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Romans 4:11-25
11 He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, 12 and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.
13 For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. 14 For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. 15 For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.
16 That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, 17 as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. 18 In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” 19 He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness1 of Sarah’s womb. 20 No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, 21 fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. 22 That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” 23 But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, 24 but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, 25 who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to Romans chapter 4. While you're turning there, I wanna just, mention a couple of things. First, I wanna take time to thank you. Just thank you for praying for the leadership over the last, really more than a year or so, as we have been working through all the, the COVID issues and, live streaming, meeting outside, when do we move inside? Are we masked?
Joel Brooks:Are we unmasked? And, and you guys have been incredibly gracious to the leadership and, and thank you for your prayers. It hasn't been the most fun time to kinda navigate, but we have really been striving hard to try to follow Jesus in this and do what we want. And, and hopefully having some services mass, some not. I know we are one of the few churches that still have mass services, but we we really think that this is something that the Lord wants us to do, especially considering all the healthcare workers that we do have, in which just a thank you for those who are working in healthcare.
Joel Brooks:Thank you to our doctors and to our nurses. We have a couple of elders who are doctors, and they almost have a shell shocked look to them because they're so exhausted. And they've said that, you know, they've gone from being like heroes early on to being zeros now. And I think a lot of people in the healthcare industry just kinda feel like that. And I want you to know that you're not a 0.
Joel Brooks:We are praying for you guys, and we really are thankful for the work that you are doing. And we're gonna get through this. So that's the first thing I wanna say. Second is this. I had a couple of elders actually come and correct me last week, saying I said something factually wrong and that I needed to address this all with you.
Joel Brooks:And if that's true, I definitely need to. They mentioned that when I said Izod's, Izod's had the alligator little logo that I was incorrect. And I needed to repent of that. And you know, if that was incorrect, then I could see how like, was Joel's incorrect about that? Can we believe him about the gospel?
Joel Brooks:Can we believe him about anything? I mean, I could see how it could spiral out of control. And so, I do wanna just tell you that, no, there were the Izods. They were the alligators in the eighties. Okay?
Joel Brooks:And then during 1993, Lacoste came and merged with IZOD. They shared the alligator logo for a while, and then Lacoste eventually just took on the alligator logo, but since I was a child of the eighties, the Izods were the alligators. Alright? Thank you. It was actually way too long of a email thread from the elders about this.
Joel Brooks:And I do want to say, like, even if you look at the word Izod in Hebrew, it means Joel is right. And so well, if I'm still your pastor next week, then, then we'll we'll keep going through Romans. Alright. So Romans 4, beginning in verse 11, and once again, we're gonna do kind of a long stretch in Romans. I think it's best to kinda get a big picture of this instead of, you know, look at the forest instead of each individual little tree here.
Joel Brooks:But we're gonna be reading through a good long section here. Beginning of verse 11 to the end of the chapter. He, this is Abraham, received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well. And to make him the father of these circumcised who are not merely circumcised, but also walk in the footsteps of the faith that their father Abraham had before he was circumcised.
Joel Brooks:For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if it's for if it is the adherence of the law who are to be heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, there is no transgression. That is why it depends on faith. In order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring, not only to the adherent of the adherent of the law, but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.
Joel Brooks:As it is written, I have made you the father of many nations. In the presence of God in whom he believed who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. In hope, he believed against hope that he should become the father of many nations. As he had been told, so shall your offspring be. He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead, since he was about a 100 years old.
Joel Brooks:Or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God. But he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness. But the words that was counted to him were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also.
Joel Brooks:It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised him from the dead. Jesus, our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. This is the word of the Lord.
Collin Hansen:Yes, sir.
Joel Brooks:You pray with me. Father, we pray that your Spirit, give us would give us the mind that we need to understand the words we've just read. Give us the heart we need to receive it. I pray, Jesus, we would see You and the work You are doing in this world as more glorious and more beautiful than when we first came in this place. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore.
