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Well, good morning, Rock Point. Good morning. Man. Yeah. You guys, it is true. They said you're definitely the best looking service. You know? That's I didn't believe them, but now I do. So, man, it is good to be with you. If I have not had the chance to meet you, my name is Daniel.
It has been my honor and privilege to get to be up here with you for the last few years, and I just wanted to point out it's been a few months since I've been here, and I would like to point out the maturation process that I have been in. If you didn't notice, my pants no longer have holes in the knees. So I know, it's a big deal. I was I was actually really, like, just appalled that Clayton would have the audacity to get on this stage with holes in his jeans last week, but I'm just good to know that I'm now the mature one and he's the young whippersnapper around this place and, you know, he's he's keeping us us young. So, man, I can't tell you how excited I am to be here. My family got to come with me. On Friday, we got in our car and we left beautiful San Diego, and a few hours later, arrived back in America. Come on, somebody.
Yeah. It's I can't tell you. The freedom, you can smell it. You know what I mean? Like, it's we're almost at the tail end of getting out of this. We're about to recall our governor, we're fighting for more freedom, but I love being here. I love being with you. I love the state of Arizona.
And if you have a Bible, just open up to Hebrews chapter 11. I promise we're gonna get into the Bible at some point
this morning, but I can't tell you how good it is to be here. I'm excited to see you all. If I have not had the chance to meet you, I would love to meet you after service out in the courtyard somewhere. But what we're gonna do today is we're gonna wrap up our series that we've been in over the last few weeks, looking at this idea of allowing our homeland, our eternal homeland, to determine where our heart lands and really wrapping our our mind around the idea of what it means to be a citizen of heaven and allowing that to be the thing that impacts how we live as citizens of our country and of our states. And I really am encouraged. I do believe that God wants to,
I think, shift the focus a little bit for the church. I think some of us have settled into kind of just playing church, and I believe that God has something powerful for us this morning. So amen?
Hebrews chapter 11. Are you there? Yes. Awesome. We're gonna read in verse eight. We're going to look at the last person in this hall of faith, and then we're going to essentially see the overview of his life in Hebrews 11. But then what I wanna do is in Genesis 15, I wanna jump back and look at one specific day of his journey. So in Hebrews 11, we're gonna look at the life of a guy named Abraham. Here's what it says in verse eight. It says, it was by faith
that this guy Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and to go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance, he went without knowing where he was going. I love that line. Because when you and I really truly do, we allow our homeland, our eternal homeland to determine where our heart lands,
it will position us to do incredibly powerful things like Abraham does here, where he leaves his homeland without even knowing where he's going. Verse nine says that even when he reached the land God promised him, he lived there by faith, for he was like a foreigner living in tents.
And so did Isaac and Jacob who inherited the same promise. Abraham was confidently looking forward to a city with eternal foundations, a city designed and built by God. It was by faith that even Sarah was able to have a child, though she was barren and was too old.
She believed that God would keep his promise. Verse 12, And a whole nation came from this one man who was this is the best compliment you can make about a man's body, he was as good as dead. A nation, like imagine you're like writing your list of things you want out of a guy like six'four,
dark, tan, and a body that's about as good as dead. With so many people that like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore, there is no way to count them. Father, I thank you God for the moments that we have together. Lord, we not take them for granted.
That Lord we don't come to this place to check a box and fulfill some religious duty. God we don't come here for just some transfer of information.
The beautiful part of the Holy Spirit living in us, the triune part of the God that actually allows us to hear what it is you're trying to speak to us, is that we can walk out of this room different than we walked in here.
So God, would our ears be open, would our hearts be open to what it is you have to speak to each of us this morning? Allow us to experience true life transformation. And if you could, let the Chargers win the Super Bowl in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank
you for praying for that with me. Man, it's it's a tough time to be a San Diego fan at all of anything. Like, all we have is Fernando Tati, so at least our baseball team is cool. So it's good.
