The Almighty Comes to Dinner

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I invite you to take out your Bible and turn with me to Genesis chapter 18, continuing our verse-by-verse study through Genesis.
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And it really is going to become more of a chapter-by-chapter study as we get further into the book, because we get into these long, sweeping narratives in the text.
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My original plan was to try to do all of chapter 18 today, and then at 1.30 this morning, I was up looking at my notes and was struck with the reality that it's just not going to happen.
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I mean, it really was.
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I just was thinking, yeah, I'll get through chapter 18.
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Because I start on Monday.
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I start preparing my sermons Monday morning.
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And it's a week-long process, but usually Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, that's my really focused time.
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And I'm always, yeah, I'll do it.
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Then Saturday night, I'm not going to do it.
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It just hits me.
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It's like, OK, I've got to step back.
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And that's when the Lord allows me to sort of begin thinking about time.
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And I'm not super concerned with time, but I don't want to rush either.
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That's the other part, is I want us to focus on what we learn from the text.
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And the title is The Almighty Comes to Dinner.
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But again, at 1 o'clock this morning, I was struck with a different title.
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And so here is the subtitle of today.
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The Almighty Comes to Dinner subtext, When We Struggle with Our Faith.
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That's what today is really going to be about.
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Because I want to begin with a question, and I hope that this question is one that at least some of you would be able to affirm.
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Do you ever have trouble believing in all of the promises of God? Now, maybe you don't.
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Maybe you have never struggled with doubt.
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But I know that I have.
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I know that in my life, I've been in the Lord for 20 years or so.
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Nineteen ninety nine, so I guess twenty two years.
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And it was actually a it was a season of of of severe doubt that led me to Christ, because I had grown up in the church.
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And then when I became a teenager, I, you know, was.
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Just sort of not caring what the church had to say.
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And then when I turned about when I turned 19, I got married and it became life became different.
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And I got confronted with some people who were atheists and a friend of mine who was an atheist and just a lot of things happened.
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And and it sent me into this severe spiral of just doubt, doubting everything, doubting even the concept of existence became very existential and very nerdy for for a season and sort of had an existential crisis.
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And the Lord used that, and he drew me in and saved me, and and I became a Christian and my life changed and I began to follow Christ.
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But even after following Christ, there have been seasons in my life that have been tremendously difficult in regard to doubt.
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If if Satan attacks you with anything, he attacks you with the areas where you're the weakest.
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And for me, it just seems like that would be the times that he would sneak into my brain and he would introduce doubts that I never even thought of before.
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And there would be times where I was just struggling with whether it was disappointment over something or maybe I didn't see God working and where I thought it was going to work, or maybe I was counting on God for something and it just didn't happen.
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Something was introduced into my life that was just that was a struggle.
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And I was in and again, I didn't come for a therapy session today, but this is for real.
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This is like this is life.
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Right.
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And and, you know, I'm 42 now.
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And I I still struggle sometimes.
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And so and I'm a pastor.
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I'm I'm I'm one of three elders here.
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And we're charged with leading you all spiritually.
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But I I can honestly say I still don't have it all together.
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I don't have a perfect faith.
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I still struggle and I'm thankful for passages like we're going to read today.
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Because what we see is we see Sarah, who the Bible says had faith.
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I want to point that out before we even read the text.
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If you go to Hebrews 11, there's a thing called the Hall of Faith.
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And it just it tells of all these people who had great faith by faith, Noah, by faith, Enoch, by faith, Abram.
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And then it says in verse 11, by faith, Sarah.
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And it expresses that she was a woman of faith.
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But in our text today, Sarah laughs at the promise of God.
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We saw Abram do the same thing just in the last chapter.
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But this one is a little different because she gets embarrassed by it.
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God says, you laugh because I didn't laugh.
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Like God doesn't know.
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And I've just really been struck this week with how real that is, that God knows our doubts, that God knows when we laugh.
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So with that, I we're going to read verses one to twenty one.
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But we're not going to do all that in the opening reading for the opening reading.
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I just want to read verses 13 and 14.
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So let's stand together and read verses 13 and 14, because this is really will be the focus of today.
