow the faith of God to rise up on inside of you again?

God loves your family and He's concerned about future generations.

In James chapter 3, verse 10, it says, From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.

James 3:10

My brothers, these things ought not to be so.

We should stop saying things like, You're always gonna be that way, you're always gonna fail, you're never enough, you can't make it.

You'll never survive.

We should start saying things to our young men like, You've got what it takes.

You're gonna make it.

God's with you, and he's gonna walk with you all the days of your life.

We need to say to our young women, you're beautiful.

You are beautiful in God's eyes.

He sees you as his beloved daughter, and he walks with you, and he's gonna walk with you all the days of your life.

We should speak words of life and words of blessing and not words of cursing.

Amen?

Can we should we take a minute right now and just repent?

Seriously, do we need to just take a minute and say, God help us?

Forgive us, Lord, for the times when we get frustrated, when we don't speak words of life over our children.

Help us, Lord, to see your will, your way, and to speak those things that are not as though they are.

This passage reminds us that we should bless our children first.

Isaac's life didn't come, it wasn't extraordinary in the same way that Abraham's life was in comparison with his father.

There weren't a lot of things that caused him to stand out.

He was a well digger, and every time he would dig a well, the enemy would come and fill it in.

And he'd dig another well and they'd fill it in.

It was kind of like a it was part of his story, right?

But his story comes alive when God used him to bless his own family, right?

Now remember the story of Jacob and Esau.

Jacob uh was is the mean name means deceiver, supplanter, and he wanted to uh receive the firstborn blessing even though he was born second.

He and his brother were twins, and his mother kind of got along, uh went along with this.

Jacob was her favorite as well.

And so uh Esau's been out hunting, he comes in from the hunt, he's starving.

Jacob's made his favorite meal.

He offers him some of the stew and he says, if you give me your firstborn rights, I'll give you some stew.

And Esau, not exactly being a forward thinker, trades his birthright for a bowl of soup, right?

Must have been some really good soup.

And then uh what does Jacob do with his mom's help?

He dresses himself up in animal hair and uh tries to make himself smell like Esau.

Esau must have had uh sort of a rugged sort of uh musk involved.

Uh and so uh Jacob enters into the room of his father Isaac and he tries to make his voice sound deeper like Esau, and he smells like Esau, and he feels like Esau, and he comes up to his dad and he's wanting the firstborn blessing, and he sort of has earned it in a roundabout way by getting Esau to give it up, right?

And Isaac in his blinded state uh hesitates and hesitates, and then he finally lays his hand on him and blesses him.

But how many of you know that the deceptive behavior with Jacob didn't end then?

He continues on and on, right?

Until finally he's faced with the repercussions, his brother Esau is coming towards him, and he knows that his brother Esau is mad at him and he's gonna try to harm him.

And so Jacob, it says, wrestles with God.

And this is one of the most interesting passages in all of Scripture, in my opinion, because it actually says that if God hadn't touched his hip and put his hip out of socket, that Jacob would have won.

Wrestling with God.

What?

But God didn't, obviously, God does win, always wins, right?

But he he put his hip out of place, Jacob's hip out of place.

And we know that uh Jacob, even at that point, held on to God and wouldn't let go of him until God gave him a blessing.

And so God blessed him, he blessed him so much that he changed his whole name and his whole identity.

Instead of Jacob, now he would be called Israel, which means child of God.

Child of God.

So we should bless our children.

We should bless our children.

Amen.

And then what I'm currently enjoying, we should bless our grandchildren.

Am I right?

Come on now, grandparents.

Are there any grandparents in the room?

We should bless our grandchildren.

Don't let the blessing stop with our children.

Let's press on into the next generation.

And if that becomes Gigi, great-grandchildren or whatever layer that becomes, let's bless them.

Jacob, remarkably, doesn't bless his own children in the same way that Isaac blessed Jacob.

Instead, he blesses Joseph's kids.

So Joseph, the favored one, the favored son of Jacob, uh, Jacob blesses his sons Ephraim and Manasseh.

And again, as he's getting to lay hands on them, he crosses his hands and he lays his hand of blessing for the firstborn on the secondborn, and vice versa.

So this is continuation.

And what does that prove to us?

It proves that God's the one who chooses how he blesses, right?

That's up to him and whom he places his favor upon.

Our job is to bless according to uh God's way and God's word.

It's interesting that the 12 tribes of Israel, which were the sons of Jacob, now become 13.

Never heard of the 13 tribes of Israel?

Twelve of them, including Joseph's two sons, were granted land in the promised land.

Who was not?

There was one tribe that was not.

Do you remember their names?

Levi.

And why weren't they given land?

Because their inheritance was God Himself.

Their inheritance was God Himself.

They served the Lord and they served the people in the tabernacle.

So we should bless our children, we should bless our grandchildren, and we should bless the Lord.

We should bless the Lord at all times.