I don't know why I brought that up, but I did. Have you guys ever been out in public and seen somebody walking on their phone and they're just so enthralled with what they're doing? They're just relying kind of on their peripheral vision and they're just walking
along. And then the next thing you know, there's like a telephone pole or like a car or a person or like a street or something in front of them they don't see, and then they just smack right into something. Anybody seen somebody do that?
Let's be honest. How many of you have actually been the person that has done that? Okay, that's good. At least there's some honest people in the house of God today. The reason that I bring this up, and I promise I'm going somewhere with it, I was thinking about this story a few months back. I was at lunch with some friends, and we were sitting there in this kind of food courtyard watching this lady who had clearly just bought some stuff. She had a bunch of bags on her arm, and she was really enthralled in whatever was happening on her phone, doing TikTok or whatever these young kids do these days. She's
just walking like this, holding her bags, and we can see the whole thing unfolding. It's like watching a car accident in slow motion. Right? Because ahead of her is a fountain that clearly she does not see, but we all see. And so I'm like tapping my buddies like, hey, check this out. This is gonna be awesome. And we don't
judge me. Okay? I probably should have tried to help her or something, but it was way more entertaining to just go, Hey, let's see how this thing plays out. And sometimes life's greatest teachers is just allowing us to walk into some messes.
So this lady, by the time the whole table is watching, we look, she just literally never skips a beat. Just walks, trips, flips into the water. Bags go everywhere. She's trying to get out. She fell two or three times trying to get out. Eventually, people went over and helped her. I'll be honest with you. It wasn't me, but
people that were better than me. I'm still in process. Okay? I'm trying to journey through. And it just it was incredible.
And the reason that I'm telling you that is because the scene that I'm talking about is something that all of us have experienced to some degree. If you have not, just go to YouTube or something and type in people falling while walking on their phone. And it's just it's everywhere.
I was blown away this week as I did some research. The National Institute of Safety, which is like this group that exists that records how people die five years ago, they had to add a new category of deaths on death certificates. Do you know what it's called? Walking distracted or distracted walking.
Think about this for a second. We are supposedly the most advanced civilization that exists at any point in the history of humankind. Yet today, on the death certificates of multiple people, it says they died by walking and being distracted.
I mean, right here in the beautiful state of Arizona, people literally just fall into the Grand Canyon because they're on their phone taking selfies or just not paying attention. And I only bring this up because if we see the picture, it's powerful.
I believe the visual of a bunch of people just walking around like this being completely enthralled with what's happening here but not seeing any of the distractions or the things in front of them is a beautiful picture of what the church looks like today.
I would argue that the church today has settled into kind of just plain church, and there's some things that have become really important to us, and there's some issues that we have made the primary thing that we just go, No, no, no, this is it. This is it. This is it. And we're so distracted by them
that we don't actually see any of the obstacles that are in front of us. More importantly, we don't see any of the people that are in front of us. And here's my fear. I'll be honest with you. My fear is that the church in America today is so distracted.
We might not be defeated, but we're definitely distracted and we've become ineffective. My hope this morning, my encouragement to all of us this morning is no matter what it is that's distracting you, no matter what it is that's causing you to look down and miss all of the dangers that are right around us,
we have an incredible opportunity by looking at the life of Abraham to understand that at any moment we can make a decision to stop looking down and begin to look up again. I promise it will make sense, but what I want to do is circle our time together around one thought. This is why where you look matters so much,
because where you look is ultimately where you will live. If you don't believe me, try running on a treadmill and looking to your left the whole time. All of sudden, you'll fall off to the left. I think sometimes we undervalue what we have our eyes focused on.
I'll prove it to you in just a second, but I think most of you are already tracking with me. What you look at will determine where your life goes. It will determine the direction in the course of your life.
In Hebrews chapter 11, if all you read was those five or six verses that we just read telling the story of Abraham, you would think this guy was just incredible. Perfect guy. Never made mistakes. Was awesome. He just left.
Know, believed God. He always trusted him. He always did amazing things. And don't hear what I'm not saying. Abraham lived an incredible life. He lived a life that most of us can only dream of as far as creating an impact for the kingdom of God.
