Genesis Recap: God's Glory On Display

Well, I gave myself the task, and this is so hard for me. I feel like a pitcher who's been on the bench for a while, and I'm worried I'm going to throw one to like the back stop, [laughter] but I'm going to try to recap Genesis 1-2. We've gone through half of the book of Genesis, and if we're not careful or if we're not intentional, we'll have all these little stories, but we'll miss the big the big picture. To set that up, I want to ask you this question. What stories form your imagination? What stories form your imagination? You normally for most of us we receive stories in books, in in movies, even in songs. And they create in us an imagination of how the world exists and if there's a God, what's he like? And I've been thinking about kind of woke me up in the middle of the night a couple days ago. Welcome to my sleep issues of late. Uh two types of stories that are really popular these days. One is the heroic human story and the other is the dystopian god. So let me start with the first the heroic human. You know this one. This is franchises like the Avengers and and Mission Impossible and pretty much any John Wayne film you've ever seen. Okay, kids ask grandpa. Okay, so those are the stories where if there's a will, there's a way. And we love these stories. We we we watch them. We know how the ending's going to turn out. That's probably part of why we like it because we get to live through the heroes. We identify with them and we love their bravery and their success. The maybe unspoken message in these stories often is we don't need God. We can save ourselves. Thank you very much. The other type of story that's become more and more popular, I would say, especially after World War II is dystopian God stories. Big word dystopian just literally means bad utopia. A utopia is supposed to be something good, kind of heavenly. And so a dystopian story is where the what you expected to be really good and amazing is actually evil. And as a result, these stories tend to view God as the problem behind evil and suffering. So these stories sometimes can be told in post-apocalyptic manner like Mad Max on Fury Road. Uh or others are just involving everyday people like you and me. I think of Manchester by the Sea or Nomad Land stories that we can relate with and the pain that they're going through, but there's a sense in which there's no hope and there's no faith. And if there's a God, I'm not sure he really cares about us. Two very different stories. Um, neither [clears throat] promoting a Christian view of the world. On the one hand, Mission Impossible teaches us we can save ourselves. We don't really need God. And movies like Manchester by the Sea or Mad Max teach us that God can't or won't save us because he's either disinterested or not really good. Genesis though, the first book in our Bible tells us a different story. It's the first chapter of 66 in the Bible. And it tells a story of one hero, just one. The hero is the same in every book of the Bible. all 66 chapters. You can't see this hero though without the eyes of faith. He's not like us. He's totally in control. He's always good. And he's surprisingly kind even in the midst of his wrathful justice. And he doesn't really look like us or seem like us. Well, except for chapter two in the story. But I'm getting ahead of myself. So, Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament, the first chapter of God's story in the Bible, shows us the character of its author. God is revealing in his word who he is and how he actually is involved and has a plan to save people like you and me. Today, I want to recap where we've been so we don't lose the forest, the big idea for the trees. And this is really hard for me. So you can pray with me as I preach. Our need today is to encounter the real God, to see him in the greatest story ever told, recorded in the Bible, proved true throughout history, changed lives, and then to follow him by faith through grace. Would you join me in prayer? Oh, Father, what would we do? What hope would we have if you had not given us your word spoken through the prophets years ago? and brought into living flesh when your son was born of a Virgin Mary some 2,000 years ago.

