GENESIS | Week 6 | Full Service

Y'all, it was one of the most incredible days of my entire life. It was a day when God came and visited me. But I need you to know that when God came to visit me, he came with a promise.

It was the promise of a son. You see, for months and months, years and years, decade after decade, my wife and I had been praying to have children. And the truth of the matter is, is it didn't make sense for God to promise us a child now because I was 99 and my wife was 89. And unfortunately, in vitro fertilization

wasn't a thing back then. And it was crazy, I never will forget it. God comes and he tells us we're getting ready to have a son, and my wife literally laughs at God. She was like, Boy, you playing. You ain't about to give us no son. And y'all, God did not find my wife's sense of humor very funny.

As a matter of fact, he looked at me and said, Son, why is it that your wife can't believe me, the creator of all things, has the power to bless you with the sun? Is there anything too hard for me to do? And then he said something that marked me. He said, This time next year, you and your wife, y'all gonna have a son.

And y'all, God was so faithful to keep his promise. A year later, my wife and I were able to witness the birthing of our son. We named him Isaac. I'm so sorry, where are my manners? I am just so rude. Hi, hello, how are y'all? My name is Abraham. My friends, they call me Abe.

I was minding my business in heaven, and we got a phone call this week from this guy named Pastor Brent. And I need you to know, we really love Pastor Brent. He's a great guy. And he called me and he said, Hey, Abe, I'm doing a message this weekend

on faith. I was wondering if there's any way you can step outside of eternity, come into time, and share your testimony with this church that I'm teaching at. So I asked them, I said, well, what church are you teaching at? I said, I'm teaching at this church called Rock Point Church in Queen Creek, Arizona. And I said,

Jesus loves that church. I said, Listen, Pastor Brent, it would be my honor to come and teach at Rock Point Church, but there's one condition for me to come. He said, Sure, Abe, what is it? I said, You just gotta get me an essential hoodie and a pair of dunks, and I promise you I'll be there. And here we are.

Y'all, as I thought about what I wanted to share today on this conversation of faith, you see, I'm known as the father of faith. I went down in history as a man of great faith,

but what if I told you that there were so many times in my walk, there were so many times in my journey with God to where, if I'm being honest with myself, my faith was inconsistent?

What if I told you that there were some times in my walk with God and in my journey with God to where he told me to go left and I went right? As a matter of fact, there were some moments in my walk with God to where I really just was disobedient and let God down.

And if I could tell you anything about faith, because I know pastors tell you all the time, Hey, we want you to have great faith. We want you to have more faith. We want you to have crazy faith. And there's nothing wrong with more faith or great faith or crazy faith, but what if, in fact, the goal isn't to have great faith? What if, in fact, the goal is to have consistent faith?

That's the big idea that I want to share with you today. The goal, I don't think y'all, is for you to have great faith. I really do believe the goal is for you to just have consistent faith. So here it is, I give birth. My wife and I, Sarah, we give birth with our son named Isaac, and I'll never forget the first time

I laid my eyes on Isaac, and I held him in my arms. I looked down at him and all I could say was number one, God, you. And then number two, all I could say was, Boy, you look just like your daddy. And eight days later, we took Isaac to the temple. We had him weaned, I watched him grow into this young toddler full

of energy. It was just an exciting time in the life of our family. And then all of a sudden, God came and visited me again. But this time, He didn't come with a promise. He came with a test. And can I be honest with you? It was one of the hardest tests I'd ever taken in my entire life.

As a matter of fact, the test was so hard, I prayed that no one in this room ever has to take a test like that.

I wanna bring you in on the conversation that God and I had, this moment where he comes with a test. The story is found in Genesis chapter 22, and I want you to see how this conversation went. Beginning at verse number one, it says, Sometime later God tested my faith. Abraham, God called. Yes, God, here I am.

He said, Take your son, your only son, yes Isaac, whom you love so much.

Go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you. Verse three, The next morning, y'all, I got up early, I saddled my donkey, I took two of my servants with me along with my son Isaac.

Then I chopped wood for a fire for a burnt offering and set out for the place God had told me about. If I'm being honest with y'all, when God had this conversation with me, I was perplexed. I was a little bewildered, and I was wrestling. The reason why I was wrestling is because I didn't understand why God

wanted to test my faith. I had been walking with God long enough to where I had these moments where he knew that I had faith. On top of that, he's omniscient, meaning he's all knowing. If anybody knows I got faith, it ought to be God. But then I realized that God was doing much more than testing my faith.

I figured out what he was really doing is he was testing my obedience. You see, all too often, you and I

make the mistake of thinking that faith has to do with believing God for miracles, believing God for signs, believing God for wonders, and I'll be honest with you, faith does have to do with that, but more often than not, faith has to do with you and I simply being obedient to what it is God's asking us to do.