His praise should continually be in our lips, on our lips.

It says here that Jacob bowed in worship over the head of his staff.

After the blessing of future generations was completed, Jacob uses all the strength that he can find within him to prop himself up on the staff so that he can stand in whatever posture he was able to stand.

And what did he do towards the end of his days and the end of his life after the blessings had been imparted into future generations?

He blessed the Lord.

He blessed the Lord.

How do you want to finish your race when Jesus returns or you pass from this life?

What do you want to be occupied with?

Blessing the Lord is something that's a worthy occupation.

Amen.

Aren't you sick and tired of stories of people in the last of their days turning their backs on Jesus?

Lord have mercy on us.

Help us, Father.

That that wouldn't be our testimony, that we would be those who finish well.

And that sort of leads us into our third question.

Are we leaving behind a legacy for others to carry with them?

Are we leaving behind a legacy for others to carry with them?

It says, by faith, Joseph at the end of his life made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave directions concerning his bones.

So Joseph, who had been mightily used of God to sustain the life of countless people, you remember the story of the famine in Egypt, and also how before the famine there were seven years of plenty, and how Joseph had this master plan given to him by God to store up the wheat and the grain.

And so then when the famine came, he was not only able to sustain the people of Egypt, but of all of the surrounding countries.

All of those who were affected by the famine were able to be blessed because of Joseph's faithfulness.

And so what was Joseph's mindset at the end of his life?

Was it that he would be, that there would be a huge uh you know, monument built for him in Egypt?

Would he be uh, you know, some kind of catacomb, some some kind of uh, you know, uh an amazing tomb where people could come and worship at the you know at the memory of Joseph.

Joseph's thought was concerning a future hope.

Joseph said, gather my bones up after I die and put them in a box and take them with you.

Because I want to be found in the place of future hope, which is the land of promise, the land of Canaan.

That's where I want to be.

Imagine hundreds of years later, and they did that exact thing when Moses, and we'll learn about Moses next week, I won't get on top of that, but when Moses left the bones of Joseph, Joseph left with him.

Look at Genesis 50, verses 24 and 25.

Genesis 50:24

And Joseph said to his brothers, I'm about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob?

Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.

Was Joseph a man of faith?

Did Joseph see something in the future?

Did he believe that there was something that God was going to do?

And that did he want to participate even in some kind of posthumous way, you know, after he had passed from this life?

Yes, absolutely.

You know, there's probably no one in the entire Old Testament that is a better example or most closely a type and shadow of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let me just run through a few of these with you.

The analogy between the two is striking.

Joseph was the best beloved son, as was the Lord Jesus.

Joseph obeyed his father, and the Lord Jesus said he had come to do his father's will.

Joseph's brethren hated him.

It is said of the Lord, he came to his own, and his own received him not.

Joseph was sent by his father to seek his brothers, and the Lord Jesus came to the earth seeking the lost.

Joseph found his brothers who were shepherds in a field.

Shepherds came by night when the Lord Jesus was born.

His brethren mocked Joseph, refused him, and plotted to kill him.

And the same thing happened to our Lord Jesus, didn't it?

Joseph was sold into slavery, and the Lord was sold for thirty pieces of silver.

Joseph's coat was dipped in blood.

The soldiers gambled for the clothes of the Lord Jesus Christ with his blood upon it.

Joseph was sold into Egypt where God raised him up to save the world.

The Lord Jesus went down into death after having been tempted by the world, the flesh, and the devil to become the savior of the world, both Jew and Gentile.

While on the throne, Joseph gave bread to the people, and Christ is the bread of life.

Joseph made himself known to the brethren when they came to Egypt, and someday the Lord Jesus will make himself known to his own brethren.

What an example to us of Christ.

What an example to us of this ongoing generational faith.

Now I want to back up just as we finish this up to a couple of verses that came before the passage that we read from Hebrews chapter 11.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

So listen to this as I read this to you.

It's from Hebrews chapter 11, starting in verse 10.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

If it doesn't, I'm gonna need a Bible.

Because I don't I don't have it in my notes.

It was a last-minute edition.

Anyway, we'll get to that in just a minute.

Let me say this let us together trust God for future generations.

Can you do that with me?

Can you trust God for future generations?

Can you once again put your hope and faith and trust for future generations?

Let us be about the business of blessing future generations.

Can we learn to speak words of life?

Can we return to that practice again?

Can we do this?

Will we do this?

Will we stop cursing future generations and talking about all that's wrong in the world?

And can we start speaking words of life and words of hope over the kids and grandkids and uh our spiritual inheritance as well?

It's not just uh kids and grandkids in the in the uh after the flesh.

Many times God gives us those that we can disciple and walk with through their lives.

Let us be about the business of blessing future generations and let us leave behind a legacy for others to carry.

Let us leave behind a legacy for others to carry.

What will be said at your funeral?

Have you ever thought about that?