We would have no hope and we would be despondent and a very sad people. But Lord, we have through your word and through the uh gospel, the good news of your son's life, death, victorious resurrection, and ascension, we have a hope that can stand or withstand anything. Oh father, through your son's life and sacrifice and prayers on our behalf and through the power of the spirit that you have given to any man, woman, or child who's believed in you, stir in us aresh this morning the hope that we have. Help us to see your character, who you are, so that our lips will sing words that our heart rejoices in, that our eyes would flood with tears of joy. that we would be a people quick to repent and to follow and that we might share with others the hope that we have whether things are going well or things have just gone really really hard. We pray all these things in your matchless name Jesus and all God's people said amen. Well, I've got the task, as I said, which I I did to myself to recap. Genesis 1 through 25. Um, we'll come back to this book next year at some point, Lord Willing, and the Creek Don't Rise. Uh, Genesis, you remember, is a book of beginnings. That's that's obvious in the title. And and that's the first po point on our outline, and you can see our outline in the back of your bulletin. The first point is God's glorious creation. Chapters 1 and two. Chapters one and two, God's glorious creation. And we'll cover that very quickly today. And we're going to notice how chapters 1 through 11, God's using kind of a macro lens, a wide angle lens. And we're seeing how he interacts. We're going to see his character interacting with the universe and the world and people as a whole. And so chapters 3 through 11, we see the fallout from sin. Point 2. point three. Then the the cinematographer, if you will, swaps out the lens and gets us a close angle and we zoom in chapter 12 through 25, really through the end of Genesis chapter 50 on how God interacts and how his character works in the lives of of one man and his family, Abram, later called Abraham. And I'll most likely refer to him in that way through the rest of our sermon today. My ultimate goal this morning, and you're going to need to get your pen out for this, is to highlight three attributes of God's character in all three sections of what we just outlined in in creation, in the sinful fallout, and in his gracious covenant. In verses chapter 12 through 25, we want to see three parts of God's character. We could we could highlight more, but a good author that I like recommended this, and so I'm going to follow it. God's holiness, God's sovereignty, and God's mercy. God's holiness, his otherness, his perfection, God's sovereignty, his his rule as king of the universe, and God's mercy, his grace, undeserved favor on people like you and like me. Well, let's start in the beginning. If you have your Bibles, turn to chapter 1, verse one. In the beginning, God incredible words. We heard these months ago. It's good to rehash them again. In the beginning, there was no one else but God. Before time began, before the universe, before the the heavens and the earth, God existed. The the whole story of the Bible tells us that God has never not existed. He has always been three in one, Father, Son, and Spirit. And so God existed without us with no need for us in a perfect loving community in and within himself. God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit. And yet God not by need but by choice decides to create, decides to share his love in joyful creation of the heavens and the earth. And that is our next part in verse one. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the inference here is from nothing. God didn't need any raw material. He created it. He spoke it into existence. He didn't need to labor. Uh other creation stories from other cultures and religions show a a sense of a a good and bad battle that results in the the birth of the universe. But not so not so with our God. He creates as his perfect will desires and it is good. In fact, very good. We won't read this but you remember six days of creation and each time day one it was good. Day two it was good. Day three good, four, five, six very good. And we noticed months ago that at the end of day six, God creates you and me, our imagebearing ancestors, Adam and Eve. the high point of his creation. The reason he has spread out the stars like a blanket in the sky and the beautiful earth and all the creatures in the sky and on the earth and in the waters is if you will as a backdrop for us his image bearsers. We unlike any other creature in this universe bear his the mark of his image his stamp