And when you and I make the decision to say, You know what, God, I'm not gonna be inconsistent in my faith, I'm gonna be consistent in my faith, That means, God, I'm gonna consistently give you a yes.

That means, God, no matter what you ask me to do, no matter what you tell me to do, no matter where you ask me to go, no matter who you ask me to minister to, no matter what you ask me to give, no matter if you ask me to leave this job and take this job because it's less, no matter what it is, my answer to you, God,

is yes. Now just as a forewarning, I need to let you know, take my advice. Whenever God tests your faith because He's looking to test your obedience, I gotta be honest with you, obedience is never convenient. One of the things that I've learned is that every single time God tested my faith, it was never at the right time.

But here's what I've learned. Even though obedience is inconvenient, it's always worth the price. If I can encourage you to take a lesson from my life, please, oh please, be consistent in your yeses with God. However, in this moment, I don't know if I really wanted to be consistent in my yes, y'all. God comes to me and asks me

to sacrifice my son, the son I had been praying for, the son I had been believing him for. And now all of a sudden, God, you wanna come and ask for him back. The timing could not have been worse. And the reason why the timing could not have been worse is because I had just gotten over the loss of my other son, Ishmael.

For those of you who may not be familiar with my story, let me tell you about a moment where my faith wasn't consistent.

My wife and I, Sarah, I told you that we had been praying for a long time to be able to have children. And no matter how hard we tried, we just couldn't. So one day Sarah and I were lying in bed and my wife looks at me and she says, Abe. Said, I What's up girl?

She said, I don't think I'm gonna be able to have kids.

You see my maidservant Hagar? I think you should sleep with her, and maybe we can bear children through her, and we'll raise children through her. So I go and I have relations with Hagar, we have a son, and his name is Ishmael. But here's what you need to know. When I first met God, God told me that he would give me many

descendants. He would give me children. But Ishmael was not the promised son. Matter of fact, here's the problem. You see, because God wasn't moving on my timeline and on Sarah's timeline, instead of us resting in the promises of God, we tried to make the promises of God happen. And take a lesson from me.

Don't ever try to play God. That's what we try to do. We try to manipulate and control the situation. And here's what you need to know about Ishmael. He might not have been my son through Sarah, but I loved Ishmael. I love Ishmael just as much as I love Isaac, but there was consequences for my inconsistent faith.

See, here are the consequences for my inconsistent faith. Ishmael would grow up to become a great nation with many descendants. But if you read my entire story, you will come to discover that the descendants of Ishmael were extremely hostile to the descendants of my other son, Isaac. Y'all, I caused a family feud. My family

became broken because I didn't learn how to simply rest in the promises of God. I got anxious, I got weary, and I tried to make something happen. What would it look like in your life if you stopped trying to make something happen and you just simply let God be God?

It got to the point to where Sarah could no longer stand to see Hagar and Ishmael at our house. So I had to kick them out. Y'all, it broke me. It hurt me. And now all of a sudden, God comes, I've lost one son, and you're telling me to sacrifice another? God, this doesn't make sense. And God knew I would wrestle.

So that night, I'm tossing and I'm turning. Y'all, I barely got any sleep. I don't even think a Tempur Pedic would have worked to let me get my eyes closed that night.

And I'm laying in bed and I'm sitting here thinking, God just asked me to sacrifice my son. Why would I do this?

And at 03:00 in the morning, all of a sudden it hit me. It hit me that every single time I was inconsistent in my faith, God was consistently faithful. You see, there are some moments in my story that you may not be familiar with. I wanna take a moment and remind you and tell you about this time where I was definitely

inconsistent in my faith, and God proved to me that he was consistently faithful.

You see, when I first met God, the story's found in Genesis chapter 12, he came to me, y'all, and here's what God said to me. He said, Abraham? I said, Yes, sir. He said, I'm a make you famous. He said, I'm a make your name great. I'm a give you many descendants,

and I'm a bless those who bless you. I'm a curse those who curse you. I said, God, I really like you.

And he says, Here's what I want you to do. I want you to gather your whole family. I want you to leave your hometown of Haran, and I want you to just go. I'm not gonna tell you where you're going. I just want you by faith to just go.

So y'all, because I believe him and I had this consistent faith at the time, I got up, I got my wife Sarah, I got my nephew Lot, I got all of my cattle, I got all of my money, my livestock, and we left and we just started walking. And as we were walking, God stopped us in this place called Canaan.

And he said, This is the place that I'm gonna give to you and your descendants. Y'all, it was the promised land. It was beautiful. It was like Queen Creek.

