The Call of Abraham

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I invite you to take out your Bibles with me and turn to the book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 11, we're looking at verses 8 through 10, Hebrews 11.
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We've been going through Hebrews 11 for since the beginning of this year.
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We've been in the book of Hebrews now for a few years.
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But the chapter 11 is very important because it has a listing of Old Testament believers and it commends their faith to us as an example.
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And we are looking at the faith of Abraham.
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And we started last week, we've looked at Abraham, we've looked at it from looked at him from a couple of different angles so far.
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But we started last week looking particularly at the call of Abraham.
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And we said that there are different aspects of what we would call the call of God.
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We said that there is the the general call of God, that is, the preaching of the gospel when the preaching of the gospel goes out to all people and all people hear the preaching of the gospel.
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We call that the general call of God.
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Yet there is also the internal, specific, particular call of God, that call which actually changes our heart.
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We know people can hear the outside call of God for for hours, days, months, years and never have a change of heart.
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But when the inward call of God comes, when that change of heart takes place by the power of the Holy Spirit, we respond.
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In fact, that's the reason why we respond, because God has opened our heart to believe the gospel.
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We call that the particular or inward call of God.
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And we said Abraham, we talked about this last week, Abraham is an example to us of what the particular call of God looks like.
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Abraham was not a perfect man or even a good man who received from God something that he deserved for being good.
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Abraham was an idolator, according to Scripture.
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He lived in a family of idolaters.
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And the only reason why God chose him was specifically in accord with God's grace.
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Abraham was not chosen because he was a good man.
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Abraham was chosen because God is a good God.
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Understand that, understand that the only reason God chooses anyone is because he is good, not because we are.
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All right.
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So that is setting up what we talked about last week.
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And now we can move on to this week.
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Let's stand together, let's read Hebrews chapter 11 again as the as the opening text for the morning says in Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 8.
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By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance, and he went out not knowing where he was going.
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By faith, he went to live in the land of promise as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise, for he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.
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Father, we thank you.
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For this opportunity to be in your house.
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We thank you that you have given us your word and it is so clear to us and we have this opportunity to study it together.
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We pray, oh, God, first and foremost, that you would keep me from error as the pastor and the speaker, the one who is preaching the word, as I am a fallible man, capable of error.
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I pray, God, that you would protect your people from that, put a hedge around them.
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And keep me from it.
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I pray also for their hearts, oh, God, that they be open to the truth, that they be pliable and moldable, that when the truth is inserted, that the heart would receive it and, Lord, God, be applied to it.
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As we examine the text today, oh, God, we pray your mercy upon us and that in all things and in all ways, what we do in this church would bring glory to you.
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In Jesus name we pray, Amen.
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Because I went through the first half of this message last week, I don't want to reiterate everything that I said, but I do want to I want to be able for those of you who were not here to kind of bring you up to speed as to where we are, particularly looking at the outline of when we talk about the call of Abraham.
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Here are the three things that we are looking at.
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Number one, we're looking at the condition of Abraham prior to the call, the condition of Abraham prior to the call.
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Second, we're looking at the command which accompanied the call.
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And finally, we're looking at the content of the call.
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And I've already mentioned it before we pray, but I want to mention it yet again, the condition of Abraham prior to the call is that Abraham was unregenerate.
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Now, that sounds maybe like a big 50 cent word or one that we're not used to hearing.
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An easier way might be to say Abraham was unsaved.
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But yet I think sometimes when we use when we try to distill things down like that, I think sometimes it loses the meaning.
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By using the phrase unregenerate, what we are saying is that Abraham was, in fact, dead in his sins and trespasses.
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The Bible says that before God regenerates our heart, that we are all dead in our trespasses and sins.
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It says that in the book of Ephesians, it says that every one of us lives in the passion of the flesh, that every one of us will not obey the law of God because it is not within us to do so.
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Abraham was not some kind of particularly special person who had the ability in and of himself to obey the law of God.
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Abraham was not a man who in and of himself was able to lift himself up by his bootstraps and apart from the grace of God, obey God.
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No, Abraham was a man.
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Abraham was a sinful man.
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And I showed you this passage last week.
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But again, for those of you who weren't here, I just want to point out that in Joshua chapter 24 and verse two, it specifically says this.
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It says it says in Joshua said to all the people, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel.
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Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and Nahor, and they served other gods, specifically referencing the fact that Abraham Nahor, who was his brother and Terah, their father, all were servants of other gods.
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What does it mean to serve another god? It means you are an idolater.
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That is what Abraham was.
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Abraham, before God's call on his life, was a sinful man.
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He was one who worshipped gods other than the true God Yahweh of Scripture.
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That has to be understood, because if we begin to think that these people that are in this list of Hebrews were some super spiritual people that in some way were perfect, we will miss the analogy between their lives and ours.
