Christmas in Genesis (The Promise of Blessing)

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon We pray that as we declare the

Word of God that you would be encouraged Strengthened in your faith and that you would catch a greater vision of who

Christ is May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word and may the Lord be with you as the clock struck midnight in Ebenezer's dimly lit and frozen room too cheap in fact to pay for extra heat

The apparition of Jacob Marley appeared Now if you remember from the classic

Christmas Carol that Joseph Marley was a business partner was a co -owner financial

Sort of friend and ally to Ebenezer Scrooge and he had created with Ebenezer a financial institution that was

Interested entirely in one goal and that was more money. In fact, you could even reduce it down to one simple goal more now

Where that money landed at Joseph Marley is very clear in the apparition form it landed him in a place of absolute suffering and Scrooge became vividly aware of how this suffering was affecting his friend and he beheld it through the chains and the money boxes and the ledgers and the clanking of the coins and he got to See firsthand the agony that idolatry produces

Now Marley and life actually influenced Scrooge to greed He influenced him to chase after this idol

But in death he comes and he's encouraging Scrooge to flee from this to use himself as an example to run from this sort of idolatry because it leads nowhere but suffering and in that sense in literature

Jacob Marley would be considered a cautionary character, but also in literature

We have this category called types Joseph Marley would be a type of the destruction that was coming upon Scrooge Now if you're unfamiliar with that term type, it's a very important concept in literature but it's also incredibly important in scripture type or typology simply means a

Literary discipline that uses character event or idea to point to something ultimate

It's a stand -in it's something that points to something larger and bigger than itself So for instance, let me give you an example not in the

Christmas Carol But in the Lord of the Rings the greatest work of fiction in all time

In that book Frodo is a type of the true high priest He's the one who bears the burden and he carries it up to the mountain to offer the sacrifice that will cleanse the people

He is a type of The true high priest he is not the true high priest, but he's a type his life points to the work of Christ What about Gandalf?

Gandalf is a type of the true prophet. He's the miracle worker. He's the one that has smooth words He's the one who opines eloquently and gives these great diatribes against Saruman and against Sauron and all of these different characters.

He's type of the true prophet Aragorn type of the true King you've got in Tolkien's work there the tripartite office of Christ and typology

Because he is more refined than C .S. Lewis who was fond of allegory just so you know

Typology looks beyond itself to something greater infinite of great weight and importance and it serves sort of like a picture and if you can understand the idea of a picture then

You can understand typology. You have a phone that has thousands of pictures on it Probably have hundreds of different people, but those pictures aren't the people

Those pictures merely point to the people they point to the events They point to the situations that you were in when you captured them

They are a type they point to the full It's a picture

Now Tolkien's point in his book was not to leave us with an impressive view of hairy -footed midgets

That wasn't his point Hobbits as they're known in Middle -earth, by the way, let's use the correct vernacular

That wasn't his point. His point was to show us that the evil in the world is not heavier than a tiny hobbit

That will ascend to the mountain and through the sacrificial act of love even though I get it it was actually

Gollum that destroyed the ring, but that's another type. It's a type of sin It's that redemption comes in unlikely places

That's the point of the Lord of the Rings Now I would say the same thing with Charles Dickens great work the

Christmas Carol his point is not For Scrooge to sit down and say Wow Jacob Marley, I bet you evident really stinks to be where you're at right now

Let me let me empathize with you. Let's sit down and let's have a cup of coffee. Let's talk about your suffering

It's not a it's not a psychological knob. It's it's a warning The point of it is to look at Marley as a type of the destruction that is coming to Scrooge and to flee

From the idolatry of money those types of pictures are clear to us but yet in the

Scriptures We miss so much of the richness and the beauty and the tapestry of the

Bible The Bible is filled with typology and I would even go as far as to say if you don't understand typology

Well, you miss the richness of Scripture. There's so much it's like adopting a diet of Ritz crackers when you could eat at a five -star restaurant

Typology makes the Scriptures rich and dense and beautiful and there's so much in there that we could actually point to for instance

I'll give you an example the temple God did not create a temple so that we would like fancied buildings that are gold on the inside There are men like Donald Trump and Kid Rock who built their houses like that Well, maybe they don't know a lot about typology

