Welcome to the Willow Ridge Sermons podcast.
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And thanks for listening.
Glad that you guys are here.
If you have your Bibles, and I hope you do, please join me and open them to Genesis chapter 15.
That's where we will be.
I want to encourage you.
Next Sunday is our adjustment, is the shift that we are making in discipleship and in our scheduling.
And so just really quickly, you're like, Man, I'm tired of hearing this.
It's going to be the fastest it's ever been for this one.
All right.
Starting next Sunday from nine to 950 is when we'll have our discipleship time.
That's for our kids all the way through all of our adults.
You got relational discipleship opportunities and theological discipleship opportunities.
We're going to have wonderful studies like the one that you just heard from Robert.
Robert's a good friend of mine since I want to see.
I believe I met Robert in 2020, right?
And since then, I've been able to hear his story and also see how God is using some of the worst situations you could imagine to be in to grow Robert and his relationship and to use that and to leverage that not only for Robert's growth in the Lord, but an opportunity to share the gospel with people.
All right?
And so we got all types of studies that we're going to provide.
We'll have these back there.
Aaron and I will be back at the connection table at the end of the service.
We can help connect you with that.
So discipleship from nine to 950, happening in both buildings from 950 to 1015 will be our fellowship time.
That's everybody, that's all the kids, all the teenagers, all the adults gathered in here together for a wonderful time of fellowship, of coffee, juice, cakes, snacks, all those things that we love.
We'll get jacked up on some sugar and coffee, right?
And then we'll get ready for worship.
And at 1015, we'll have our kids, we'll be worshipping over there in building two for the most part.
And we will be gathered in here together as teenagers and adults worshipping our Lord and Savior.
And so we're excited.
If you show up next week and you're a little unsure of what to do, you're a little unsure what to go, we'll be all over the place making sure that you're going where you need to go to do what you need to do.
The one thing that we do want to press in is please make sure that you get registered for one of the studies.
Here's what's happening.
We don't have tons of large spaces for a lot of our studies to gather.
Okay.
And we've got some studies that are reaching their capacity, and they can't take more people than we've got set for them.
So if you're like, I'll just show up or I'll just kind of get connected at a later time.
We want to encourage you to go ahead and do that now.
If you show up next Sunday and you have not registered, all right, you're just going to get stuck with me.
So you've got 2 hours of me next Sunday then, all right?
And you might not want that.
That might not be what you feel like the Lord has for you, all right?
And that's okay.
But please go ahead and get registered and love to have you do that.
I've been using this phrase lately, I want to put it back up on the screen and it says walking together as we each take a next bold step with Jesus.
When I started going through in my mind what this looked like for us to do as a church and to take our discipleship strategy that we had in relational discipleship and make it more of a process that we will have together where we see missional discipleship where that is believer to unbeliever discipleship where we see relational discipleship so that's peer to peer discipleship but in theological discipleship that is teacher to student discipleship.
When I began to look at how we could build all of those different strategies into one process for us, the challenge that I felt like the Lord gave me for myself and that the Lord gave us as a church was this walking together as we each take a bold next step with Jesus.
And really prayerfully considering all of these words because I love that this statement embraces some important aspects for us when it comes to discipleship.
In this statement, what we see is community, right?
That's what we are.
We are a community.
We are a body of believers walking together as we so the picture that we get is that you and I as this unique body of believers, that is Willow Ridge Church.
We think of the big universal church that we're all a part of.
But then what makes the universal church so special is that there's these unique individual bodies called the local churches and we get to be a part of this one that we chose to be a part of.
And so that we're walking together as we, we're not wanting to leave anyone behind.
We're not asking you to do anything that we're not doing, right?
No, this isn't you go do this.
This is come join us as we do this together.
But that within there, there's still personal accountability that walking together as we each individually.
So here's what I love about that.
There's personal accountability meaning I don't blame anyone else for what I disobey with as we each but it also is personal accountability for me to take the step that I feel like God's leading me to take.
I don't take the step that God's leading you to take and you don't take the step that you feel like God is leading me to take that.
I take the step that I feel like God is calling me to take.
But it's not just a step because it's trusting faith.
A bold next step.
What does that mean?
What does that look like?
The whole call we're going to see this here in just a moment is God takes us through things that oftentimes are not easy.
And we have to be willing to trust Him, to not just say, I have faith in who he is, which is an intellectual faith, which is good, but I have an action faith of saying, this is what I believe.
And what I'm going to believe, I'm going to step toward.
And so I'm going to step toward Him.
As we keep our focus, it's not walking together as we each take a bold next step.