I've wondered that a few times, not in a like a weird way, like where I've written out my funeral service.

Maybe someday that will be the case, but at this day I'm not doing that.

But what will be said at your funeral?

Will it be able to be said, just like it is of all of these generations from Abraham's family, that they weren't perfect, they did make mistakes, that they fell down and they got back up again.

But for the most part, and especially at the end of their stories, they were men and women of God who walked after him.

They were found faithful in their generation.

Amen.

So now let's finish with this Hebrews 11, 10.

For he was looking forward to the city.

This is talking about all of the people that we're reading about and studying about in Hebrews chapter 11.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

This is what inspired them.

They were looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.

Right?

Um, yeah, that's good enough.

They were looking for a city.

Let's go on.

Let's let's go on.

Are you can we go on?

Are you guys okay?

I've got three minutes according to the clock up here.

So by faith, Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful, who had promised.

Verse 12.

Therefore, from one man and him as good as dead was were born descendants, as many as the stars of heaven, and as many as the immeasurable grains of sand by the seashore.

Verse 13.

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.

My friends, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and Joseph and Ephraim and Manasseh, and on and on and on, were not concerned with the things of this life primarily.

Were they used by God in this life?

Absolutely.

But they were all looking forward to the life that would come.

They were all looking forward to the fact that God would be faithful to his promise to send his son to live a perfect life, to die on the cross, to be raised from the dead, to be seen by many people, and then to ascend into heaven, to be seated at the right hand of the Father, to send the Holy Spirit to us, to live among us and to dwell inside of us.

That is that is the the per that was the purpose of God, and that's what all of these saints were looking forward to.

They were looking forward to restored relationship with their Heavenly Father.

I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but there is a second coming of Jesus.

There is a day and an hour that is coming, and I believe that it may be sooner than we can even imagine.

And trust me, I've been hearing that my whole life, and I still believe it.

And I believe it even more today.

My thought is my question for all of us in conclusion, I know I've asked a lot of questions today, but are we thinking about that?

Is our faith and our hope based on not only what's happened in the past?

You see, we have the benefit where Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all those guys didn't have the benefit of Christ having come to this earth.

They were living their whole lives based on a promise.

We get to walk on truth, on reality, on what has already occurred as we yet prepare for what is to come, and as we are going to be re-reunited, reunited with our Heavenly Father, and we're going to live forever and ever with him.

Celebrating all of the generations.

I just want to pray a prayer for all of us, and this includes me.

Maybe I'll say especially me.

I want to pray concerning those three questions.

I want to ask the Lord to help us.

Let's not let somebody else in this world who doesn't have the truth show more hope in our children than we show and convince them to believe a lie.

Let's stand for something.

Let's stand for truth.

Amen.

Father, we can we we confess to you today we need your help.

First of all, we're grateful for those who are in this room who are standing together, who have been impacted by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We are so thankful for the great salvation that you have provided for us.

Help us, Lord, to not grow weary in well-doing.

Help us to not uh you know sit down or quit.

Help us to finish the job that you've given us, to complete the task that's in front of us.

And Father, first we ask that you would help us to trust you concerning future generations, the outcome of future generations.

Lord, we believe that future generations are in your hands.

They're in your hands.

Lord, we thank you that you are the God who loves to save, that as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.

We ask this, Father, for each and every one of our families, Lord, that you would cause each one, it doesn't matter how far they seem away from you now, would you reach out to them even this hour, this day, this moment, and remind them of the love that you have for them and draw them to yourself.

Lord, we trust you and yet we ask you to help us to trust you.

And Lord, we also ask that you would help us to be blessers of future generations, that you would forgive us for the times when we have cursed those that come after us, when we have said they're never going to make it, that they're so they're so tainted by the world that because they believe this or because they believe that, there's no hope.

Father, we ask that you would help us to be people who would speak words of life and speak blessings by faith over our children, over our grandchildren, and over all who are a part of future generations.

Help us, Father.

Help us, Lord.

And lastly, Lord, would you help us to leave a legacy?

Help us to live a legacy that can be left for future generations to carry forward.

Lord, help us to endure to the end.

Help us to be found faithful in every generation.

And we thank you for it.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Now, if you've never accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and you've heard the good news about him today, there's going to be a team up here that's going to be ready to pray for you.

We'd ask that you would come right after the service.

And if you have other personal needs, healing or other things, please come and receive prayer.

We say a blessing over you and we'll release you.

May the Lord bless you and keep you.

May He cause His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you.

May He lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace in Jesus' name.

Amen.

My family and I have been on vacation for the last few days in Gatlinburg.

And I drove, we drove in from Gatlinburg to preach to you this morning.

We're going to go back for one last day and we're going to celebrate future generations.

Amen.

And by the way, this works both ways.

You can also represent these same things to the former generations that are still alive.

God wants to save your parents and your grandparents.

Amen.

Love you guys.

God bless you.

Have a great week in Jesus.