The point is not the building the point is what it points to the temple points to the fact that God Is going to set up his dwelling place with man sinful man and he's gonna set up his dwelling place in such a way that man is not going to be

Attacked by the ferocious holiness of God and that temple points to the fact that that temple was not enough

That all the people on earth were not going to stream into Jerusalem It was pointing to a better salvation a better Example of God coming and dwelling on earth, which is

Christ because he is the one who tabernacled among us He is the one that the nation streamed to now to know who

God is and we the recipients of his blessings Are now like little holy of holies where the

Holy Spirit dwells the temple is a type

It's pointing to the limited expression of God's saving graces in the Old Testament Pointing to the magnificent triumphant spectacular

Salvation that is going to be coming in Christ. God gave his people toy cars

So that they could hope for a Lamborghini God gave his God gave his people figurines when he was bringing them a person

All of these things in the Old Testament are types. There's all sorts of types. Not just the temple. There's types of Things like or type yet types of biblical things like the priesthood in general is a type of Jesus Christ and his mediatorial work that he's gonna offer for us on the cross the sacrificial system is a type of Jesus's sacrifice the clean dietary laws or a type of how

Jesus not food is going to make us clean The bronze serpent that's elevated in the wilderness is a type that's pointing to Jesus is the one who's truly

Lifted up who truly cleanses us from our infirmities There's also biblical types of people

Jesus is the true and better Moses he's the one who Really is let us out of slavery to sin who brought us to a mountain and who cleansed us at that mountain not called

Sinai But called Calvary and he's one who now is leading us to the promised land where we will live with him forever

He's the true and better Moses He's also the true and better Elijah Jesus is the one who at the mountain of God fought the battle that you and I could not fight and one

Not over the prophets of Baal but over the powers and the principalities of darkness over everything

He's the true and better David He's the king who will lead us into an everlasting kingdom not a brittle kingdom

Not a shallow kingdom not a kingdom like every other kingdom on earth that has its day in the

Sun and then it dies No, he is the true king who will lead us into an everlasting kingdom It's a true and better David.

He's the true and better Solomon Who has the wisdom infinite wisdom of Christ even

Solomon didn't have the wisdom of Solomon? Because at the end of Solomon's life, he's bowing the knee to idols

He's has multiple hundreds of wives and concubines and he's lost it at the end of his life the wisest man on earth totally botches wisdom

Because he was never meant to point to himself. He was meant to point to the ultimate wisdom that comes in Christ Samson Do we think it's a coincidence at the end of Samson's life?

He stretches his arms out and he saves his people And he kills these three thousand

Philistines by spreading his arms out and it was Jesus Christ who had a greater victory when he spread his arms wide

The very first people who came alive were three thousand people who came alive because of Christ He is saying that I am the true

Samson. I'm the true Adam. I'm the true everything Typology is every week and we continue going on.

It's littered all throughout the scriptures. We can have an entire series on the typology of the Bible But it enriches our study because we see that every single page of the

Bible is all about Jesus So when I say well, I've looked in the Old Testament. I don't see Jesus his name anywhere

He's there in every example of Every limited person and every limited event and every limited institution

It is pointing to the true and better and why why does the Bible do this? Several reasons again, we could go into an entire mini -series on this topic

Number one number one. It's foreshadowing to us That the

Old Testament is not enough on its own. It's not enough to save us.

It's not enough to rescue us it's not enough and It's pointing to something that is the second thing is it creates a unity of Scripture So that we can say that all of Scripture is from God breathed out by him useful for teaching correcting and building us up in righteousness because the

Old Testament is not as Andy Stanley says something that we must unhitch ourselves from It's not a different story of a different gospel.

It is the gospel Concealed the New Testament is the gospel revealed

It's there to show us the covenantal promises that can only come true in Christ it's there because God is creative and he's a good writer and he writes in such a way where he doesn't tell us everything on the on the nose and he

Writes in such a way where it's layered and beautiful and you can study it for a lifetime and you've never learned at all

You can't the treasures that are buried in Scripture are too deep for you

You will not exhaust them and I don't think you'll exhaust them in eternity either Because it's not like the matrix when you get to heaven.