It's not walking together as we each take a bold next step with one another.
It's walking together as we each take a bold next step with Jesus, because.
We'Re not the focus, we're not the standard.
We're all in submission to Him.
So what I want us to get to, and it's just beautiful how God works this out, where we're going to land in Genesis 15 today is that we can take something like a process and we can attach a mindset to it and say that I intellectually agree that this is good and yet not attach it to our life.
About twelve years ago, I had to see a cardiologist and I went and sat down with a cardiologist who critiqued me on my love for McDonald's.
Fair fair.
And he started to smile because I guess the look on my face was like, hold up, buddy, because he's bigger than me, right?
And he said to me, and I love this, and now he'll forever be my doctor.
He said, I'm not saying that I do the right thing, but I am saying you need to do the right thing.
You see, he knew the process, but he wasn't willing to buy into it.
And I find that oftentimes that's where we find ourself when it comes to.
Obedience to the Lord.
We know the process, but we look at what's out there.
And before we even take a step.
We make the decision that this isn't going to be easy and in fact, it may be painful.
And so I'm just good with the status quo.
In Matthew 1624, Jesus told his disciples.
If anyone would come after me, anyone.
Let him deny himself, take up his.
Cross and follow me.
Jesus doesn't say if leaders would come after me.
Jesus says, if anyone.
Jesus is honest.
The call to discipleship is not a call that is light and it's not a response that's made lightly.
We have to come with the understanding and come to grips with the fact that discipleship is a difficult calling that requires men and women to boldly and faithfully make decisions in the midst of uncertainty and fear.
If I do this, then if I commit to this, then and in that, what we see is pain.
In this, what we feel is fear.
And so we make the decision that the pain and the fear is not worth it.
And what I would plead with you, what Robert would plead with you, what Scripture pleads with you, is, no, no.
The pain and the fear is minimal compared to the glory of what we understand in who Christ is.
And every moment of suffering, every moment of pain is worth it.
Is worth it.
And I say that as someone who's.
Walked through it is walking through it.
And who knows that I will walk through it again.
And this morning, this is where we find Abram in Genesis 15.
He's afraid.
So look at me.
Chapter 15, verse one.
I'm going to read and talk a little through these first six verses.
After these things, let's pause, all right?
What things?
It's been five weeks since we've talked about these things.
What things?
Well, immediately, what we have seen, what we talked about last time we were in Genesis, in Genesis 14, Abram has rescued a lot.
And he's rejected the offer from the pagan king.
The offer to be wealthy, the offer to be powerful, the offer to be a king himself.
Abram rejects it and instead affirmed his trust in the Lord.
So after these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.
Fear not, Abram.
I am your shield.
Your reward shall be very great.
But Abram said and this is what I want us to look at so God's already said, Fear not.
Why would God say that?
Because Abram's afraid.
And now we begin to see why he is afraid.
O Lord God, what will you give me?
For I continue childless.
And the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus.
His lead servant is who he's talking about, that's his heir.
And Abram said, behold, you have given me no offspring and a member of my household will be my heir.
And so what Abram is saying to God in this is I've trusted you to do what you say you're going to do.
Abram is around 90 years old.
He's without a child.
And he's beginning to think those years have passed.
And he's concerned and he's afraid.
Verse four.
And behold, the word of the Lord came to him this man shall not be your heir.
Your very own son shall be your heir.
Which is what God's been saying.
Verse five.
And he brought him outside and said, look toward heaven and number the stars if you were able to number them.
And then he said to him, so shall your offspring be.
And he, being Abram, believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness.
So abram's afraid.
And what we see comes out of his fear is faith.
I was reading a guy this week, and he talked about how you and I respond when we're afraid.
And I know you've heard the theory fight or flight, correct?
Like you've heard that before.
And this author talked about this.
He said, I think fight or flight is incomplete.
He said, I think it's incomplete when we talk psychology, but I also think it's incomplete when we talk about Christianity.
He said, because the truth is you're going to make as a believer one of four decisions when it comes to your fear, specifically in spiritual matters, not just fight or flight.
He said, the first one that you'll choose is you may choose to freeze.
Freeze.
And he defined this right as when depression begins to take over.
The situation occurs.
I don't know what to do, and so I do nothing.
And if you've experienced depression before that.
Come from these seasons of your life, you understand this feeling very, very well.
I just want to pull the blanket over my head and hide.
I just want to go away and never be heard from again.
I just want to freeze.
And in these moments, what happens within that of I'm just going to stay right where I'm at.
These pockets and moments of depression begin to overwhelm us, and it's hard to get going.