But the part that is encouraging, the reason that the Bible is so important for you and I to read is because the Bible is not just a story of recorded it's not just a recording of stories that happened. It's actually a predictor of what always happens.
And the story of Abraham is powerful in that yes, we can remember what he did, but the real insight for you and I is that we can learn from him and not have to go through the same painful lessons
that he went through. So I want you to jump back with me to Genesis chapter 15. If you can't find the book in your Bible, literally just open the page and turn one page and you'll be there. Right? It's the first book in the Bible. Genesis 15, we're going to zoom in on one specific day of Abraham's life
where he's been looking down for a while. He's been distracted. He's been looking down, and God's going to meet him and give him some powerful advice that I hope we can see this morning.
Genesis chapter 15. Are we there? Perfect. We got two of you. The rest of you, you're going be in the iPad Bible with me. Okay? Genesis 15 verse one. Here's what it says. It says sometime later. Any SpongeBob fans in the house?
Okay. When I see sometime later, all I hear is the SpongeBob graphic. It's like thirty years later.
Just me and my kids are all in SpongeBob right now. Here's why I stopped there. Genesis 15 starts and says sometime later. Three words that encompass about twenty years of history. Okay. Hebrews 11 says that Abraham's story starts. It's recorded in Genesis chapter 12.
But Abraham's story starts, his journey with God starts in Genesis chapter 12 where Abram at this point is 75 years old, and God's going to come to him, show up and meet him and tell him, Abram, I'm gonna make your name great.
Through you, I'm gonna birth a nation. You're gonna be wealthy. You're gonna have land. Your your children will inherit. And through you, I'm going to birth a nation. Now this is a peculiar promise to give to a 75 year old man who is yet to have a single child. Yet somehow Abraham goes home to his wife,
and he's like, you're not gonna believe what happened today. I was at Chick fil A, and God met me there. That's where God, I would assume, would meet somebody. The chicken is divine. Okay? He's like, God met me today, and he said that we have to move.
We've got to leave everything that we've known. Leave our family, leave our business, leave all of our ties, and we've got to move. And she's like, okay. I'm in. Like, I don't know how he convinced her, but she was like, I'm in. Where are we moving?
He's like, yeah, that's the weird part. God was like, I'll tell you once you're on your way. Like, how do you pack for that trip? Right? Like, I guess bring a bathing suit and a parka. Right? Like it, we don't know. Yet somehow
Abraham and his wife decide together that they're going to make a decision in faith to trust God despite what they know. I would submit before all of us this morning that most of our relationships with God started with some type of similar decision.
At some point, you and I make a decision despite logic sometimes, despite what we see, despite what we think, our journey with God typically starts by one decision of faith. And then we enter into this faith journey with God. And the one time decision is powerful. Don't misunderstand it. Like it really is important.
But for those of us in this room who've journeyed with God for a while, there's times where you start to go, God, did I not hear you right? Because what started with such promise for Abraham and Sarah, we're gonna see in a second. Sometime later in Genesis 15 is ten to fifteen years later.
Their journey starts with a powerful promise and they leave everything. I don't know if you know any 75 year old men, but like willing to change and adapt quickly is not like on the top five strength list of most 75 year old men I know.
Yet somehow Abraham and his wife go. They trust God and they believe that through them God is going to birth a nation. And again they have no children. Her womb is barren.
And so they're like, God, this is what we've always wanted. This is gonna be incredible. And they start this journey with such promise. But look at where we find them.
It says, Sometime later, the Lord spoke to Abram in a vision and he said to him, do not be afraid Abram, for I will protect you and your reward will be great. Where we find Abram ten years later, God shows up to him and he has to tell him, do not be afraid.
Anytime you see God telling a human in the Bible not to be afraid, it's safe to assume the reason he has to say that is because he knows the person is what? Afraid. Think about this. Abraham, he is known as the father of faith. That's this dude's title, right? Three world religions tie their origins to this man's faith.