and God just spread that out for us. It's an amazing observation and it's a reminder again of his holiness. God is so different than us. He is so different than us. He can make everything good. There's no sense of evil or sin or that his plan has at all been betrayed whatsoever. You and I could never say that. No farmer will ever say it was the perfect harvest. There could always have been a better yield or this field could have done better or whatever. The famous opera singer Bev Sills said, "I never sang perfectly. Maybe maybe once almost." But God, he's different. He's holy. utterly different than you and I. And yet somehow in our rations and our emotions and our ability to follow or not follow, we reflect his image. [clears throat] Well, on the seventh day, God rests and he calls that day holy, the the Sabbath. And this reminds us, and this quote that I'm going to share reminds us of a great principle that we often forget in the busyiness of life. It goes like this. Rest does not exist for the sake of work, but work for the sake of rest. Rest does not exist for the sake of work, but work for the sake of rest. Thanks to Bobby Jameson and his good book on Ecclesiastes called Everything [snorts] is Never Enough. So the high point, if you will, is the rest. Getting to commune with God. And as we on Sundays, not the Sabbath, but the Lord's day, commune with one another. Well, we learn again about God's character. He's created the heavens and the earth as a backdrop. There's no evil in his creation. And he gives Adam and Eve in the remaining chapter two clear instructions here. Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth with my image bearsers and rule it or have dominion over it. So he gives us jobs. Work is not a bad thing. It's a good thing, but it's not the ultimate thing. Rest in communion with God is. And he gives us these clear commands. One rule that's negative. And but you can eat anything you want. All that I've spread out before you. The whole table's yours except for that tree. Do not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. So we see God's holiness and his law. God is morally perfect. There is that there are dos and there are don'ts. He is the one who defines good. It is objective, not merely our experience that drives what's good or bad. [clears throat] Excuse me. And he works in ways that we can't fully understand. But he is sovereign. He's control. You can sense that there's no sense in which God has struggled at all. As again, other ancient myths would see the the the struggle to from good versus evil, the ying and the yang, the the good force and the dark force, all that stuff. That's not real according to the scriptures. That's that's all a bunch of yahoo nonsense fiction. That's not how the universe really works. But there is evil. And we're going to encounter it now in chapter 3. the unfortunate reality that chapter 3 brings temptation and the breakdown of trust, sin and shame in a cursed world rather than a good world. Is God still in control? Is God still holy? The answer is yes and yes. But let's see that again. Chapter three, point two, the sinful fallout. [clears throat] The devil we find here is a serpent. We don't know how we got in the garden, but we do believe that God is sovereign. God allowed him to come. He enters in as a in the form of a serpent, the devil, the the the dragon of old as Genesis calls him, and he tempts Eve and Adam with pride and with pleasure. And they succumb. We we know the we know the story. They succumb to sin and they eat the forbidden fruit. They eat the forbidden fruit. In an instant, everything changes. Genesis 3:7 says, "Then the eyes of both Adam and Eve were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin cloths." And then we see them hiding in the garden and God calling out, "Adam and Eve, where'd you go?" And Christian counselors tell us that the themes we see here in chapter 3 have been repeated in our lives over and over and over and over again. Sin brings shame. Sin brings uh hiding and covery and the temptation to blame others. And that's what we see here. Shame. Something's wrong with me. I've done something wrong. I I'm no longer valued. I need to hide from God. I need to cover myself what I'm embarrassed about. And I blame others. They blame the devil. They blame God. Adam and Eve blame each other. Shame, duck, and cover and blame. Now God searches not because he is not sovereign but because he's giving Adam and Eve I think a chance to come to him in their sin and to confess it. They don't. But he is fully sovereign. God saw what was happening. He's not surprised. God creating time stands outside of time. So he sees past, present, future simultaneously.