I say that having gone through that and experienced that myself, days and weeks and months and seasons of life, where the fears of this world, where the fear of the situation begins to consume, and I just want to freeze.
The second one, other than freeze is fight.
Fight.
And a lot of us like to choose when the options are fight or flight.
We like to choose fight.
And here's what I want to caution against fight.
It is this.
Especially when we deal with the spiritual world and the things that we face.
In fight, we can decide that I am big enough, I am capable enough, I am strong enough.
I am dependent enough that I can.
Get me through this, that I need no one other than myself to get.
Me through the situation that I found myself in.
And while that may be great American.
Theology, it's terrible, terrible Christian theology, because in that moment of fight, who am I dependent on?
Who is my savior?
Me.
So we can freeze.
We can fight, or we can flight.
We can run.
We can remove ourselves.
We can cut off all of our relationships.
We can quit the season of where we're at, and we enter into this wonderful stage that we think of of denial.
It's not there.
It's not real.
I don't have to respond to this.
This isn't going to control me.
I can just think positively all the time.
I don't have to deal with the fact of this is what is happening, of this is what's going on, of how this is destroying my life.
And in our flight, as we run.
We deny, and I would argue that to freeze, to fight, and to flight does not bring out positivity, does not bring out healthiness, does not produce in us what God wants to do.
And instead, it is this.
It's faith.
Now, you're like, I knew that's what you would say, man, there's all of these f's and we knew, because you're a preacher, you'd end on faith, right?
Let me explain what I mean by faith, because faith isn't freezing in the moment.
Faith isn't depending on yourself.
And faith isn't denying that the situation isn't real.
Faith isn't the absence of trouble, but instead, it's the confidence of the presence of the Lord in the midst of the struggle.
Abram is afraid, so God says, Fear not.
And then God says, I'm two things for you, Abram.
I'm two things.
He says, I'm your shield.
I'm your shield.
I'm your protection.
We all know how a shield works, right?
If you're in a battle and you've got a shield and you're going through the battle, you're going into the battle, can I tell you that shield does you no good by your side?
Can I tell you that shield does no good behind your back?
Can I tell you that shield does no good on the sideline?
But you fully understand how that shield works.
The shield works the best when the shield is out in front and you're behind.
And so God says, It's not that you're going to get through this.
It's not that you're going to ignore that this is happening.
It's not that you're going to stop.
But, man, I'm here, and I'm not just going through this with you.
And I holding hands side by side.
I'm there.
I'm in front.
I'm your protection.
God says, abram.
I got you.
Fear not.
And then he says, Your reward shall be very great.
God's already told him that.
What's God saying, abram, I'm faithful.
I'm faithful.
I know that you live in a world of unfaithfulness.
I know you live in a world where people promise big and underproduce, but.
Abram, that's not me.
That's not me.
Your reward shall be great.
I am faithful.
And Abram, though, is afraid, and he asks questions.
Now, we live in a mindset oftentimes.
That asking questions shows that we're weak.
So Abram asking questions must show that he is weak and faithless, right?
The fact that Abram, in that moment, didn't go, come on, man, what are you thinking?
Why would you do this?
Put on the Rocky soundtrack to get himself hyped up and run out of the tent ready to go, right?
This is a knock on Abram, right, that he asked God questions.
All right?
So let's go.
Matthew 26 38 through 39 will be on the screen.
This is Jesus in the garden before he's arrested.
Jesus is their ultimate model, right?
Jesus said to them, my soul is very sorrowful, even to death.
Remain here and watch with me.
Jesus says, I'm afraid.
I'm scared.
I know what awaits me.
And I'm not looking forward.
In going a little farther, he fell.
On his face and prayed.
My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.
Jesus comes and says.
There'S this death.
There's this beating, there's this punishment.
Jesus is preparing himself to feel the.
Full wrath of God for your sins and for mine.
And he's like, Lord, if there's any father, if there's any other way but he showed his faith, not as I will, but as you will.
You see, Jesus had questions.
Luke's account shares that Jesus suffered from hemiotidrosis.
All right.
Hemiotidrosis is the condition when a person experiences a high level of stress which causes the blood vessels that feed the sweat glands to rupture, causing them to exude blood under the condition of extreme physical or emotional stress.
And in Luke's account, he says that Jesus began to sweat drops of blood.
Now, I want to tell you, I've been in some situations.
I've experienced some stress.
I've never experienced that.
But this is what Jesus went through.
Is Jesus afraid?
You bet he was.
Was Jesus scared?
Absolutely.
Jesus didn't freeze.
He didn't fight.