Yet in Genesis 15, God shows up and the first thing he says to him is like, dude, don't be afraid. Stop being afraid. Here's what I hope you and I can glean from this. Sometimes we mistake living a life of faith, of being one that is just completely absence of fear. And it's just not true.
I don't think that faith is some mystical thing that we just conjure up somehow with enough like positive thinking. I truly believe what faith is, is making a decision, exercising a discipline in the moments when life is throwing stuff at you where you want to freak out and be afraid.
It is in those moments that we get an opportunity to exercise faith. Faith is not never feeling afraid. Faith is saying, I'm choosing to trust God even when everything around me, when my perspective says I should be afraid. I'm going to not trust my perspective and I'm going to rely on God's divine intervention.
That's what faith is. If the father of faith had moments where he was deeply afraid following God's plan for his life, that means that you and I are gonna have similar problems. And it's okay. It's okay to have doubts. It's okay to have moments where you go, man, don't know about this. But we can't live in that doubt.
We can't stay there. And God's going to encourage Abraham to do something in this next verse. He says, Don't be afraid, Abraham, for I will protect you and your reward will be great. But Abraham replies to him and he says, What good are all your blessings
when I don't even have a son? He says, You've given me no descendants of my own. So one of my servants is gonna be my heir. And the Lord told him, No, your servant will not be your heir, for you will have a son of your own who will be your heir. This verse and truly understanding the
totality of Genesis 15 as a whole is just a powerful portion of scripture. Because we see Abraham, the father of faith, this man who three chapters later, ten years later, entered into this crazy faith journey with God, believed that he was going to have a nation birth through him.
And then year after year after year after year goes by where him and his wife just continued to take pregnancy tests and the results are negative. They watch all of their friends plan the Instagram gender reveal parties, but not them.
Sarah's like, man, I bought the little popper things. I want to see, is it blue? Is it pink? Like, we cheer? Do we not? Like, how does this whole thing? Like, I want to do this, God. And you promised that you were going to do this through me. And I don't know about you, but I can 100%
relate to exactly what Abraham is feeling in this moment, where it feels like you've held up your end of the deal. I've done this stuff. I've served. I've given money. I've done the thirty day YouVersion Bible reading plan, and I got the streak notification,
and I've showed it to all my friends on social media. I did all of my stuff. And yet God still my business is failing. My marriage is still on the brink of falling apart. My kids are still on drugs. I'm still working this job that just seems like a dead end thing. I still am not married.
I had these things you spoke over my life, but now I'm in year three or four of waiting, God, where are you? And this is where you and I make the most dangerous decisions is when we take what was God's promise. That was something that was incredible. And we begin to do exactly what Abraham does in Genesis 15.
He's like, God, I know you promised me a nation, but I'll settle for just one son. This is where you and I get into really dangerous waters following and journeying with God, is when we know what the promise is, but we're willing to settle for something that is far less.
It's like, God, I know you promised me a spouse that would lead me, that would love me, that would also love you And that together we would build a family. But that promise seems so long ago. So I'm just going to do what the people around me are doing.
I'm going to try out this dating website. I'm going to try this Tinder thing out. Like maybe you need help in helping me find a spouse. So I'll find him and then I'll get him saved. I'll bring him to church. I'll do the discipling of him. And all of a sudden you stop looking up and you start looking around.
But the problem is, is when you and I look around, eventually it will lead us to decisions that we will always regret. And we'll end up walking around with our head low just going, man, I guess this is it. I guess this is what faith is.
And I think my fear is that a lot of people who wave the banner of Christianity are people who've just settled into playing church. We go through the motions. We come in here because we feel like we have to. We read our Bibles. We pray because we feel like it's how we make sure God's not mad at us.
And I think we're missing the entire thing. And I'm not trying to discount what we're going through. But here is the most difficult part of our faith journey with God is we serve a God who is not stuck in the confines of time and space like we are. And here becomes the other issue.
As humans, we try to take something that is eternal, that is huge. God through Abraham was thinking about you in this room. He was thinking about me. He was trying to birth something in Abraham that was so much greater than him.