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Genesis chapter 18, verse 13.
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The Lord said to Abraham.
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Why did Sarah laugh and say, shall I indeed bear a child now that I'm old? Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time, I will return to you about this time next year and Sarah shall have a son.
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Father, thank you for your word.
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May it be written on our hearts and may its truth permeate our souls in Christ's name.
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Amen.
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One of the best ways to get to know someone, at least I have found, is to have a meal together.
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In fact, some of you I've been talking about trying to get together to have meals and eventually want, you know, if you've never been to my house before, I want you to come.
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And, you know, even the elders have been talking about wanting to try to do more visits and be in people's homes, because this is how we get to know one another.
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This is how we learn life and our lives together.
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And as I was reading this text and as I was reading about this whole moment in the life of Abraham, it struck me just how just how intimate this moment is.
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In fact.
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This moment is unique.
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In all of the Bible.
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In regard to the method and the way that God interacts with his chosen person, Abraham.
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Because this is the only time we see God come in and literally feast with.
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This man who he calls his friend.
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In fact, the closest thing we can get to this outside of this particular passage is to run all the way into the New Testament and see Jesus doing this with his disciples.
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But this is prior to the incarnation.
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This is God.
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And I will argue in a little while it's Jesus in the second person, the Trinity, who is who is actually there.
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But the point is, this is so unique.
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This is an intimate moment of personal communion with God and two angels.
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And I want you to think for a moment.
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I want you to imagine you could have a meal with God.
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You ever play that game? You know, if you could have dinner with anyone, if you ever had that, you play that game, like go to maybe at a party or something.
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So if you could have dinner with any historical figure, people say, well, I'd like to have dinner with George Washington.
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I'd like to have dinner with Abraham Lincoln.
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Or I'd like to have dinner with, you know, Billy Graham or somebody.
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You know, people always think, you know, the one you always tell people, you can't say Jesus because everybody will say Jesus.
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Right.
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So you got to.
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So to make it a little more interesting, you know, everybody would choose Jesus.
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You have to choose someone else.
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But honestly, that's the reason why we say you can't choose Jesus, because we all know.
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If we could have dinner with anyone.
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It would be Jesus.
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If you had the choice of any person in all of history, forward, backward, up or down, you would say, I want to sit across the table from Jesus Christ and I want to have an intimate fellowship with him.
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That's that's what we would.
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That's what I hope we would want.
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Well, that's what this chapter begins with.
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This chapter begins with Abraham being visited by the Lord.
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But the Lord is not simply out on holiday.
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We learn by the end of this chapter.
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That there are several reasons for the Lord to be visiting.
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He's come to inform Abraham that he's going to have his son within a year.
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Remember, he's made this promise to him for years.
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You're going to have a son.
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You're going to have a son.
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And even recently in chapter 17, he told him, you're going to have a son by Sarah.
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And now he's giving him a timetable by this time next year, you're going to have a son by Sarah.
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So there's a reason for his visitation with Abraham.
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And it was to give him a timetable for his promise.
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But there's another reason.
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God's on his way somewhere.
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God's on his way with two angels to exercise judgment on a wicked city.
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God's on his way to exercise judgment on Sodom.
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Now that's, again, I was going to try to squeeze all this in today.
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Let's save that for next week.
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But that's really what we see.
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God is sort of, and I don't want to say he's passing through.
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Obviously, he meant to see Abraham.
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He comes to Abraham.
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He sits with Abraham.
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But God's on a mission here.
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There's part of this is the mission to get to Sodom.
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But he stops to fellowship with Abraham and to tell him what he's about to do.
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We see this later in the chapter.
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God makes it a point to tell Abraham what he is about to do.
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And then Abraham intercedes for Sodom.
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Abraham prays for that wicked city.
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Well, God, if there were 50, 45, 40, you remember, if there were 10, would you spare them? Abraham.
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It's interesting.
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I'm going to talk about this next week.
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It's interesting that Abraham, in that sense, becomes an intercessor.
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And he's talking to Christ, who is the only intercessor to God with man.