He didn't go into flight mode.
Jesus faithfully obeyed.
Abram's question does not reveal a heart of disobedience, but reveals a heart of concern.
And with abram's concern.
God answers.
One of the greatest responsibilities that I think that I have as a parent is this when Emma and Grayson are walking through a situation, a situation they've never been in before, a situation that is beginning to create in them stress, that is beginning to create in them, anxiety that is beginning to create in them fear.
I think my greatest resource for them as a parent is not to look at them and say, toughen up and get over it, but is to say, Let me share with you.
Let your mom share with you how we've walked through that and come out on the other side of that.
And I know right now you can't see the other side, but I promise that it's there.
And here's what God wants to do in that, because this is what God has done in my life.
You see, in their limited 15 years of life experience, they feel the situation that they're in, and they can't see the other side of it.
And what we want them to know.
Is that God is faithful.
And that's what God does with Abram.
And it's a beautiful picture of God as our loving Father.
Look back at verse four and five says and behold, the word of the Lord came to him.
This man shall not be your heir.
Your very own son shall be your heir.
I can just see God doing this.
So give me some.
It's the feeling of taking him by the hand.
Verse five says and he brought him outside.
He brought him outside and not in.
A way to rebuke him, and not.
In a way to chastise him.
And he says, look toward heaven.
Look toward heaven and count the stars, Abram.
Can you do that?
Can you do that if you were able to number them?
He says.
And then he says, so too shall be your offspring.
Just Abram, come on outside with me, buddy.
I love you.
And man, I know that you think that your life is destined to be something different than what I've promised, but it's not.
It's not.
Abram, buddy, here's my plan.
You see, this plan reveals my heart for the nations.
And this plan reveals my heart for you.
And I love you.
Look at the stars, Abram.
Look at them.
And Abram believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.
He's like, yeah, dad.
Yeah.
This is faith through fear.
Faith through fear doesn't mean what is.
Happening around you isn't real.
Faith through fear doesn't mean what you.
Feel isn't valid or unimportant to God.
Faith through fear doesn't mean that your.
Current reality will change soon or even change at all on this earth.
Faith through fear is that I trust.
My shield, my God, and I know my reward is set.
And that cannot it cannot be taken from me.
And this is what we see.
But Abram's not done, and neither is the.
And really quickly, we'll take Lord's supper here at the end of our service.
I want to get to that really quickly.
What God does in these next verses is what we see is God's covenant, promise, and prophecy for Abram.
Verse seven.
And he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.
He takes him all the way back to the establishment of his very first covenant that he made with Abram.
But he said, this is Abram, o Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?
So Abram before, asked for confirmation of his lineage that God had promised.
And now Abram comes back to God and says, can you affirm for me the land that you promised because the people need a place?
So God responds.
Verse nine.
And he said to him, bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon.
And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other.
But he did not cut the birds in half.
And when the birds of prey came down on the carcasses, abram drove them away.
And you're probably thinking that just got weird, right?
All right, so let's explain what's going on.
Abram knew exactly what he was to do with these animals according to the customs of the time.
What Abram's preparing to do is sign a contract, right?
Next time you close on a house, just think it could be more difficult than that.
All right?
There's no credit score involved in this.
One, though, all right?
And God told him to get ready for this signing.
So in those days, contracts were made.
By the sacrificing and the cutting of animals, right?
And they would split the carcasses of the animals, they would lie them on the ground.
And this covenant, this commitment was made between the parties as they walked through the parts of the animals, repeating the.
Agreement that they had just come to.
So Abram gets all of this ready, thinking, here's what me and God are going to do.
We're going to walk through these together and we're going to say, I get a son, I get a people, I get a place like he's ready.
Me and God walking through dead animals.
Here we go.
This is what he's waiting for.
And the symbolism of this is supposed to be pretty big.
If you're entering into a covenant in this, first it's sealed with blood, but also you're acknowledging if you break the covenant, what happens?
This bloodshed will be poured out on me.
So if I break this, this is what could happen to me.
And so Abram has his doubts.
God says to him, let's sign a contract and settle it.
Let's go.
Verse twelve.
As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram.
And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him.
Then the Lord said to Abram, know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for 400 years.
But I will bring judgment on the nation that they will serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.
As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace, you shall be buried in a good old age, and they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.
So as the sun was going down, here's what's happening here.
Abram would have to wait for God so they could walk through this together.
And God had not yet appeared to kind of seal this so they could do this.
And instead, what God does is he causes a dark sleep, a deep sleep.
Abram's knocked out, he's snoring.
No one's going to wake him up, right?