Joel Brooks:But, Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. I love the Sundays, that we get to celebrate baptism. I love seeing people get up here and give a profession of their faith.
Joel Brooks:I love watching the symbol of baptism as it represents, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, and how those who enter the waters are uniting their story with His story. They're being buried with Him in baptism. They're risen to walk in a newness of life. But another reason that I love watching baptisms is that I am reminded that Jesus is the Lord of all the nations. Jesus told his disciples that they were to go into all the nations, and to make disciples, and to baptize them.
Joel Brooks:And that is exactly what they did. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, the disciples, they went and they shared the good news of Jesus Christ, not just in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, but they spread out and they began to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. And as a result, today, Christianity is the most culturally and, and ethnically diverse movement in human history. And it's not even close. There there's something, so remarkable, something so special about the person and story of Jesus that it penetrates every human heart.
Joel Brooks:Human hearts from from all different ethnicities, all different cultures, something about the story of Jesus resonates with them. And so as a result, you have our Bible, for instance, being translated into many, many languages. The New Testament alone is translated into 1500 different languages. In addition to that, the gospels are translated into another 1200 languages. So we have 27 100 different languages in which people can read the Gospels, the story of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:No other religion comes close. The closest is actually Islam, in their holy book, the Quran, is translated into a 116 different languages. 116 versus 2,600 different languages. Once again, there is something about the story of Jesus that resonates in the hearts of every person in every culture. My wife and I, we like to celebrate this or be reminded of this every Christmas through our nativity scenes.
Joel Brooks:What we bring back whenever we travel, we bring back a nativity scene from that country. And so we've got nativity scenes, you know, from Indonesia and from Peru and from Haiti and, just just all over the place. And I love it because we have, black Jesuses, brown Jesuses, white Jesuses. We've got, you know, mangers that are, some are huts, some are coconut shells, some are bamboo. Some look like, you know, real stables here.
Joel Brooks:It's you have every kind of different representation from every different culture. I love seeing that. And it's because each of these cultures, they identify their story with with Jesus'. Jesus fits seamlessly into their culture and is a part of their story. And all they although they know, of course, you know, for most of them, they know that He didn't share my color.
Joel Brooks:He wasn't my ethnicity. Still their impulse is right. Their impulse is right is to see themselves as so attached to Jesus that he's one of them. Did you know that today, there are 2 and a half 1000000000 followers of Jesus? And most of those Christians do not look anything like me.
Joel Brooks:For instance, there are 541,000,000 Christians in Africa. Making Africa the first continent where over half of its population identifies as Christian. One out of every 4 Christians on the planet is African. China now has conservatively estimated at a 100,000,000 Christians. By the end of this decade, they will have more Christians in China than there will be in the United States.
Joel Brooks:And this number is continuing to grow. Actually, Christianity is growing at twice the rate of the population growth among all Asian countries. Even in hard to reach places, places like India, in which the gospel's very hard to penetrate, there are 15,000 baptisms per month. So the good news of the gospel is going all around this globe. If you want to know what the average Christian looks like, or I'll probably just say the median if you, you know, take statistics.
Joel Brooks:Like, what most of the Christians look like in the world, it would look like this. Not like me. First, the average Christian would be a woman. Maybe from a small village in Nigeria. Or from a shanty town in Brazil.
Joel Brooks:It would be incomprehensibly poor by any American standard. That's the face of Christianity. Now why am I giving you all this information? Besides the fact, I think it's really cool and important for us to know. Well, it's because we need to understand this is what Paul's talking about here in Romans.
Joel Brooks:This is what he's talking about in chapter 4. He's talking about Jesus drawing to himself, people of every tongue, tribe, and nation. And not only is is Jesus drawing to himself people of every tongue, tribe, and nation, and people from all different ethnicities they identify as Christian, they also do this. They call Abraham father. It's kinda crazy to think about, but you have Europeans.
Joel Brooks:You have Asians. You have Africans, you have Americans, all calling calling this this Jewish wanderer in Palestine from 4000 years ago, calling him father. How how did that happen? Any of you grew up singing Father Abraham? Alright.