The New Testament tells us that any person today living that has put their faith in Jesus is actually a seed of Abraham. That's what God was doing.
But Abraham was just like, no, no. So wait, you're gonna birth a nation. So that means me and my wife, we have to come together. We do this thing. We make a baby. If you don't know what that is, ask somebody after service, and we're gonna do that thing, and then we're gonna have a kid. And then I will have one kid, and then I'll convince my wife to do the thing again, and then we'll have another kid.
And Abraham was thinking like we do as humans in addition. One plus one plus one plus one plus one. And here's the problem, you guys. We serve a God that doesn't think in addition. We serve a God that is always thinking in multiplication.
Look at the promise that God gave Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis before this whole thing took place. He told them to go into the world to be fruitful in what? Multiply. God is trying to burst something in you that is so much bigger than your life. He's trying to create generational
legacy through your faithfulness. He's trying to break generational cycles. And sometimes the timeline is going to take longer than you thought it would. This is the most tense moment for you and I in our journeys with God. But the part that I love is that God reassures him, Abraham, I'm going to fulfill
my promise to you. You will have a son. But the crazy part is it doesn't actually happen for almost twenty five years later. From this moment in Genesis 15, it's still going to be twenty five years.
And it tells us in Romans chapter four and Hebrews 11, the moment that God made the decision that Abraham and Sarah were ready for a child is when he looked at Abraham with the angels and they were like, yep, he looks like he's about dead. Give him a newborn.
My God, that's jacked up, man. Like what? He should have waited until he was youthful. You know what I mean? He waited until he was about dead. And then he said, you're ready. And I often think part of why God doesn't just meet our expectations is because if he did,
he would never have the opportunity to exceed our expectations. If you're here this morning and you're going, God, these are the things that I expected and I just don't understand why you're not coming through. Maybe, just maybe, God is doing something that is so much bigger than you, that it's going to take time.
And this is the difficult part in our faith journey. Oftentimes the point where God says, I think you're ready, is the moment when your nearest death, when you get to the end of yourself, when you get to the ability that you can't do this on your own, God goes perfect. This is where I do my best work.
This is where I think sometimes the American church has missed the true invitation of faith that exists in scripture. This is not like, oh, hey, you know what's cool? Like come to church and God's gonna make you a better version of you. It's gonna be like you plus God is gonna make you a great you.
That's not the invitation of the gospel. The invitation is one to death. If you are willing to lay down your life, if you are willing to die, at that moment you will find true life.
While we go through the ceremony of baptism where somebody is dunked into water, it's the symbolic representation of you, the old person that you were dying and a new person coming out. Not a better version of you. God doesn't want a better version of you.
A better version of you is still a crappy version of who God wants to make you to be. I just said crap in church. They're probably not gonna invite me back now. What God wants to do through you is something so much bigger than you.
And here's my encouragement. I don't have some like pretty bow that I can wrap all this up with, but here's what I do know. If you look at your life right now and the circumstances around you make you wonder if God is listening, if you wonder if God is still there,
maybe just maybe what God is actually doing in this season of waiting, the season of the in between, between where you are and where you want to be, maybe what God is doing is he's preparing you for what it is that he's preparing for you. Here's what I mean. There are things that you and I pray for actively
that God knows if we were to get them, they would actually be the thing that destroyed us. But it's really hard when you're living in poverty to believe that prosperity is the thing that would kill you.
But if you look at our culture, the things that takes out more people than anything else, it's not poverty. It's actually abundance. It's prosperity. It's a burden. Go look at lottery winners. It's not always a blessing.
And what that tells me is just like Abram and Sarah, for whatever reason, God wasn't ready for them to birth this thing that he was doing in them. This is where we get to exercise faith. We go, Okay, God, you're preparing me. You're making me into who I need to be to carry this blessing forward.
But that's a very different disposition than going, God, you just have forgotten me. I don't know where you are. I'm just going to do this myself. God, you must be asleep at the wheel. I'm going to make this thing happen myself. And don't mistake it. Abraham, you go read Genesis 16.