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And so it's like an intercessor and an intercessor having a conversation.
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It's the type and the antitype in the same place.
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Abraham is the type of Christ.
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Christ is there, and they're interacting.
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And Abraham is, in a sense, being what Christ will be perfectly, the perfect intercessor.
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Now, I've said it a few times.
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Let me just clarify.
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When I say that I believe this is Jesus Christ, why do I believe that? I believe it's Jesus Christ because it identifies this character in the narrative as Yahweh.
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It says it is Yahweh and two angels.
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But understand this.
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When we say the term Yahweh or the other term for that is Jehovah, when we use the phrase Yahweh or Jehovah, we are talking about the being of God.
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And the being of God is shared by three persons.
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The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit share the one being, which is God.
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And the Bible says no one has seen the Father.
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You want to know the passage for that? John 6, 46.
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No one has seen the Father except he who is from God.
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So, we have to begin to make a distinction within the Trinity when we begin dealing with the visible manifestation of God in the world.
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When we talk about the visible manifestation of God in the world, it is always Jesus Christ.
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In fact, I made the argument back in chapter 16 that the angel, the Lord, is a visible representation of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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I make the argument in Exodus that the burning bush, it says that was the messenger of Yahweh, that that is Jesus Christ.
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He speaks as God.
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He speaks for God, but he also speaks as God.
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This, it literally says, this is Yahweh.
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And he comes, but what does he look like? He looks like a man.
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And so, I believe that it is the second person of the Trinity.
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John 1, 18.
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No one has ever seen God, but the only God who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.
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And that word made him known is the word, we get the word exposition or exegesis.
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It's the idea that Christ is the one who shows the Father.
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Jesus said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father.
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Not that they're the same person, but Christ is the physical manifestation of God in the world.
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If you've seen me, you've seen him.
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This is why, and this has nothing to do with the sermon, but I always like to point this out.
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People say, I want to know God better, know Christ better.
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If you want to know God, know Jesus.
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If you know Jesus better, you know God better.
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It's just that simple.
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So, all this is just buildup.
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Let's now read the text.
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We're going to read beginning at verse 1.
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And the Lord appeared to him, and notice that capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, that's Yahweh.
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So, if you're reading this in Hebrew, it would say Yahweh or Jehovah appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day.
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This would have been the time where no work was done.
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And I can get behind this completely.
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As I was reading about commentaries and, like, how world worked at that time of this time in history, they would work in the mornings, they would work in the evenings, but they would take the midday off because the midday was when it was so hot, it was miserable, it wasn't good to be outside, you know, dehydrated and things like that.
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So, they would have, like, a siesta.
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They would go in and relax, and I am totally down for an afternoon nap.
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I'm good.
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And this is the picture we see.
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The Lord appears to him as he's resting in the shade.
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Verse 2, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing in front of him.
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And when he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth and said, O Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant.
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Now, for a moment, let's just address one thing really quickly.
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It is not 100% clear that Abraham knows for certain that this is God.
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And somebody says, wait a minute, he called him Lord.
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Yes, but he calls him Lord in the same way that later Sarah will call him Lord.
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Sarah calls him by the title Lord, and it's the same word.
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So, some have conjectured that maybe this was just, he knew it was a special visitor, but did not realize necessarily that this was God yet.
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But it doesn't take long.
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If that is in fact the case, by the time we get just a few verses in, he's going to realize who it is he's talking to.
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But at the very least, he knows this is a very important visitor because he runs out and he bows down and he says, please don't pass me by.
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Please stay.
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He says in verse 4, let a little water be brought.
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This is, by the way, there's a little bit of an interesting play on the words here because he says, let a little water be brought and wash your feet, rest yourselves under the tree while I bring a morsel of bread that you may refresh yourselves.
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And after that, you may pass on since you have come to your servant.
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He mentions a little bit of water and a little bit of food.
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Okay.
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By the way, I've entitled this section, Abraham's Hospitality, because look what he does next.
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And Abraham went quickly into the tent and said, quick, three seers of fine flour.
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By the way, three seers is six gallons.
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Six gallons of fine flour.