Joel Brooks:You know, if you grew up in the church, you know, Father Abraham had many sons. Many sons had Father Abraham. Okay. In in their earlier services, they sang it. I should've had to get them to stop.
Joel Brooks:You know, I am one of them, so are you, and then it's like, so let's just praise the Lord. And then you start moving body parts. For some reason, it's like, you know, the Lord, it's like the Lord told Noah to build an arky arky, and then you just dance around. I think we designed songs in children's Sunday Schools or VBSs literally just to wear out kids before the lesson. But we grew up with a song I did, and many of you did apparently, about father Abraham had many sons.
Joel Brooks:Many sons had father Lord. I never thought about it at the time. But how am I a son of Abraham? How are you a son or a daughter of Abraham? Why do we call him father?
Joel Brooks:Well, Paul tells us why in this section. 3 times in verses 11 through 12, Paul calls Abraham our father. He says he's both the father of the circumcised and the uncircumcised. And that's just Paul's way of saying he's the father of the ethnically Jewish person or the non Jew. And the reason he's the father of both is because he had faith before he was ever circumcised.
Joel Brooks:And anytime, just so you know, in the Bible, you read the word Jew or you read the word Gentile. Gentile is simply the Greek word for nations. And so Abraham is the father of the Jewish person and also for the rest of the nations. Because we're saved by the same faith that he had. He's our spiritual father.
Joel Brooks:And some of you are thought you're thinking, I'm kinda tracking with you right now. I'm kinda getting this. But honestly, you might have a question in which we need to take one further step back and just say, well what's so important about Abraham? I share faith with a lot of people, even a lot of people across the globe, but I don't call them my father. Why do I call Abraham my father?
Joel Brooks:I'm so glad you asked. That's what we're gonna spend the rest of our time unpacking. Why is Abraham our father? What's so special about him? And if I could just make a shameless plug for our Genesis series, we preached through Genesis 2 years ago.
Joel Brooks:And one of the reasons we preached through Genesis before we preached through Romans is because you can't understand Romans unless you have an understanding of Genesis. And so we wanted to go through Genesis first, all with the aim of us, at some point, going through Romans.
Jeffrey Heine:So I
Joel Brooks:would encourage you to go back there and to read Genesis. So let me now just quickly explain to you why Abraham is so important to us as believers. And to do so, I've got to go back to the very first page of scripture. I've got to go back to creation itself. When God created the world, he created mankind, male and female, as the pinnacle of his creation.
Joel Brooks:That's what he created on that last day there, day 6. And so, we're the pinnacle. We're the ones who are created in his image. And right after God created Adam and Eve, we read that he blessed them. And then he said, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
Joel Brooks:And so the reason that God did this, he was he was blessing them for the purpose of then going and spreading that blessing all around the world. They were to take, if you will, this Eden blessing. The blessing they had and enjoyed in Eden, Eden was now to be spread over the entire world. That was their commission. But we all know what happened.
Joel Brooks:They sinned. They disobeyed God. And now instead of spreading a blessing around the world, they spread sin. They spread the curse. So instead of turning the world into a Garden of Eden, they broke the world.
Joel Brooks:But we see from the very beginning what God's design was. They were to be blessed in order to share this blessing all around. But sin now starts spreading. And the very first sin that happens after Adam and Eve, we see things go from bad to worse. Adam and Eve, they have 2 children.
Joel Brooks:They have Cain and Abel. And the very next sin after theirs in the Bible is Cain murders Abel. And this pattern of violence is actually going to continue. It starts to grow and to grow. This pattern of just tremendous evil and violence, it it finally just covers the entire world.
Joel Brooks:And God says, I've gotta wipe it clean. I've gotta wipe it clean and do a reboot. And so we come upon the flood and Noah. And God wipes away all the sin and the flood. He wipes away this evil and he preserves Noah.