You don't get everything downloaded into your brain It's the second matrix reference today, which is actually odd But When you get to heaven,

I think you learn new things about God all the time I think those new things that you learn about him because he's infinite and you're not and As you learn new things about him, it fuels your worship

Uninhibited by your sin uninhibited by your cloudy broken mind Think about the discoveries that you will learn about the infinite

God in heaven and how joyful it will make your toes curl heaven will be a joyful place because of that and many other things

When you're looking at the scriptures you're looking at all of Christ That's meant for all of our life

The whole Bible is pointed squarely at Jesus Christ And when you start to understand that it makes your life richer and better and sweeter

Because you realize that everything you go through also points to Christ Every limited broken moment that you go through points to the fact that you need to trust him more

Every joy that you have points to the fact that he's perfect joy everything in your life Points you towards Christ typology is a big deal in Scripture and it makes our reading of it richer

Now I want to add one layer to that today that's typology in general Today, I want to suppose that if the whole

Bible is all about Jesus and that also applies to his birth Which is why we're doing a series called Christmas in Genesis because we believe that you can learn things about his birth in Genesis They're the breadcrumbs that lead us to Bethlehem So if you will go ahead and turn with me

We're gonna be in Luke chapter 2 verse 1 through 17 to start Then we will move very quickly to Genesis 12 1 through 3 and while we're going there while we're turning there

I'm being very gracious this week and actually giving you time to get there While we're getting there

Remember last week that we saw that the breadcrumbs that led us to Bethlehem were the breadcrumbs of the virgin birth

Revealed thousands of years before it happened to Eve not to Mary And we saw how the expectation of the people of God was that at some point

God was going to bring the serpent -crushing Son and He did and he brought it through the womb of Mary the daughter of Eve Today, we're gonna look beyond the conception beyond the birth

We're gonna look to the nature of who this child is. We're gonna look. What does this child do?

What is the what is his life going to accomplish? What is the purpose that he came and we're gonna see that In the

New Testament for sure, but we're also going to see that in the life of Abraham and Isaac so if you will turn with me as We look at the seed of Abraham We'll start in Luke 2 1 through 17

Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth this was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria and Everyone was on his way to register for the census each to his own city

Joseph also went up from Galilee from the city of Nazareth to Judea to the city of David which is called

Bethlehem Because he was of the house in the family of David In order to register along with Mary who was engaged to him and was with child while they were there the days were completed for her to give birth and She gave birth to her firstborn son and she wrapped him in swaddling cloths and Laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the end and in the same region there were some shepherds staying out in the fields and watching over their flock by night and an angel the

Lord suddenly stood before them and The glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terribly frightened

But the angel said to them do not be afraid for behold. I Will call the people for today and the city of David there has been born for you a

Savior who is Christ the Lord and This will be a sign for you You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger and suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host

Praising God and saying glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among men whom he is pleased

And when the angels had gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds began saying to one another, let us go straight to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened which the

Lord has made known to us. So they came in a hurry and they found their way to Mary and Joseph and the baby as he lay in the manger.

It's Luke 2, one through 17. That's clear what is going on.

Now let's look underneath the surface of it and see where it all began. In Genesis 12, one through three.

God says this to Abraham, and I will bless those who bless you. And the one who curses you,

I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed.

Now for the rest of our time, we're gonna connect those two thoughts together. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you that your foundation and your coming is from old.

That Lord, you've been planning this before the foundation of the world. And that Lord, this is the story that you determined to tell for your own glory.

This is the story out of all of them that you loved most. Out of all the possible stories and characters and situations and events, this is the one that you chose to reveal yourself.

And Lord, let us revel in that. Let us see how deep those foundations go all the way even back to Genesis 12.

Lord, it's in your name we pray, amen. Now there is a typology, as we talked about before, which remember is one person pointing to something bigger than themselves.

There is a typological connection between Abraham and Joseph. Joseph, the human father of Jesus, not

Joseph, the son of Jacob. There's a typological connection between Abraham and Joseph.

And I'd like to explore that for just a moment before we move forward. I want you to think about their lives, Abraham and Joseph.