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Yeah.
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Imagine, Kelly, Chuck comes in, six gallons of bread, please.
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Six gallons of, okay.
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This is a big deal.
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But notice he said a morsel.
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See, he's encouraging these visitors to stay.
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Let me go get you a little something to eat.
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But he runs in to his wife.
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We have very special visitors, and we need six gallons of fine flour kneaded and made into bread.
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Then he goes on.
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It says, and Abraham ran, verse seven, to the herd and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to a young man who prepared it quickly.
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I don't know about you, because I've never, ever slaughtered a calf.
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It's on my bucket list, but I haven't got there yet.
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But I've never done it.
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But I can imagine this is a time-consuming event.
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You don't just go out and whip it up.
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It's not like this quick, you know.
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This is going to take a minute.
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Well, but still, even Brother Chuck would have, it'd take an hour or two to slaughter and to drain and to gut and to prepare the meat.
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So the whole time, time's clicking away here.
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But Abraham is concerned with being hospitable to this guest.
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He knows this guest is important.
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He loves the fact that he is getting to entertain this person.
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He's getting to show love to this guest.
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And he says, go take the calf and prepare it.
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And then, verse eight, then he took curds and milk, which is, you know, sort of like a yogurt type.
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Well, you guys know what curds are.
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We sing about it at Christmas, right? Curds and whey.
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It doesn't matter.
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Anyway, he's giving him the best of the best.
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He's giving the cream of the crop.
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He's giving him the best food.
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He's giving him everything.
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And then notice, verse eight, it says, and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.
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Abraham's not even sitting with them.
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Abraham is standing, as it were, like a servant or what we might say like a waiter.
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He's attending to them.
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He's demonstrating love and concern for these three men.
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Now, this is not the focus of today's message, but it could be.
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Because what Abraham is demonstrating here is he's demonstrating the concept of hospitality for the people of God.
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In this moment, Abraham becomes the consummate host.
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You say, well, he's hosting God.
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Obviously, he's going to be the ultimate host.
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Well, what does the Bible say that we are to do with strangers, that we're to love them and that we are to care for them, that we and by the way, that's what the word hospitality means.
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People think the word hospitality means you have other people over for dinner.
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In fact, I'm going to be teaching on this in our academy because the word hospitality does not mean fellowship.
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People always think hospitality means fellowship.
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It doesn't.
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Hospitality comes from the Greek word phallos in us.
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Phallos in us means lover of strangers.
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It means to love those who are outside.
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Most of us are really good at loving the people we love.
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But Jesus has loved the people you don't know.
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Love the stranger.
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Love the people outside.
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In fact, if you remember the book of Hebrews, Hebrews 13 to says, what do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers for thereby some of you have entertained angels unaware.
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You think the writer of Hebrews might have had this picture in his head of Abraham entertaining two angels and the Lord and Abraham being the example of hospitality.
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I tell you what, and again, I could go, we could do the whole sermon on this.
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This wasn't the intention, but it's just the Lord's on my heart.
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Are we a lover of strangers in this place? When people come in that we don't know.
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When people come into this place, are they treated with love and care and compassion? Are they treated with suspicion and contempt and avoidance? It's an important question.
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Do we open our homes to people? Or do we close ourselves off from the world because it makes us feel uncomfortable? The Bible doesn't call us to comfort.
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It calls us to be hospitable and love other people.
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Open up ourselves.
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You say, well, I might get hurt.
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I might, it might hurt my heart.
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I open up myself.
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Somebody might take advantage of me.
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Yeah, it might happen.
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Well, you think Matthew 5 and 6 is about when Jesus talks about, well, if somebody asked for your coat, you give them your tunic as well.
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Somebody asked you to go one mile, you go the extra mile, right? This is all about loving people who aren't necessarily lovable.
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Again, I go, I feel like I'm going off topic here.
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The point is Abraham is showing love in a way that is above and beyond the norm.
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He's showing hospitality and he's opening himself up.
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And you say, well, he knows it's God.
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Maybe he doesn't.
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Maybe not yet.