Joel Brooks:And he preserves him in that ark, that boat, which essentially is almost like a floating eden, if you will. I mean, once again, man's got this great relationship with the animals. They're in there 2 by 2 and then they land. And now we are starting, essentially, with Adam 2.0. Okay.
Joel Brooks:It didn't work the first time. Now we're rebooting Adam 2.0. Noah, go. And we have the same commission. The Lord blesses Noah.
Joel Brooks:We read that he's created in God's image. And after he blesses him, he says, now fill the earth. Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Carry this blessing across the globe. Instead, Moses or Noah fails.
Joel Brooks:You actually have all the exact same themes as you had back at the original sin in the garden. You have another garden. You have another sin. You have more nakedness. You have more shame that needs to be covered.
Joel Brooks:It's the exact same themes. This time, instead of an actual garden, Noah creates a vineyard, though. Then he gets drunk and then he gets naked. That is the person. That's Adam 2.0 right there.
Joel Brooks:And so he fails. So how does God respond? Well, he promises he won't ever destroy the world again and then it just kinda seems to let let people go. And this violence and this sin continues to cover the globe once again. You come to Genesis chapter 11.
Joel Brooks:And at first, you're thinking, wait. There might be hope for humanity. Because for the first time, they come together. All of humanity comes together, and they're not killing one another. You're like, this is good.
Joel Brooks:Right? They're coming together. Like, wrong. They're coming together and uniting in rebellion against the Lord. It's the Tower of Babel.
Joel Brooks:And so they they all gather together, and that is an open defiance against the Lord. Because once again, what had God commanded them to do? Disperse. Fill the whole earth with my glory, your image bearers. This is why I created the world.
Joel Brooks:It's for my image bearers to be all around the world, blessing it. Not congregating together in rebellion. So this is what they do. They one of the ways they rebel is they decide to build this giant tower. And this wasn't a, this wasn't a temple in order for them to worship the Lord.
Joel Brooks:This was a monument to their own greatness. And they they basically they said, we want to make a name for ourselves. And so they build a tower. So, how does God respond? We're only on page 11 of the Bible.
Joel Brooks:How does God respond? He does 2 things. We're almost at Abraham here. He does 2 things. 1st, he confuses their languages.
Joel Brooks:They were all one language at this time. He confuses their languages. Now, they don't understand one another. Now, they have to disperse. Basically, God is saying, I will make you disperse.
Joel Brooks:I will fill my world with all different cultures, all different languages because I will be worshiped in every tongue, tribe, and nation. And so, he forces them to disperse. And then the second thing he does is he picks Abraham to be the next vehicle for his blessing. But Abraham is in direct contrast to the Tower of Babel. Abraham is God's response to the Tower of Babel.
Joel Brooks:When mankind united all together in rebellion against God, and they built this tower, they said, let us make a name for ourselves. And God says, you will not make a name for yourselves, and he disperses them. And he says, but I'm gonna take this no named guy, and I'm gonna make a name for him. I'm gonna make his name great, and I'm gonna make him the vehicle of blessing for the entire world. And so we read about this in Genesis chapter 12, and some of the most important words we have in the Bible.
Joel Brooks:I think I have a slide for this. Put it up here. This is God's calling of Abraham. Now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation.
Joel Brooks:And I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you. In him who dishonors you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Hopefully this sounds familiar.
Joel Brooks:Once again, blessing, blessing, blessing. That's what God's been after all along. I'm going to bless you, wife, so you can then spread this blessing all around the world. Now, the rest of the Bible is gonna be full of different stories, different teachings, but these three verses, the call of Abraham, are gonna be central to it all. It's gonna hold the rest of the Bible together.
Joel Brooks:I like to think of it this way. If you think of the rest of the Bible as Delta flights, this is your Atlanta. Okay? This is where every Delta flight's gotta go through Atlanta. It doesn't matter where you're going.