I want you to hold them both for a moment in tension. Both of them were called out from where they were living.

They were called to travel. Right in the very beginning of when we meet them, both of them, the first thing that we see about their life is that God himself calls them out.

Abraham from Ur and Joseph from Galilee. And they're called to travel to the land or to heaven.

To the place where God had told them to go. Both journeyed to the land of promise, Bethlehem.

And one, and then Abraham to the land of Canaan. Both are called righteous in the text. Both have wives that cannot have babies.

Both of them have wives that by some reason or another cannot get pregnant.

Sarah, it's pretty obvious why. She's beyond the natural years of having children.

She's past menopause. Mary, it's also quite obvious. She's a virgin. Both, although in their far past the years of child rearing and virginity, are given divine announcement by angels that they will have a son.

Both of them. Both of their pregnancies are absolutely miraculous. Sarah, God overcame the menopause of her womb to reinvigorate it to have a child.

And Mary, the greater example. See, he overcame virginity itself and impregnated

Mary by the Holy Spirit of God. Both are miraculous pregnancies. Both children were promised vast offspring.

Abraham was told to look up at the sky and say, if you can count the stars, then that's how many offspring you're gonna have.

Somebody today in Sunday school said how many stars that they theorized that they are. I can't even remember the number.

It's uncountable. That's how big your offspring is gonna be. Jesus has promised that as well.

Both children have fathers who are advanced in years. Abraham is old.

Abraham is so old that the Bible calls him old. He's pretty old. Church history tells us that Joseph was actually quite old as well.

The Bible doesn't tell us that, but the church history tells us that Joseph was quite a bit older than Mary, died when

Jesus was somewhere between his teenage years and when he enters into ministry. So he's an older gentleman.

So both similar there. Both are told the name that they're supposed to name their child. Both of them are given these specific names.

Abraham is told here to name your child Isaac. Isaac means laughter because Sarah laughed at the promises of God and that was the joke.

You're gonna laugh at me? Your son's gonna be called laughter. Jesus is named by God as well.

He's named Yeshua, which is the Hebrew word for Joshua because he is going to be the savior of his people. He's gonna be like Joshua in the

Old Testament who's going to lead his people to conquer the world and to live in the freedom and the presence of God.

Both are circumcised on the eighth day. Both of them, that's Abraham and Joseph, have visions.

Abraham is knocked out, put into a deep sleep, and he sees this great vision of God working out the covenant for him.

Joseph has many visions and dreams in his time that are meant to propel him in the direction of making sure that Jesus is not murdered.

Both of them travel to Egypt, Abraham and Joseph. Both of them have problems with a pagan king. It is

Pharaoh who is trying to take Sarah and Abraham has this moment where he says, no, she's my sister.

The evil king, the Pharaoh, Mike Herod, is also trying to kill Jesus. So they both have problems with pagan kings.

They both return to the land of promise shortly thereafter. Both of their sons are put forward as a sacrifice on a mountain, on the same mountain.

Mount Moriah is where Jerusalem was built. And the only difference between them is God let Isaac walk away free and he did not with Christ.

Do you see how from the start of Abraham's life and the start of Joseph's life, they're going through the same things?

It's meant to point us that God is doing something in that, that he's bringing a child, a second child, a miraculous child, but better than Isaac.

That's the point, that God is not gonna bring another Isaac because Isaac failed. He's gonna bring one better than Isaac.

That's why their lives were coordinated and there's so many overlapping things because it's meant to invite us to stare at it and to learn from it.

And it's meant to point our gaze directly at the child that is born, the

Christ. So there's a typology there of Isaac and Jesus.

Again, both children were promised by God. Both children named by God. Both children announced by the angels of God.

Both children conceived by miraculous means. Both were the only begotten son of their father.

Both were taken up to a mountain. Both carried their own wood up the mountain. And both were gonna bring about the father's blessings to the covenant people of God.

This is where we introduce the Christmas theme in this passage in Genesis. That Isaac is the type of the

Christ that is coming. So his birth is gonna teach us something about the birth of Jesus. There's a connection there in their birth and it all comes down to the seed promise, this promise of a seed.

That is where we now transition so that we can uncover those seeds. The layers of that because at Christmas, there's a really incredible promise that Jesus is going to fulfill.