And yet he calls out and then he hears their story, their [clears throat] blame, their shame, their pointing fingers, etc. And yet, did you notice in chapters 1 and two, there was no need for God's mercy because everything was good, everything was perfect. In chapter 3 comes God's mercy. His first mercy is to cover them. And to do that, he has to slaughter animals. So the first death comes actually at the hands of these animals that God slaughters, makes skins out of, covers Adam and Eve with. That's a mercy. Two, he then lays out his curses, a sign of his sovereignty and his justice. And the curse is first on the devil and then on Eve and then on Adam. But in the middle of those curses, there is our first really uh uh strand of ultimate hope in the gospel. And that is the promise that the seed of Eve will one day crush the head of the serpent. So even in the midst of God's punishment, even in the midst of his sovereign justice on sin, there's mercy. One of your sons, Eve, will destroy the enemy, the devil. [snorts] But there is a cost as well. In addition to the curse on the woman, which is pain and labor, and the man is toil in the fields, there is also limit on life. Genesis 3:22- 24. Then the Lord God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us, and knowing good and evil, thou, lest he reach out his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever." Therefore, the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubam and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. So there is a distinct change now. Let's keep that passage up, please. There's a distinct change now. They're no longer going to live forever. There's an end to life. Death is a punishment for our sin. And they can no longer be in fellowship with him. God's holiness does not allow sin to abide with him. He destroys sin. And so they are cast out of the garden and God controls that boundary. He puts a cheruban there that would slay them should they try to enter back into Eden so to speak. And so we see God's sovereignty and his holiness and his mercy. All three things perfectly here together. His justice is meed out in the curse and the the the the death. But there's also sovereignty. He controls the garden. and they can't come back in and get the tree of eternal life. And there's mercy. And there's these two points of mercy are worth noting. And I don't remember when I read this and it just kind of clicked like, oh, how how could I not have seen this? It was a mercy that God did not allow Adam and Eve to come in and eat the tree of eternal life, the fruit, because they would be eternally evil. They would share the same fate as the angels who followed Satan were eternally condemned. Adam and Eve would have faced the same fate. There'd be no hope for redemption. Let me repeat that. There'd be no hope for redemption. But God secures a hope for redemption as hinted very clearly in his promise to Eve in the midst of her curse. He drives them out. But there is mercy. There is mercy [clears throat] in that. As we move on through the rest of chapters 4 through 11, we see God's character woven out now in the lives of their descendants. We see Cain slay Abel. And though Cain is punished, he is also given mercy, a sign of some sort, obvious to anybody who would have seen him. Don't kill me. So therefore, Cain is protected against retribution. And then we come to Noah, the next big character in the in the Bible, and a hero of sorts. So let's remember, I I I make the claim, and I think it's absolutely true, that God is the only one true hero in the Bible. or to put it in the in the sense of if we're going to the Oscars, he's the only one who can win the main actor award. Everybody else are supporting casts. So, Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel and Noah and then later Abraham, they can be wonderful and good and righteous and and at times foolish and wicked. So, Noah is our next hero. Not at the same level of God, but he's the next hero to come forward. And in chapter 6, we just hear this disturbing account. When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw the daughters of man were attractive and they took any woman they wanted as wives. Chapter 6. And we see just sin grow and grow in grotesque abuses of women and of other men killing other men. Life is no longer valuable in Genesis chapter 6. And it grieavves God so much. Another insight into his character. Our God is holy. That is, he's always right, perfect in all of his emotions. But he has them. He has emotions. He's not a robot. He's not a a clock that just winds up and ticks. He feels deeply. And he hates what he sees on the earth. It's not surprised. It doesn't say that. He's sovereign. He knows all things, but he hates what he sees. Reminds me of Jesus weeping at Lazarus's tomb. Jesus knew Lazarus was going to die. Everyone dies. He knew this. But he hates the the the the the causes of this, the reason, the sin, and the pain that it causes his people. The hope that we have though in chapter 6 comes in very at the very end of that first passage, verse eight. But Noah found grace, found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Not for anything he has done. Noah is chosen, given grace, favor, undeserved mercy. And he is going to continue the bloodline of faith, if you will. And so we know the story. He's told to make the ark and he makes the ark and Noah and his family are saved by the very justice that God pours out on the earth. The very waters that destroy every other living man, woman, and child on the earth who justly deserve to die because of their sin. Noah and his family are saved by grace and they float upon the the very wrath actually saves them as they are in the ark. And I I I didn't write this passage down to to put up on the board, but we know 1 Peter 3 picks up on that theme to say, isn't it just isn't that basically our baptism? What a beautiful precursor of our baptism that we are united with Christ in the waters of death with him and then brought out in new life and resurrection with him. God shows his sovereignty in controlling the waters. He puts them on the earth for a certain amount of days. they recede. He shows his holiness and punishing sin and he shows us mercy and saving. Not anybody special, just a man who would walk with God, Noah and his family. This brings [clears throat] us to the last part of our our passage through chapters 3 through 11. And that is the Tower of Babel where we see uh men and women again uniting against God. They've kind of got their act together. They want to build this tower to the heavens so they can worship their own work. They don't have to worship God and they don't have to spread out and multiply and fill the earth with God's image bearsers. They can just be united against him in one little city. And all God has to do is come down and visit. It says and he changes their languages and so they can no longer understand and they're scattered. Genesis 11:es 1-9. Verse 9 says, "Therefore its name was called Babel because there the Lord confused the language of all the people and from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of the earth." This sovereignty can never be foiled by our sin. Friends, God's control has never rested from his hands because you and I had a different idea. The whole earth at that point, aside from Noah, decided to conspire against him. And all he had to do was shake up their languages and they had to obey and disperse. Now, the cinematographer pulls off the lens, the wide angle, and puts on a smaller one to focus in chapter 12 on Abraham. And a covenant, not as broad as the covenant of the rainbow with Noah. That was a covenant for all the peoples of the earth. But in chapter 12, we see now a covenant with one man and his family. And this man is a nobody. This man was a moon worshipper. Most likely scholars of ancient neareastern culture tell us this man was an idoltor. Did not know God. But he heard his voice. And he responded. 12:1. 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. And I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you. and in him who dishonors you I will curse and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So Abram later named Abraham went as the Lord had told him and Lot went with him. Abraham was 75 years old when he had departed from Haron.