Joel Brooks:This is your Atlanta here. So if you're gonna read any other part of scripture, you're gonna read this, you need to first redirect it, take it back through Genesis 12, and then you could go back out. But you can't understand the rest of the Bible unless you get God's calling to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12. God picks Abraham. He says, I'm gonna make you great.
Joel Brooks:I'm gonna give you a name. I'm gonna bless you. And now through you, my blessing, my Eden blessing is gonna spread all over the globe. So how did Abraham do? I mean, we've seen how Adam did, Noah did, people at the tower of Babel did.
Joel Brooks:Does Abraham do any better? Not at all. Father Abraham doesn't do any better. First thing Abraham does after he's called is he goes to the promised land. He looks at it and he goes, no thanks.
Joel Brooks:And he turns around and goes back. That's the first story we have. After he's called, he literally goes straight into Canaan, looks at it and there's a famine there, and he turns around and he leaves. He completely forgets. He's supposed to take the blessing of God.
Joel Brooks:He's supposed to take Eden, if you will, to the rest of the world. Instead, he's like, no, thank you. Turns around and he heads to Egypt. And then he goes to Egypt, and he's scared because he thinks Pharaoh's gonna look at his wife, who apparently was incredibly hot. You know?
Joel Brooks:And he just thought, he's gonna want to marry her, which means he's gonna kill me and marry her. And so, he tells Sarah, you need to lie. Say you're my sister. And she does. So, that's the first thing that Abraham does is he goes to the Promised Land, turns around, leaves it.
Joel Brooks:Then he goes to Egypt and he lies about his wife. And instead of bringing a blessing to the nations, Abraham brought a curse. Because of Abraham's sin, God sent plagues down on Egypt. I mean, that's like the ultimate failure. He's supposed to bless the world.
Joel Brooks:Instead, he brings curses on the world. How does God respond? How does God respond? Well, God doubles down on His commitment to Abraham because He emphatically said, I will use you. There's no if, ands, or buts.
Joel Brooks:I will bless the Lord through or bless the world through you. Despite your sin, I will bless the world through you. And what God does in response to Abraham's sin is he enters a covenant with him in Genesis 15. And He takes Abraham out, and He says, look up at the stars in the sky. Can you count them?
Joel Brooks:That's how many offspring you will have. And that's where we read those words, and Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. And that's the faith that Paul talks about when we get to here here in Romans chapter 4. Read with me beginning in verse 18 again.
Joel Brooks:In hope, Abraham believed against hope that he should become the father of many nations. As he had been told, so shall your offspring be. He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead, since he was about a 100 years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God. But he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.
Joel Brooks:That is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness. Now, when you read those words, in hope, he believed against hope, That gives you a great picture of what saving faith looks like. In hope, he believed against hope. When Abraham looked at his body in the mirror, he saw the exact same thing that a modern scientist would see. You don't have a chance of having a child.
Joel Brooks:You're about a 100 years old. When he looked at Sarah, he understood the same thing, because she was nearly as old as him. Their bodies were dead. There was no way they were gonna have a child. Even Sarah, when she was younger, could not have a child, let alone when she's 90.
Joel Brooks:But faith doesn't go by sight. Faith is not making decisions based on what you see. Faith is making a decision based on whom you believe. And Abraham, he's putting his trust in the Lord even though his body is as good as the as dead. He's trusting that God is going to do something despite everything my eyes see.
Joel Brooks:I trust in God's word. And I think, Abraham, he's trusting him more than just God giving him a child. He's trusting that God would give him a savior because Abraham knows at this point he needs it. I mean, we we read here these words. He did not waver.
Joel Brooks:I mean, how do you reckon how do you reconcile that with Abraham's life? He did not waver. Doesn't it seem like he wavered a whole lot? I mean, right after he was called, up I mean, just immediately he tanks. What do you mean did not waver?
Joel Brooks:And actually, that wavering continues. You know what happens right after God makes His covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15? First thing after He says, you know, look at the stars. That's what your offspring's gonna be. And he goes, Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.