And then God gives him a dream.
And specifically in this dream, we don't have time for all of the details, but God basically tells Abram of all of the slavery and hardship that Israel would endure in Egypt.
But that the land that was given to Abram and his covenant descendants.
There'd be a long period where they lived outside of the land in Affliction, but yet they would return to the land with great possessions.
All right, verse 17.
This is where it gets good not that it wasn't good before.
Sorry.
When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking firepot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.
On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, to your offspring, I give this land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Canaanites, the Kezzizites, the Cadmonites, the Hittites, the parasites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebucites.
So here's what happens.
As Abraham was either asleep or possibly still groggy from the sleep, he saw God do something.
Abraham's there and he's ready to walk through the animal parts with God signing the contract.
But instead, God leaves him on the side and God goes through the parts.
As a smoking oven and a burning torch.
God passes through those pieces.
The smoking oven, the smoking pot would be used as an illustration of smoke or a cloud that we'll see over and over again in the Old Testament representing God.
We'll see the burning torch would remind.
Us of the fires and remind us of the presence of God.
But here's what we see in this.
God says to Abram, you and I aren't going to make this together.
I'm going to make this, you see?
I'm going to walk through the covenant, you see, abram never signed the covenant.
Abram never entered into the contract with God, and instead he watched God sign it for the both of them.
You see, if me and Burger enter into a contract, that contract is based on my character and integrity, and it's based on Berger's character and integrity.
And God says to Abram, I don't need to enter into anything, but it's based off of your character and integrity.
I'm going to walk into this based off of who I am, and this is what I'm going to do.
And so the certainty of the covenant with Abram is based on who God is, not on who Abram is or what Abram would do, only based on what God can do.
God alone signed the covenant.
Abram didn't haggle with God over the terms.
God established the covenant and Abram accepted the covenant.
Abram could not break the contract that he never signed.
And as we prepare to take the Lord's supper, in a sense, what we see is the foretelling of the cross.
As God the Father walked through the broken, bloody body of Jesus his Son.
We didn't walk through that, god did, to establish a covenant for us, and God signed it for both of us.
And so how do we enter into this covenant?
How do we get to be a part?
What did verse six say?
Abram believed he had faith and it was counted as righteousness.
And that too, is how we interfaith.
In just a moment, we're going to prepare to take the Lord's supper.
The band's going to come up on stage, play one last song.
For us.
And it gives you and I the opportunity to pause, pause for just a moment and reflect on the work that.
Was done for us.
We can reflect on the bread, the body of Christ, which was given and which took on the punishment that you and I deserve.
We'll take the cup that was spilled, the cup that represents the blood of Christ, the new covenant to which we are brought into the family, to which our sins are forgiven.
Not what you've done, not what I've done, but because of what we've done.
Jesus Christ's blood in his alone washes us and makes us clean.
As we prepare for this, I want to invite you, if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, whether this is your church home or not, we want to invite you to be a part of this with us.
We ask you, all of us who are followers of Christ, through the dependence on the Holy Spirit, to evaluate our hearts for the readiness to take part of this today.
To check your heart of any unrepentant sin that you may have and repent to check your heart of any relationships where you've sinned against others and you need to seek their forgiveness.
Or where you need to seek to forgive them.
And ask that you do that as you prepare to take this together.
If you haven't already gotten a cup, in just a moment, the band will lead us in a song.
The elements are at the back.
You can feel free to go back during that time.
And then I'll come back on stage and we'll take this together.
Would you pray with me?
God, I thank you so much for today.
Lord, I thank you for this word.
That You've brought us in Genesis, chapter 15.
Lord, I thank you for the beauty.
Of what we see.
It's not in our work.
It's not in our power.
It's not in our deeds.
Lord, it's the belief in who you are.
God, I thank you that you are our shield.
I thank you that you are our reward.
I thank you that you did the work of the covenant.
And Lord, that you invite us into that relationship.
And what saves us is not our works.
What saves us is not our ability to believe, but is the gracious, kind, mercy work of the Lord.
We can put our faith and our hope and our trust in Him.
God, I pray.
If there's anyone here who's not a.
Follower of Jesus or that today would be the day, or that they could.
Admit that they're a sinner, or that.
They would believe that Jesus Christ is who he is, is who the Bible.
Says he is, and they would confess Him as Lord and Savior, putting their faith, their hope, and their trust in Him.
It's in Jesus'name we pray.
Amen.
Thanks again for listening, and be sure to check back next week for another episode.
In the meantime, you can visit us@willowridgechurch.org or by searching for Willowridge Church on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.