Wow. [clears throat] We don't know how God spoke to Abram but it was undoubtedly him. His instructions were clear. I will make of you a great nation. Now, we know the the the rest of the story if we've been through this series. Abram is hearing these words. He's quite old and his wife and he have never been able to conceive children. I'm going to make a great nation of you, Abram, even though you physically cannot have children, whether it's on his end or on her end, biologically, humanly speaking, cannot work. And I'm going to ask you to move. In that day and age, you never parted like we do, you know, across the globe to go different jobs. you you stuck with your family, your people, your kin. You must leave your father Terron and and move. And the amazing thing is that Abram has faith like a child. What does it say in verse four? Abram went as the Lord had told him. He leaves, takes his wife and his nephew Lot because his brother had died and and you know, a couple dozen people maybe and whatever flocks they had and he goes to a land unknown. doesn't even have a GPS plugged into his phone. We know that this will later become the promised land, the where the 12 tribes of Israel will settle, but he doesn't know that. Only God knows that. And God begins to make a gracious covenant. A covenant is a a word. It's a promise. There's more to it than that, but it's a promise. And our God is a promisekeeper. He is able to because he is in sovereign control. He always will because he is holy. Doesn't make mistakes. Doesn't go back on his word. And even when we struggle, God remains faithful. Because he is merciful. Now, there's a lot that we could cover here and we could be here for an hour and you would not like me back in the pulpit. You'd say, "Please bring Pastor Matt back. He doesn't preach an hour and a half sermons." And I would be with you. So, we're going to just skip a lot, but I want us to stay focused. Now, Abraham is a hero, but God is still the ultimate hero. And it is his character that is now shown through how he reacts and interacts with Abram's life. We're going to see Abram struggle up and down. And I I won't reference a lot of scripture because that would be just too difficult. You'd be in and up and down. You start to get dizzy. But we know that that right after this Abram has to go to Egypt because he's there there's a famine in the land and he lies about his wife. Says, "Oh, she's my sister." Why? Because Abram's lacking faith in that moment. He has fear. But God is merciful and releases Sarah and actually blesses Abram with a lot of goods. Abram comes out of Egypt, a pretty wealthy man for a nomadic shepherd. He's got all the stuff, all the sheep and all the cattle and all the stuff, camels and now even servants and slaves to serve in his household. And he comes back [clears throat] and we could trace far more of this than I have time for and that you have time for. But he moves, we know, into a land and Lot and he realized that things are getting crowded. They're starting to fight over water rights. And anyone who's ranched or has cattle, water is is is life or death. And Abram does something that on the first shake, you go, "Wow, that was really gracious." And Lot does something that kind of feels a little selfish. But again, God, the main actor, the main hero in our Bible, is sovereign over all of their decisions. Abram says, "Lot, you can pick where you go." So Lot says, "Sweet. I want the valley." And you can't blame them, right, farmers? I mean that that's going to be far easier to graze in the valleys rather than the steep slopes of the mountains. Chapter 13. So Lot picks the best the best land. If given two choices of stake, he picks the biggest stake. Yeah. All right. But Abram then gets the highlands, so to speak. And God says, "Guess what, Abram? From this high vantage point, you see everything that will one day be yours." So the promise now is not only to a nation but also with a land. A nation and a land that they can occupy. God is sovereign. God is in control. Abram rescues Lot. God covenants with Abram in chapter 15. Remarkable chapter. Abram struggling in his faith. Chapter 15. [clears throat] Abram says verse two. Oh Lord God, what will you give me? For I continue to be childless. And the heir of my house is a servant named Eleazar from Damascus. And Abraham said, "Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him. The man shall not be your heir. Your very own son shall be your heir." And he brought him outside and said, "Look toward the heaven and number the stars if you're able to number them." And he said to him, "So shall your offspring be, Abraham." Verse six, and Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord counted to him as righteousness. That passage is quoted four times in the New Testament, and it is a big deal. Not because Abram's special, he's not. [sighs] But he has a childlike faith. So God promised, "I'll make a nation of you, and I will bless the nations through you and curse those who are against you." And then Abram says, "But okay, Lord, great. Maybe you're going to go through this servant, but not through my blood. No, I'm going to I'm going to give you a son, Abraham. And through him, your descendants will be more numerous than the stars you used to worship. And all Abraham did was say, "I believe you." And it was counted to him as righteousness. We'll come back to that. It's one of the greatest verses in the Old Testament. Some of us have asked me or others, why do we go through the Old Testament sometimes? That's why the Old Testament shows us what was coming in Christ. [snorts] And if it was good enough for Jesus to read the Old Testament and the New Testament church to read the Old Testament, oh, there's a lot that we can learn from here. Now, mercy comes in the next chapter. Abram and Sarah are struggling again in faith. And Sarah says,"Abram, we haven't had any kids. I'm not getting pregnant. You should sleep with my servant Hagar." And he does. And they have a baby named Ishmael, a half son. They try to fix, you know, God helps those who help themselves seems to be the message. And poor Hagar is picked on by Sarah and she flees. But God has mercy. Saves her from death in the desert. Brings her back. Gives her promises. I'll take care of your son Hagar. Don't worry.