This dude, after this powerful encounter, his wife's like, I got an idea. Let's use the handmaid. We'll use her and you can sleep with her and that'll be a baby. And Abram's like, I'm in, let's do that. That's a good idea. If it's for the family, I'll do it.
If Abraham did it, you and I will be tempted to do the same thing when we stop looking up, we'll begin to look around. But the part about the story that I love the most is God does not show up and then just give Abraham all the details of the future. But he gives him a powerful reminder that I hope we can see this morning.
Abraham at the end of verse four says, to note your servant will be your heir for you will have a son of your own who will actually be your heir. In verse five, says, then the Lord took Abram outside and he said to him, 'Look up.' Everybody say, 'Look up.' That was so weak. Come on, look up.
There we go. Look up into the sky and count the stars if you came. That's how many descendants you will have. And Abram believed the Lord and the Lord counted him as righteous because of his faith. Think about this for a moment. This a powerful picture. Abram, the Bible tells us is in a tent.
Part of what's significant to understand is Abram lives his entire life in a tent. God told him he was going to make him wealthy. He was going to do this thing through his life. Yet Abraham never got outside of living in a tent.
I don't know if you've ever seen like archaeological digs, but they don't ever find tents that are there because this tent is like tents are temporary. Tents are not meant to be permanent dwelling places.
And this guy through which God is birthing a nation lived his whole life in a tent. In this moment in Genesis 15, he's having a temper tantrum in the tent.
He's like, God, don't know where you are. I don't know why you're not here. I don't have a son. You promised all this stuff. She won't get off my back. She keeps saying, I don't know when this is going to happen. You're going to make this happen. We're going to figure this thing out. I don't know where you are.
And what does God do? He does what God always does. He's patient. He's full of grace. He's full of mercy. And somehow he steps out of heaven, comes down into Abram's world, gets in the tent with him, puts his arm around him. He says, Abram, step outside. And all he tells him, he says, Abram, look up. Look up and remember
who I am. And in Genesis 15, in the moment of Abram's freak out, God reminds him of the promise he gave him in Genesis 12. He says, look up and count the stars. There's so many here you can't even count them, but that's how many descendants you're going to have. God was reminding him, I'm faithful.
What I've started in your life, I promise I will bring to a completion. But again, it would make my life so much easier as a communicator of God's word to just go look. And then this is God gave him all the details. He said, look, on 12/01/2015,
you're gonna get this job and then this is what's gonna happen. And then these things, these are the trials you're gonna have. He doesn't give them details. He brings them back to the dream.
I feel like God truly brought me here to tell some of you, you need to get out of your limited perspectives that you've been living in. You've got to get outside of the small circumstances that you're living in. I know it's difficult. I know it's been hard. I know you're wondering if God is still there but he is.
And if you would step outside and just look up and dream with God again. It's not that you'll have all the answers and you'll have all the details. It might still take twenty five years for this thing to come to pass but what will begin to happen again is you can live from the vantage point of heaven down
and you no longer have to just walk around like this and you can begin to look up. And the first time in the entire Bible where we see a human gain righteousness in the eyes of God be made right where his sins are forgiven. The first time we see this happen in the entirety of Bible based not on works but on belief
is in Genesis 15. Abram right here in this portion, the first time where God credits righteousness to somebody because they believed what God said. All of this is a foreshadowing of the invitation to faith that Jesus would initiate on the cross.
And Abram for the first time believes God and says he's accounted righteous in the eyes of God. But I love the very next verse because Abram's like, no man, I need some proof. All that sounds good, but I need some proof.
God says in verse seven, I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur and the Chaldeans to give you this land as your possession. Verse eight, But Abram replied, O sovereign Lord, how can I be sure that I will actually possess it?
Again, I often wonder how he got the name the father of the faith, right? Because as I read his story, there are more moments of faithlessness than faithfulness. But the good news is that you and I in the eyes of God are remembered not for our moments of failure, but our moments of great faith.