Shortly after arriving, plague breaks out. So we've gotta leave. Excuse me, a famine breaks out. So we've gotta leave Haran and go to this place called Egypt. And here's where my faith got inconsistent. Y'all, when I got to Egypt, I got scared. I let fear get the better of me. Another way of saying it is I let fear

trump my faith. Problem with Egypt was is they didn't serve the same God that I served. Egypt was a wicked place, and when I got to Egypt, was in fear for my life. I thought they would kill me. And here's why I thought they would kill me. I haven't told you much about her, but my wife, Sarah, y'all, she fine. No,

seriously, she fine, fine. I remember the first time I saw her, I was trying to go get some water from a well, and Sarah was already at the well when she had this nice little pencil skirt on. And she offered me, she was like, Sir, would you like some water? I said, Girl, you can draw water from me anytime,

and the rest is history. And I knew that other men would find her attractive, but specifically the man with power would find her attractive. And it was a man named Pharaoh. So here's what I told Sarah. I said, hey, when we get to Egypt, don't tell him you're my wife. Tell him you're my sister. Here's what's crazy.

I just finished believing God that he would make my name great, that he'd give me many descendants, and that he'd bless those that bless me, and he'd curse those that curse me.

I'm still trying to figure out why in the world And on top of that, He randomly tells me to leave Haran, shows me the promised land, Egypt. I see that it's beautiful and I see that He's good. Why in the world all of a sudden would I have faith over here for Him to do all these things in my life, but then lose faith over here that He can't keep my life?

Can I give somebody some hope and some encouragement real quick, where you find yourself stuck between a rock and a hard place and you don't know how things are gonna turn out, can I be honest with you? The same God that kept you five years ago was the same God that can keep you today.

Real quick, up in heaven when we give applause, we give loud applause. So next time, don't be giving me no pity patty applause, but you give me a real applause. All right. So thank you. So here it is. Pharaoh takes my wife. Takes my wife, but God gets his attention. He sent an entire plague into Egypt, and Pharaoh realizes

something's off, and the thing that's off was me. So he doesn't sleep with my wife. The next day he comes, he confronts me, and he says, Is this your wife? I say, Yes, sir. He says, You almost caused me to lose my life. God had a conversation with me. Get out of Egypt. And y'all, I leave Egypt with all my stuff

and my life intact. And here's what I learned from that lesson. I know for a fact that lying is a sin. And I thought to myself as I was turning over at three in the morning trying to get some sleep, I said to myself, Self, self said, I said, If God can be faithful in my disobedience,

how much more faithful could he be with my obedience? And then all of a sudden I got the courage to say, I've watched God keep me before. I've watched God come through before. I believe He's gonna keep me and come through again. So here it is, time goes. It's five a. In the morning, and it's time to journey. I want you to see

how the journey goes. Verse number four.

Text says, On the third day of our journey, I looked up and saw the place in the distance. Stay here with servants. The boy and I will travel a little further, and we will worship there, and then we will come right back.

I don't know how many people in this room are going through a test right now, a test of your faith, a a test in your family, a test on your job,

a test in your environment. But here's what I can tell you. One of the things that I've learned when God gives me a test, instead of me complaining during the test, instead of me moaning during the test, instead of me kicking my feet through the test. I have learned that one of the best things I can do through the test is worship him in the middle of the test.

As I have been on my way to the mountain, I learned that there's this guy, he wasn't alive then, but I figured it out later, named Brandon Lake who sang this song about gratitude.

Y'all, on my way up to the mountain, I learned how to say two words, Lord, I thank you. In the middle of this test where it's hard, in the middle of this test where it's difficult, in the middle of this test where I wanna give up, God, I'm still gonna thank you because history has taught me you've been faithful in my past, which means you're gonna be faithful in my present.

So

I grabbed my son, and we're walking up to the mountain. And let me tell you right now, I wanted a comfortable one because I ain't had these on. I had on them Jesus sandals. And we're walking up the mountain, and we start worshiping and I'm just way make, miracle work, promise keep light in the darkness. My God,

that is who you are. My son says, daddy, you can't see it. I sing. I say, boy, shut up.

And we finally get to the top of the mountain. And here's what you need to know about my son Isaac. The boy ain't no fool. He got good sense. So here's what he says. He says, Daddy,

I see the fire,

and I see this wood, but I don't see no lamb. And y'all, I look at my son and I say, Son,

God will provide.

Now some of you may be saying, Abe, how are you going to tell that boy God will provide? See, when my son asked me that question, I looked at him, and all I could think to myself was my son Isaac was a miracle. I had him at 100. My wife Sarah was 90. We weren't supposed to have a child. And I thought to myself,

well, if God can provide one miracle, then surely God can provide another miracle. And I don't know who needs to hear this today, but I need to let you know that if God provided a miracle for me, then the same God that you and I serve can provide a miracle for you. Amen. So

here it is, we get to the top of the mountain, and here's what the text says in verse nine.