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Maybe he just knows that this group of three who's come here is worthy of his love and hospitality.
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But now if he didn't know before, he's going to know in verse 9.
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Because in verse 9, we are going to hear the mouth of the Lord speak what only the Lord would have known.
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Look at verse 9.
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They said to him, where is Sarah, your wife? And he said, she is in the tent.
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The Lord said, I will surely return to you about this time next year.
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And Sarah, your wife, shall have a son.
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Okay, right there.
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If he didn't know it was the Lord before, he knows now.
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Because he's repeating himself from chapter 17.
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Chapter 17, God spoke to Abraham and gave him this promise.
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Remember, that's when he changed his name.
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Changed his name from Abram to Abraham.
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Exalted father to father of many, father of many nations, right? Father of the multitude.
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He says, and your wife, Sarah, she will no longer be called Sarai, but now will be called Sarah because she is going to be the mother of kings and princes will come from her, right? So he tells him all this.
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And so God's made the promise.
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And what did Abraham? Abraham giggled, I can't believe my wife.
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She's so old, she's going to have a baby.
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You know, he had a hard time believing it, but he did believe it.
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But now this visitor has made the same statement, but more specific about this time next year, your wife, Sarah, will have a child.
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And Abraham has to know at this moment, this is the Lord.
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This is the Lord speaking.
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No, first of all, how do you even know my wife? How do you know I had a wife if he's just some guy off the street? How do you know her name was Sarah? By the way, calling her by her new name because her name used to be Sarai.
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So like maybe this ain't somebody that we just met 20 years ago, and he's just coming back.
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No, he knows.
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He knows her.
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He knows her new name, her new covenant name.
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And now he's saying, oh, yeah.
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And that child, I promise you, he is one year away from now.
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And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him.
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Notice Sarah is not part of the feast.
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This would have been very common in that day that the men and women would have been separated, especially when entertaining guests.
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There would have been a place for the men and a place for the women, a very culturally relevant distinction there.
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She's behind the veil, exercising her motherly prerogative and eavesdropping, which is very common.
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I always call it my pastoral prerogative.
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But the motherly prerogative, she's sitting with her ear to the door, listening in.
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Verse 11.
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Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years.
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Did it need to be said? It's been said a bunch.
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But notice he says it twice.
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The writer, remember who's writing? Moses.
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Moses is the narrator of the text.
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And Moses says, just to remind everybody, in case you forgot from chapter 17, in case you forgot from chapter 60, in case you forgot from chapter 12, they be old.
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In fact, he goes on to describe her elderly nature in a way that it seems to be rather personal.
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He says, now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years.
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The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah.
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That is the nicest way of saying menopause I've ever heard in my life.
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Because that's what it means.
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And we talked about this a few months ago when Sarah said to Abraham, you choose Hagar.
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Why did he tell Abraham to pick Hagar? Because she knew this.
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The way of women has passed me.
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I can't have a baby anymore.
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It's outside of the realm of possibility.
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So choose my handmaiden.
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Have your offspring through her.
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We always talk about the pre-scientific age and people just didn't know anything.
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People knew a lot more than we give them credit for.
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People understood a lot more than we give them credit for.
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And one of the things they did understand was things like fertility and when a person was fertile and when a person was no longer fertile and what brought about that change.
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And apparently she has gone through that change.
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So verse 12, so Sarah laughed to herself saying, after I am worn out.
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Interesting way of describing herself.
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And my Lord, there's that word Lord, and my Lord is old.
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Shall I have pleasure? Interesting choice of words there and could be interpreted in various ways.
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Somebody might say, well, am I really going to have intimacy, pleasure in that regard at 100 years old? You know, see, he's 100, I'm 90.
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Is that really going to happen? But more so the idea of pleasure here, I believe is indicating, am I to have the pleasure of childbirth? Am I to have the joy of a baby? That hope has passed.
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That that that that hope that I would hold my own child in my arms.
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I gave that up a long time ago.
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Verse 13.
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The Lord said to Abraham, why did Sarah laugh and say, shall I indeed bear a child now that I am old? Just imagine if you're Sarah.