It says that our sin is cast as far as the East is from the West. He doesn't remember the terrible things that we've done. And what is lifted up and remembered for generations is the moments of great faith that we've had. Yet in this moment, Abram's like, God, I need some proof.
All that sounds cool. I'm with it. I remember the stars, the sand. There's lots of things, but I still don't have a freaking sun. I need some proof. If you want me to keep doing my end of the deal, you've got to show me that you're going to do yours. And God says, Okay, you want proof?
I got your proof. Here's what he says. The Lord told him, Bring me a three year old cow. Wait, hold on. No, I was talking about proof. Why do you need a cow? He's like, bring me a three year old cow and I'll show you.
Bring me a three year old heifer, a three year old female goat, a three year old ram, a turtle dove, and a partridge in a pear tree.
Just a young pigeon. Verse 10, it says, that Abram presented all of these to him and he killed them. And then he cut each animal down the middle and he laid the half side by side. He did not, however, cut the birds in half. Cause that would have made this awkward, That would have been too far.
And then verse 11 says, Some vultures swooped down to eat the carcasses, but Abram chased them away. As the sun was going down, Abram fell into a deep sleep and a terrifying darkness came over him. And the Lord said to Abram, you can
be sure that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign land where they will be oppressed as slaves for four hundred years. Wait, God, I thought this was proof that this was going be like good news for me. And now like my kids are in slavery and like this is not getting better.
Verse 14, but I will punish the nation that enslaves them. And in the end, they will come away with great wealth. As for you, you will die in peace and be buried at a ripe old age. After four generations, your descendants will return here to this land for the sins
for the sins of the Amorites not yet warrant their destruction. After the sun went down and darkness fell, Abram saw a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between the halves of the carcasses. So the Lord made a covenant with Abram that day.
And he said that I have given this land to your descendants all the way from the border of Egypt. I know it's a really bizarre story. Theologians tell us that what just took place in Genesis 15 is the greatest articulation of the gospel anywhere in the Bible. When Abram asked God,
I need proof. I need something to show me that you're going to show up because I know I'm gonna have more moments where I doubt. I need some proof. And God says, okay, give me all of these animals. And for you and I, it's really bizarre. But for Abram, this would have made complete sense.
God was laying out all of the necessary pieces to enter into what's called blood oath covenant. They were going to do this thing that's called walking the blood path together. Now where you and I today making a business agreement would have contracts and lawyers and courtrooms where all of this stuff would be litigated,
This is where the deals were cut. The term that we still say cutting a deal, it's actually traced back to this ceremony. I was reading commentaries this week that said some weddings would do this ceremony. I'm like, that is not something I want to be a part of as a pastor. I'm good.
But what they would do when two parties would make a covenant in agreement to say, I'm going to do my part and you do your part. Together we're going to create the blood path with these animals that have been cut in half on each side. And then together we will stand and we will walk through these animal parts symbolically representing that I will be faithful to my word and you will be faithful to yours. If you're not,
the penalty of breaking the covenant is death. And you will become like the animals. You will be literally cut in half and killed. Very commonplace in this time. When Abram heard God doing this, he would have known exactly what he was asking him to do.
And Genesis 15 tells us that Abram gets all the parts, he gets all the pieces, he lays them out and he stands there and he waits. And he waits for God and then all of a sudden he's just knocked out. He just falls over and he's asleep. God puts him into a dark sleep
and he begins to speak the generational promises over his life. And then Abraham doesn't wake up again until he smells the meat burning, He's just a good red blooded American man where he's like, Hey, it's a barbecue. Let's party, you know?
He wakes up to the fire that has engulfed all of the animal parts around him. And it says that he sits there and he watches the fire and the smoke pass through the middle. It's a symbolic representation of Trinity. All three triune parts of God walking the blood path while Abram sleeps.
The reason that this is such a powerful illustration is what Abraham is asking is for proof. God, how can I know that I can trust you when life is making me feel like I can't? He says, you want proof, I'll give you proof. And for the first time, God makes a covenant with humanity that says, I will do it all.