It says, When we arrived at the place where God had told us to go, I built an altar and arranged the wood on it. Then with tears in my eyes, with my heart beating hard, I tied my son Isaac and I laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Y'all, it was the hardest thing I ever had to do. I picked up the knife

to kill my son as a sacrifice. And then at that moment, the angel of the Lord called to me from heaven, Abraham, Abraham. I said, Please be God. Where you at? I said, Yes, here I am. Here's what the angel said. He says, Don't lay your hand on the boy, the angel said. Do not hurt him in any way,

for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son. Then I looked up and I saw a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. I took the ram, y'all. I sacrificed it as a burnt offering in the place of my son, and then I named that place Jehovah Jireh, which means the Lord will provide.

Y'all, I discovered that when I have consistent faith, that God consistently makes ways. I discovered that day that he was Jehovah Jireh, my provider. And I don't know who needs to know this today, but I want you to know that the same God that provided for me is the same God that I provide for you. And watch this.

As I reflected on this experience, there was a couple of things I realized. That yes, God was testing my obedience, but even more than that,

while the text says he was testing my faith, what God was really doing was using that test to prove to me how faithful he is. There are some of you right now, you are in the middle of a test. It's hard, you're anxious, you're weary, and you're worried, but here's what you need to know. God's letting you go through the test

so you can also discover how faithful he is.

And one of the things that I rejoice about till this day is that the test that God gave me was really more like a retest. Because if you look at my life, there were so many times where I let God down, but He gave me chance after chance after chance after chance after chance.

And it's the same thing He's doing for you. So before I go back up to heaven, I know y'all got the Super Bowl, we got the Holy Bowl.

I'm pretty excited for this year's game. It's the disciples against the prophets. And

Jeremiah has a way of crying his way to victory, and Peter has a way of cutting his way to victory. So we'll see how it turns out. But before I leave, I want to take a moment and I want to pray for you. I want to pray that God would give you consistent faith. I want to help you see and take the pressure off.

God's not looking for you to have great faith. That's cool. I remember Jesus saying, Just have faith the size of a mustard seed. I'm not looking for you to have great faith. Here's what I'm looking you to have. I'm just looking for you to have consistent faith,

a faith to where no matter what God asks you to do, no matter what He asks you to give, no matter where He asks you to go, you would just consistently say, yes. And then there are some who are here today, right now, and life's just hard. Here's what I wanna do. If you know that I was talking to you,

I wanna pray for you, and here's what I need you to do. Right where you are, would you just be willing to stand?

Before I pray for you, I wanna just speak words of encouragement over you. Here's the first thing that you need to be reminded. You need to be reminded that God sees you. You need to be reminded that God loves you.

You need to be reminded that you are special in God's eyes. You need to be reminded that there is no longer condemnation, but you have been made new in Christ. You need to be reminded that, yes, I know in some cases, some of you messed up. You were like me, and you were disobedient,

and you didn't have the best faith, but here's what I could tell you. Here's what God has done. He has given you His grace.

And when you get through this season, my prayer is that you would have a testimony like me that says, I serve a God who is Jehovah Jireh, my provider.

For those of you who are sitting down, would you do me a favor and just stretch your hands towards the people that are standing up? And as a church, let's pray for them together.

Holy Spirit, I thank you so much for being our advocate. I thank you so much for being our God. Holy Spirit, I thank you that your word says that greater is he that lives in us than he that is in the world. And right now, as a brother in Christ, I wanna pray for every single person that is standing up in this room. God, would you remind them that you are Jehovah Jireh, their provider? Would you remind them that you are the God that can make ways that are no ways? You are the God that can open doors. You are the God that can part seas. You are the God that can move mountains. So since we see that you have done all of those things in the text, then surely you can deal with our little problem.

Father, my prayer is this, is would you allow the Holy Spirit to wrap your arms around them, that you would wrap your arms around them in such a way to where they feel the tangible presence of you. Father, I pray that they would literally come to this place to where they completely and totally surrender

and would just simply trust you. Father, I pray that when we leave this place today, that they would no longer leave here with anxiety, that they would no longer leave here with stress, that they would no longer leave here with worries, but they would leave here with the peace that surpasses all human understanding.

Father, I thank you in advance for the powerful testimony that you are giving these men and these women who are standing up today. I'm reminded of this other story of Joseph, where he looks at his brothers and he says, You meant it for evil, but God turned it for my good.

God, I thank you that whatever's taking place in their life, according to Romans eight twenty eight, all things are working together for the good of those who love God and who are called according to his purpose.

And I pray at the end of this season, at the end of them climbing up this mountain, that they would look back and say, two things. Number one, I look more like Jesus. And number two, look at what the Lord has done. Is there anything too hard for the Lord?

God, we give you glory. God, we give you honor. God, we give you praise. And it's in Jesus' name we pray and give thanks. And everybody said, amen. Come on. Let's give God a hand clap

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