And then there's the covenant of circumcision. And Isaac now by name is promised to be birthed to Abraham and Sarah. And then we see God's holiness and mercy together in a very powerful but disturbing story. Chapters 18, 19, and 20. This is the Sodom and Gomorrah passages. 18 and 19, excuse me. We see God's hatred of evil and the destruction of sin that it reeks on people. While Lot got the valley, which was right by Sodom and Gomorrah, by the way, he's also being drawn in to their wickedness, the evil acts that they do, where we get the word sodomy from in the first place. So God's going to punish this evil uh rebellious people. But Abraham pleads, "Lord, if there's a 50 people that are righteous, you surely you wouldn't wipe them all out." God says, "You're right. I won't." And Abraham gets it down to 10 people. Not because he needed to barter with God because God was going to do it. But again, our God is gracious enough to dialogue with us. He's a patient father. He asks questions, elicits our answers. You see this all the time with Jesus in the New Testament, don't you? He often when asked a question, answers one back to draw out our true heart. So as Abraham elicits or evidences a heart of justice and mercy, so too God reveals, of course that's my heart to Abraham. So God comes down in the form of some of his angels or send some of his angels, I should say, and they tell Lot, hey, you got to get out of here. And Lot's being a bit of an idiot and God is extremely merciful with Lot gets him and his wife and his girls to flee. The wife turns back and she is punished for that and dies on the spot. But he and his daughters are saved though the rest of Sodom and Gomorrah is wiped out. Fire and brimstone as the old King James would say. And it's both a sad part because there's a judgment because God's wrath is real. He sees all and will judge all whether in real time now or at the end of time.

And the rest of Abra Lot's story is pretty sad too with his daughter's incest etc. [clears throat] We close our our our journey now in chapters 12- 25 seeing Isaac born and Abram called to sacrifice Isaac. One of the hardest passages to read I think in the Bible is Genesis chapter 22. We're told through not only the Old Testament and the New Testament that Abraham had faith still that God could either give another sacrifice in place of his son or resurrect his son from the dead. But Abraham is called to sacrifice his very own son, the thing he loves the most, perhaps his greatest idol.

And Abraham is faithful up until the very moment. And then we read this word verse 12 verse 11. But the angel of the Lord called to the heaven and said,"Abraham, Abraham." And he said, "Here I am." Verse 12, "Do not lay your hand on the boy." Chapter 22:2, "Do not lay your hand on that boy or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, seeing you've not withheld your son, your only son from me." And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son Isaac. So Abraham called the name of that place, the Lord will provide. As it is said to this day, on the mount of the Lord, it shall be provided. And God reaffirms his commitment in his covenant with Abraham. Abraham is a man of simple faith.