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You got your ear to the you got your ear to the tent.
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You hear this stranger say about this time next year, Sarah will have a son.
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You laugh to yourself and you say, I am old.
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The way of women has departed from me.
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I am.
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There's no way this could happen.
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And then you hear the man outside the tent say, why did she laugh just for a moment? Think about you ever get that sinking feeling when you know you've been caught.
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Like, you know, you weren't supposed to be doing what you were doing.
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And you're doing it anyway.
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And just, you know, something happens and boom, your stomach just gets a pit.
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Yeah.
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Oh, don't look at me like you ain't never.
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I just don't you dare.
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We've been there.
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So she's she's been caught.
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But very quickly, I do want to mention God doesn't really chastise her.
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He does.
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He does challenge her.
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But we don't see we don't see a judgment against her.
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Like I talked about Zachariah.
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I remember Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, when he was told his wife was old, going to have a baby.
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And he goes, he had a hard time believing it.
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What did God do? Struck him dumb, right? He couldn't talk the whole time his wife was pregnant.
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It's rough, but we don't see that judgment fall upon Abraham when he laughed.
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We don't see that judgment fall upon Sarah.
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But we do hear the words of God to them.
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And I do believe that what he's about to say is to Abraham and to Sarah, because obviously she's listening.
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Obviously, she can hear.
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Notice what he says.
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The Lord said to Abraham, why did she laugh and say, shall I indeed bear a child when I'm old? Verse 14 is anything is anything too hard for the Lord? Now, that is what we would we would identify that question as having the answer built in.
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We know we ask questions like that sometimes rhetorical questions, not intending to get an answer, but to have the answer built into the question.
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But I want you to notice something.
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If you have the ESV Bible, and some of you certainly probably do.
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That's the one I preach out of.
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If you have the ESV Bible and you're in verse 14.
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It says, is anything too hard for the Lord? You'll notice there's a superscript there and the superscript number ties you to a word at the bottom.
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And the word at the bottom is the word wonderful.
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And it can be translated.
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I've spent a lot of time with this this week.
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Sort of I wanted to make sure that I was correct on this.
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This can be translated.
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Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? In fact, if you go to Isaiah nine, when it's talking about Jesus, it says his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
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Remember that passage, Isaiah nine, six.
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The word wonderful there has the same root.
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The root is Pele.
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It's the same root of the word that God is using here when he says, is anything too wonderful for the Lord? Is anything too hard? The Greek Septuagint translation of this passage says a dunamitai.
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A dunamitai comes from the word dunamis, which means power.
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And the concept of a dunamitai is the idea of having no power.
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That is God powerless.
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Is God unable to do this? Does God lack any ability? That's what he's asking, Sarah.
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That's what he's asking, Abraham.
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He's saying, is it in fact the case that there is something that is too powerful, too wonderful, too much for God? And this is where I want to apply this today.
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Because, brothers and sisters, that is what brings doubt into our hearts, is when we begin to think that there are things too wonderful, too powerful, or too much.
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We say God can do anything.
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We say God is omnipotent.
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In fact, by the way, we see two of God's attributes in this passage.
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We see his omniscience.
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What does omniscience mean? All-knowing.
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Because he knew Sarah was listening, and he knew she laughed.
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He knew what was going on in her heart, right? And by the way, I think he calls her out to show his omniscience.
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So what's the one reason why we think God is powerless? Because we think for some reason he has a lack.
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Or we think for some reason he just can't do something.
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And so the first thing he reminds her of is, I know even your heart.
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I know when you laugh to yourself.
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I know when you're hidden in the confines of your tent.
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As the psalmist says in Psalm 139, you go up into heaven, I am there.
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You go down to Sheol, I am there.
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No matter where you are, I am there.
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And so she can't hide in her tent.
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She's in her tent, and she's having a doubt.
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God says, why do you doubt? Is there anything too hard for me? But Sarah's not thinking in theological terms.
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She's not thinking about an abstract concept like omnipotence or omniscience.
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She's face-to-face with the all-powerful one, and he's confirming by this experience and by this interaction with her all of those things which are true about him.