But we have to understand the layers before we get there. God says in Genesis 12, three, and I will bless them that bless thee and I will curse them that curseth thee and in thee all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

He's saying in Abraham. He's promising that all the families of the world are gonna be blessed in Abraham. Which is astounding because I don't know if you're keeping track, but in the

Old Testament that didn't happen. Abraham's family barely blessed their own family.

Abraham's family didn't bless Lot and that family. So there's something going on that's bigger than Abraham.

There's something that's happening that is grander than the family of Abraham. He's promising that all the families of the earth are gonna be blessed through this family, that the curse is gonna be lifted through this family, that they're gonna be the most powerful family in the world.

To all my conspiracy theorists, they're more powerful than the Rothschilds. Just kidding.

I mean, I'm being serious about that, but I'm just kidding about that point. This family is gonna bring the entire world under the reign of God and it could not have been done through Abraham.

It's gonna be in his family, but it's too big for him. He didn't do it. It's a massive promise.

And it's a promise given to him while he has no children, while his wife is still barren.

And after 20 years of wandering, after 20 years of processing through this,

God eventually does bring him a son and the promise transfers to the son, Isaac. Genesis 17, seven, and I will establish my covenant between me and between you, between your seed after you and their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a

God unto thee and to thy seed forever. So God is upping the ante. He's saying,

Abraham, I'm promising that this will happen forever. And I'm promising that it must happen or else my credibility as God has now been challenged.

God is saying that if this doesn't come true, I'm a liar. And yet it's bigger than Abraham, much bigger than Abraham.

Look at what Genesis 22, 17 through 18 says, I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven and as the sand, which is upon the seashore and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies.

And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because thou hast obeyed my voice.

So the promise is bigger than Isaac. He is promising that through Abraham's line, the entire world will come under the blessing of God in this lifetime.

I'm not talking about heaven. He's talking about a promise that's gonna happen in our lifetime, in this world, a promise that is bigger than Isaac.

Isaac had great growth in his family. He went from being an only child to having two children.

That's double. Some would call that explosive growth. There was four people in his household.

That's 400 % growth. Is that what God is talking about? Obviously not. This promise is bigger than Isaac.

It's more weightier than what Jacob can handle. It's more, it's bigger than Judah.

It's greater than Moses and Aaron and Abiathar and Zadok and David and Hezekiah and Josiah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and all of the minor prophets.

These men were part of the promise, but they were not the fulfillment of the promise. They are not the seed.

They are a part of the seed of Abraham, but they are not the seed of Abraham. So what's

God talking about? Why is God saying with such strong language, especially in Genesis 15 where he lets

Abraham see that he's willing to be ripped apart if this doesn't come true, why is

God putting his entire deity on the line to say that the entire world will be filled with the blessings of God through Abraham?

Because he has in mind something bigger than Abraham, something bigger than Isaac, and that's his son.

Look at what Paul says in Galatians 3, verse 16. Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed, but he does not say seeds with an

S as referring to many, but referring to one, to your seed, Paul says, which is

Christ. He's saying that Christ is the seed of Abraham. He's the one who inherits the promises of God.

He's saying that God, when he made this promise to Abraham, was looking past Abraham, looking past Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Moses, all of them, looking past them to the true seed, the true one that inherits the promise of God, and that is

Christ, that he's gonna fulfill the promises of Abraham in Jesus, which means that Jesus is gonna be the one who fills the world full of God's blessings.

Jesus is gonna be the one who brings the people of God all across the face of the earth.

This is not just a promise that the world will be filled with people. That's already happened. The world is already filled with people.

It's so filled with people that I wanna move more rural, and I think you probably do too. That's not the point.

The point is that these people will be a blessed people, that every family on earth will be under the blessing of God through Jesus Christ.

How's God gonna do that? Jesus didn't have a wife. Jesus didn't have physical children.

How is God gonna fill the world with Jesus's offspring so that every family on earth is under his blessing?

Paul goes on to describe that in Galatians 3, 26 through 29. For you are all sons of God through Christ.

For all of you who were baptized into Jesus have clothed yourself with Christ. There's neither

Jew nor Greek. There's neither slave nor free. There's neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ.