And our last glimpse of Abraham is as he's dying, sending off his servant to go find Isaac, a wife. And it's a beautiful story of his servant trusting that God can reveal that God is in sovereign control and will show his dying master mercy by bringing Isaac a wife. And he does. He finds Rebecca just as God has instituted. He brings Rebecca back to Isaac and they are happily married. Now, as we transition into the next chapters, which we'll read at a later point in study, we see Isaac and Rebecca giving birth to twins. Two separate nations, Esau and Israel, or at that point named Jacob. Neither are perfect or idyllic examples or heroes, almost anti-heroes, the both of them, but God is still faithful. God is still merciful. God is still in control. So, how do we live then? We've gone through 25 chapters of Genesis, the oldest book in the Bible. How do we live? Genesis shows us the character of this God that we follow that he is actually very involved in his creation. that unlike Isaac Newton's belief that God wound the world up like a clock and then set it there and never bothered again. No, God is intimately involved and in the most intimate sense of course in the coming of our Lord and Savior the son of God Jesus Christ in the incarnation born into our human flesh in Genesis though we're not there yet are we? But we see a God who is holy. He will have nothing to do with sin. But he is still sovereign, able to work even in the midst of sinful people. And perhaps what's most important is that he is merciful, that he rewards those who believe with righteousness. And Romans chapter 4 picks this up. I want to close with a couple verses from Romans chapter 4 verse 13, starting. For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be the heir of the world did not come through the law. Didn't come through the good things that Abraham did, but through the righteousness of faith. For it is the adherence of the law who are to be the heirs. For if it is the adherence of the law, excuse me, who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath. But where there is no law, there is no transgression. Verse 16, this is why it depends on faith. in order that the promise may rest on grace, on God's mercy and be guaranteed to all his offspring

and we can move on. Friends, as you consider your life before God in your belief in God, do you see his character? Do you see his first his holiness, his otherness? He's not like us. Is he safe? No. But he's good. Yes. As Lucy says in Alan, the lion, the witch in the wardrobe. Two, do you see his sovereignty? God is not deterred or foiled by our flaws or by our sin.

A life of faith is not a perfect life. It is a life trusting in he whose life is perfect and that is Jesus. Faith is about the object contra to the Ted Lasso series which don't know if I'd recommend although I like the character of Ted. But he he exhibits the idea that that belief is enough just general belief. No, it's not. The object of your faith is what matters most.

For whether you came in here today absolutely destroyed by circumstances in your life, the deaths of many of our beloved here at the church over the past months, the station of our the state of our nation or your own sin doesn't change God's character and doesn't change his promises to you if by faith you follow him. If there is some sin in your life this morning, please as I pray this morning, confess that to God. Confess that to Jesus who is your faithful high priest. He will intercede on your behalf and remind you of the forgiveness promised to you. Again, he does not ask for a perfect faith, but you and I have faith in a perfect savior. or as the old hymn we sang this morning, oh for grace to trust him more. Would you pray with me? Lord Jesus, we call out to you now with our sins and our imperfections, our unbelief, our struggles. when we see with our eyes, but we just have a hard time believing what you're doing because we can't see you with our human eyes. And the way that we can see the cancer in our lives, the way we can see the death of our beloved friends and sisters and brothers, the way we can see the evil done over and over again throughout our country and our state and even across the world, it is so easy to get discouraged.

It is so easy

to lose our faith. And yet, as the Apostle Paul reminds us, even when we struggle, you are not faithless. You are always faithful. Thank you for that confidence. Thank you that you intercede on our behalf, Jesus. Even when we don't have the words, the spirit intercedes. We truly are blessed. We have a hope above and beyond any other hope this world could offer. for this hope will take us into eternity and through it.

For those of us who are here today and we're wondering, is this God really real? Lord, I pray that you would show them that you are real through your word, through the testimony of the people here in this room, [clears throat] to co-workers at their jobs, to even maybe events in their lives that would bring them to remember, hey, there is a God and he has something to say about your life. So do that work in us. Be glorified in the way that you transform lives day in and day out. And thank you for bringing us along for the ride. We pray all these things in Jesus name. Amen.