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In a sense, she's being called out in her incredulity, but in being called out on her incredulity, she is also receiving a subtle confirmation that God is with her, God knows her, and that God pleases to regard her barrenness.
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The same God who can hear her thoughts, the same God who can know that she's on the other side of that tent wall is the same God who promises this time next year, you will bear a son.
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Sometimes, in fact, I would say always, but sometimes in particular, it would do us good to simply stop and consider the power of God in our lives.
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Job 37, verse 14, the Lord said this, Hear this, O Job, stop and consider the wondrous works of God.
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Stop and consider the wondrous, wonderful works of God.
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John Currid wrote this in his commentary.
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He says, Sarah is a reluctant believer.
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God has promised that Abraham will have a son through her.
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The nations and kings will descend from her.
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This is exciting news, yet she hesitates.
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She is reluctant.
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She laughs regarding the prospect.
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God's good news seems to her too good to be true.
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Is that not often the case with us as well? Is that not often the case with us as well, that the promises of God seem too good to be true? What we struggle with in doubt is the very question God asks, Sarah, is anything too hard for God? You know what? We have to be able to answer that question.
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The first thing we have to be able to answer that question, the first thing we have to affirm is that we actually believe God is there.
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The Bible tells us, it says, to have faith begins with believing that He is there.
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And sometimes that's the hardest part of all, because God's not coming to dinner tonight.
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You're probably not going to receive a knock at your door, and there's probably not going to be three men standing there ready for you to go slaughter the fattened calf.
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We're called to live by faith, and sometimes that's hard.
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But the reality is still, He who is saved must first begin that He is.
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We must believe that God is, and that He's a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
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That's first and foremost.
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We have to know that He's there.
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Then we have to know who He is.
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And He is not only there, but He is the one who is there, who loves us and sent His Son to die for us.
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You ever think about the fact that God loved you so much that He sent Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, into the world? And those of you who have children, think of this.
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He sent His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him will not perish, but will have everlasting life.
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And He says, that's what you're supposed to believe in.
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Whosoever believeth in Him will not perish.
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I'm not telling you you're never going to struggle.
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I'm not telling you you're never going to laugh.
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I'm not telling you you're never going to fight a battle with anxiety, that you're never going to fight a battle or a struggle with doubt.
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But I am telling you this, where you will find your peace and your comfort is not going to be in the latest psychological exercises or in some Oprah Winfrey program, but is in coming to the realization that there is nothing too hard for God, even saving a wretch like you and me.
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Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.
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That's not impossible for God, even though it would be absolutely impossible for me.
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I couldn't save myself, but nothing is too hard for Him.
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This is why we sang that song earlier.
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We have been healed, justified, made alive in the life of Christ.
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Righteous blood covers every sin.
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In this world, we are not promised that we will always be healed of our diseases.
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In this world, we're not always promised that we're always going to get through every problem unscathed.
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Sometimes our friends die.
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Sometimes our family dies.
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Sometimes even we go into the hospital and don't come out.
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So we don't put our hope in this life, but we trust in the Lord, who said, I go to prepare a place for you.
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And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself.
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That where I am, you may be also.
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And remember what he said, if it were not so, I would have told you.
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Amen.
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When we struggle with doubt, let us remember that we serve a God with which there is nothing that is too wonderful for Him.
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Let us pray.
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Father, I'm reminded of the man who came to Jesus and said, I believe, help my unbelief.
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Father, I feel like I know that man's heart.
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And so today I pray for this congregation.
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I pray for those who have come in this morning and who are faithful and they believe, but for some reason they have struggled with unbelief.
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That they have struggled with doubt.
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That they like Sarah in the confines of their home, where they don't think anyone can hear, have doubted your promises and have struggled with their faith.
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God, would you lift up their countenance today? Would you lift up all of our countenance today? Would you lift up our hearts today? And God give us faith.
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We look at a world that is broken.
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We look at a world where people are dying and we look at a world where people are suffering and it is so easy to doubt.
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But Lord, your word is so true when you say, there is nothing that is too hard for you.
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Oh God, may we trust in that today.
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In Jesus name.