Joel Brooks:The very next thing he does is sleep with Hagar. That's how he lives out his faith. He sleeps with Hagar. To which God responds, you know, basically, I should have qualified whom you're supposed to have the child with. Abraham, I guess.
Joel Brooks:He renews His covenant with Abraham. Once again, He's overly gracious. Renews his covenant with Abraham in Genesis 17. Says, I'm gonna make you a father of many nations. Abraham believes God.
Joel Brooks:And do you know how he responds? He lies again about Sarah. It's the very next thing he does. God commits himself again and Abraham does the exact same sin again. Any of you ever following we How do you reconcile that?
Joel Brooks:Tells us something about his faith. Faith isn't a perfect amount of faith. It's it's not faith in your actions that are always perfectly expressed. Faith is this. You blow it, You sin and you repent.
Joel Brooks:And then you repent and then you move forward again and you renew your trust. And then when you fall and you sin, you repent. And then you move forward in your trust. And all along, you're realizing you can't do it alone, but you need a savior. Abraham realized he was part of the problem.
Joel Brooks:His hope was that God would bring someone along to save him. That's what he's trusting in. His faith was looking forward to one of his descendants coming to reconcile this world. Our faith looks back at one of his descendants who has reconciled us to this world. His faith looked forward to someone who would live a perfect life and then die and rise again.
Joel Brooks:Our faith looks back to someone who lived a perfect life and died and rose again. But, we have faith in the same person. Jesus, a descendant of Abraham. Jesus, who is the Lord. We share the same faith.
Joel Brooks:That's what Paul is talking about in verse 23 when he says, but the words it was counted to him were not written for his sake alone, but for ours. It will be counted to us who believe in him, who raised from the dead Jesus, our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. In other words, all of us here who are Christians, we are saved by the same faith that Abraham had. It's a faith that God will, despite all odds, God will keep his promise and he will rescue this world through the person of Jesus. Jesus was not like Adam.
Joel Brooks:He was not like Noah. He was not even like Abraham. Jesus never sinned. He was perfect. He kept the law.
Joel Brooks:Yet, He died to death we should have died. But then, He rose again that we might have life. And now that's what He offers us if we trust Him. The question is, do we believe this? Do we have the same faith that Abraham had?
Joel Brooks:Also, do you see that throughout this story, do you see God's relentless pursuit of humanity? How many times God could have just given up on this world? And be like, I'm done? But God has committed himself to this world and he says, I will bless this world. There will be families all over the globe, from every tongue, tribe, and nation that will worship my son, Jesus.
Joel Brooks:He is committed to that. Do you see how over and over God has pursued you despite your sin and your repeat of the same sin and the same sin. God relentlessly pursues us in order to bless us. And for those of you who are already Christians, let me ask you this. Are you walking in faith?
Joel Brooks:Do you cling to the promises of God, or do you cling to what you see? What shapes the decisions you make? Abraham had never seen a resurrection. He had to look forward. We read the words that Abraham grew in his faith.
Joel Brooks:He kept growing. Every time he repents and he'd move forward, he grew and he grew and he grew. Finally, he had such faith that he was willing to sacrifice his son because he actually believed that God could raise the dead. He had to look forward. We get to look back and see God has raised the dead.
Joel Brooks:Our faith should be stronger. Our faith should be stronger than Abraham. Is it? Do you believe in a God who raises the dead? If so, live your life accordingly.
Joel Brooks:Walk by faith and not by sight. Pray with me. Father, I think you have not that you have not given up on us. You've not given up on this world. Over and over again, we seem to just try to kill Your plan, Try to spread our disease of sin.
Joel Brooks:Add to the brokenness and the hurt of this world. And over and over again, you are so kind and gracious to us. You relentlessly pursue us because you are committed to filling this entire world with your glory. Flooding this world with the blessings of Eden. Thank you.
Joel Brooks:Thank you for your son, Jesus Christ, whom you have given to this world to bring that about. A descendant of David or and a descendant of Abraham. And we put our trust in Him. And we pray this in your strong name, Jesus. Amen.