Abram, if I walked this path with you, you would always be unfaithful to your commitment to me. You would break the covenant with me. And the only thing that I would be able to do at that point is I would have to kill you. So what I will do is I will take your place
in the blood walk. I will actually step into your shoes. I will fulfill the covenant by myself, with myself, for you, in your place and I will walk it alone.
Now for all of us, we have the beautiful insight of sitting here some two thousand years after this guy named Jesus stepped out of heaven and walked and lived on this earth. And we know that in Genesis 15, God was symbolically referencing the moment when the sacrificial lamb would come.
And that there would be a point that he would have to walk this path by himself. And that for you and I to be credited righteousness in the eyes of God, we would have to be perfect and live sinless, but we can't. And yet there was one that came who walked the blood path alone,
who walked the dark path and took our place. The Bible says he lived the life that we couldn't and he died the death that we deserve. So that when we sit in moments when we're tempted to look around, when we've been walking around with our head lifted high going, God, how can I know that you'll come through?
Because we have the cross. The cross is not just a one time event that gets us into heaven. The cross is the eternal reminder that God is faithful to his word.
And just like this moment with Abram, when God said, I know you're going to be afraid, but this is the promise that you can hold to. This is what you can stand firm on when it's the everything around you is making you freak out. Jesus did the exact same thing with his disciples just days before he went to the cross.
He gathered all of them in the upper room and he said, guys, you haven't been understanding what I've been talking about. But there's a moment that's coming where this whole thing is going to get really dark. And you're going to see me make this walk alone. You're going to see me actually
die. And he tells them, Do this spiritual act in remembrance of me because all of you, all of you in the days after I die, you're going to wonder if this is still real. You're gonna wonder if this thing is still going to happen. And when that happens, this is why we do communion together. He says, Take my body,
take this bread and eat it remembering the body that is being broken for you. When you are in your darkest moments, get outside of your tent,
stand out and look up to the cross. Here's the thing that I wanna leave us with this morning. If you right now are sitting in a place and you've been wondering where God is, I don't have details for you. But what I do have for all of us is the little cup that you got walking in here.
Every single person walking in here this morning got one of these little juice crackers that I think are gonna give us all cancer, but it's okay. If you need one, they'll pass them out. You're like, that's encouraging. I really want one now.
Here's what I can leave you with. I may not have specifics. I may not have details for you. But I know that I know that I know that you don't have to continue looking down in frustration and in shame and in guilt. Because we have the ultimate sign of God's faithfulness.
That he went to the cross and died the death that we deserve. He took our place on the blood path so that we don't have to live a life just looking down. And we get to look to the cross as our hope. Just like Jesus took his disciples and said take this bread together right now this morning, you and I, we take this cracker.
We break it remembering the body that was broken for us and everybody takes and eats. And Jesus' final command to his disciples in the upper room was to take this juice. Do this not because of some religious ritual but because it reminds you of what I've done for you.
Take this juice and drink it remembering the blood that was spilled for you so that you never have to wonder again if I'm faithful. Everybody take and drink.
So father, god, this morning, I know that there are so many people that have so many things happening in their life that are causing them to to to wonder where you are. And Lord, the temptation is to just reach for what's around us and to just find the simple things that can fill the temporary void that we feel in our heart.
But God, the issue with that is it will always leave us in a place where we just have our head down. And God for anybody that felt like they walked in here this morning with their head weighed down, whether it was because they felt shameful or guilty
or condemned or maybe it's because they haven't been to church in a long time and they feel guilty walking in, They got none of that is from you.
The Lord condemnation and guilt is not from you.
Lord you've put your spirit in us so that we can be people of audacious faith and that we can look to you in our moments of frustration and our moments of doubt and we can be reminded that the cross is proof that it is finished and that he who began a good work in us will bring it to completion.
So father would you bring us out of our tents this morning? Would you allow us to walk out of here and look up remembering your faithfulness, understanding that where we look is where we will ultimately live. In Jesus name, everybody said, amen.