And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendants. You are heirs according to the promise.

He does not say that if you believe, then you are heirs of Abraham who had that big promise, but we're not gonna worry about that anymore because now we're in a new covenant.

He says you're heirs according to that promise. You're heirs according to that blessing.

You are heirs according to the plan that he has been formulating through Abraham for thousands of years that in the seed of Abraham, all the world will come to know him.

This is so magnificent that I'm almost, I'm pleading with you to see it, that the world will not end in defeat.

The world will not end in defeat. The world will not end in destruction. The world will not end in a people who are just begging for Jesus to return and rapture them out of here because the

Antichrist is breathing down their throat. The world will end with a world filled with blessing.

That's what it says. Christ inherited that promise. Christ made you a part of that promise.

You're a partaker in that promise. You're a part of bringing that promise in. This world is

Abraham's inheritance according to the covenant promises of God, and it came in through Christ, and the blessings will come in through Christ as well, and that's where I want us to end.

What does that mean? What does it mean that Christ is gonna bring the blessings to the world?

Well, it begins with the world being filled with Christians. He's gonna save,

I think, according to this passage, he's gonna save people from all the families on earth, so we must evangelize.

We must preach the gospel. We must continue to preach the gospel until people from every tribe, tongue, and nation have heard the gospel and believed in the gospel and turned and bowed their knee to Jesus.

That'll fill the world with blessings. If the world is filled with Christians, true Christians, I'm not talking about Kenneth Copeland.

Yeah. First name that came to my head. We must tell the world about the gospel of Jesus Christ so that the world be filled with Holy Spirit indwelled believers who love

Jesus, who live their lives according to him, who are being discipled. That's the second step. If you wanna see the world filled with the blessings of God, you have to have a world that's filled with Christians.

Secondly, you have to have a world that's filled with Christians who know what it means to be a Christian, who've been discipled, who know what it means to obey

Jesus, to submit all of their life to Jesus, and then after that, whenever that happens, whether it's 10 years from now because of a great revival that God brings in where the whole world bows their knee to Jesus, or whether it's 10 ,000 years,

I don't really care how long it takes. I know it's gonna happen. And I know that God has brought you into that promise and he's called you to be a part of that promise.

So dear Christian, this Christmas, what I want you to remember is that Jesus wasn't just born to be a cute little chubby baby in a manger.

He was born to own the world. And through you, becoming a believer in Jesus, now he's brought you in and grafted you into that plan.

So make your life matter. Christmas is about hope shining out of the darkness. Brothers and sisters, you're the lights of the world.

You're the ones who Jesus Christ has made as his ambassadors to tell the good news of Christ and to bring the blessings of Abraham to the nations.

What a wonderful opportunity we have right now during this Christmas season where people are already looking for hope more than they are normally.

Let us be the ones that show it to them. You've been called according to that purpose.

Christ will own the world. He's gonna use you and me and the gospel to do it.

Let us be faithful. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you so much for your word.

And Lord, thank you that Paul is very clear that you have inherited the promises of Abraham, that they're yours, and that you will accomplish them.

Lord, if you do not accomplish them, then the scriptures have been shown to be false.

The promise that God gave to Abraham would not come true. And yet, Lord, we know that God is not a liar.

We know that God will accomplish everything that he intended on accomplishing. Filling the world full of his blessings was the thing that he was intent upon accomplishing, and he could not do it through Isaac or Moses or Jacob or David.

He was paving the way all those years before for his one and only son, the true seed of Abraham, who would bring the blessings of God to this earth, on earth as they are in heaven.

Lord, I pray that us, as Christians, would not adopt a very pessimistic view of where world history is going.

Lord, I pray that we would not look at the state of the world and clearly, we've got a long way to go until this

Abrahamic vision comes true. Lord, I pray that we would not be the kind of microwave people who get upset that things don't happen in seconds instead of millennium.

Lord, I pray that we would labor faithfully for all the days that you give us, and that we would pass the torch to the next generation knowing full well that when you give us new bodies in eternity, the whole world will have been one.

Lord, let us do our part while we remain, and let us do so joyfully. In Jesus' name, amen.