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We'll begin to think, well, yes, of course, Abraham believed God and was justified.
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And of course, David believed God and was justified.
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And of course, Isaiah believed God.
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But they were saints.
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They were super spiritual.
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No, they were men needing the grace of God.
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They were women needing the grace of God.
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That's who they were.
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I think one of the most dangerous things that has happened in the history of the church and really it can be brought back to it can be laid at the doorstep of the Roman Catholic Church, and that is the idea of establishing a sainthood, that there are certain believers that reach a certain level of saint and that everyone else is just rank and file.
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The Bible says that if we are believers, we are saints, all of us, we are called Hagios in Greek.
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It means sanctified one or saint.
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Every one of us is a saint.
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You might say, well, I don't often feel like a saint.
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Well, if you read the story of Abraham, he didn't often act like a saint either.
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If you read the story of David, he certainly missed his sainthood by a mile at certain times.
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And if you read through the New Testament, you'll see Peter and John and the rest all had times of failure.
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Yet they were given God's grace.
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They were drawn by God's grace.
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God's grace took them from being unregenerate men, unregenerate, dead in their sins.
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God reached down into their deadness.
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He pulled them out of the muck and the mire of their sin.
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And and I hate to use the skill crane example, but if you remember the skill crane that we all used to try to reach down and get those toys and my son's the only person I've ever seen that can do it consistently, I've never, ever gotten a toy out of the skill crane But God reached down into the world.
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He pulled us up out of our sin.
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And the Bible says in Ephesians chapter two, he seated us in heavenly places.
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He takes us out of our sin.
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He seats us in heavenly places because that is God's work, not ours.
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We are not the ones who pull ourselves out of sin.
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We're not the ones who reach down and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.
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We are ones who are recipients of grace, not causes of grace.
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And Abraham, too, likewise, and that's why when we talk about the condition of Abraham prior to the call, that must be understood.
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Abraham is one who received the grace of God.
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Now, like I said, I spent a lot of time with that last week.
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I don't want to spend too much time with it this week because I want to move on.
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We talked about the command which accompanied the call.
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This is the second point.
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We we stopped on this last week.
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If you want to turn back to Genesis chapter 12 with me, this is really where we start to hear about Abraham.
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And of course, his name is Abraham at first and later he's called Abraham.
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Great father, Abraham, and then father of the nations, father of many is Abraham.
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Genesis chapter 12.
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Verses one through three, we have what is called the Abrahamic covenant, or you might simply say the call of Abraham.
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God's call of Abraham and God's promise to Abraham that accompanied the call, the covenant God made with Abraham Hebrew or excuse me, Genesis chapter 12.
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And it says these words.
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Now, the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you and I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and I will make your name great so that you will be a blessing.
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I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you.
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I will curse and in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
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Now, the first thing I'd like to point out, and I mentioned it last week, Abraham is 75 years old.
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Abraham is yet to have a child.
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In fact, later on in the text, he's going to say to God, how am I going to become this nation when I don't even have any offspring? The only the only one that I have is Eliezer of Damascus.
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He is the the daughter or excuse me, the son of one of my servants, and he is going to receive everything I have because that was the custom of the day.
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If there was not a son born to a nobleman, his servant's child would be adopted and become his child.
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He said, that's all I have.
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He says, I have Eliezer of Damascus, I've got one adopted son, but I don't have a physical offspring.
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How am I supposed to become a nation? I'm 75 years old.
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One of the kids this week, I was talking to him in BBS and they said, but yeah, they lived a lot longer at this point in time.
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So 75 wasn't really that old.
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That's that's sort of true, but not not really exact.
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The long ages were prior to the flood.
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These five, 600, 700 year old people that we read about, that was prior to the flood.
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After the flood, there was a drastic decrease in the age.
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And 75 was pretty much what 75 is today.
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Maybe a little, little less than it is today.
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But 75 was still 75.
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It was still pretty old.
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I mean, please excuse me if you're 75, I didn't just call you old.
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What I'm saying is what I'm saying is in relation to childbearing, is anybody 75 wants to have a baby? OK, then I don't feel so bad of saying what I mean in regard to childbirth.
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75 years old is far and away past where you want to be having a child at this time.
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Sarah, Sarah, as she was called at this point, 65, because she's 10 years younger than Abraham.
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We find that out later when it says he was 100 when Isaac was born.
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She was 90.
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So if he's 75 now, she's 65.
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Unless math doesn't work, I'm pretty sure it does.
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She's 65 years old.
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So she's 65, he's 75, and the promise is given, you're going to have a nation come from you.
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That is a big belief.
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That's a lot of faith.
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It takes a lot of faith to believe that that's going to happen at that age.
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And that's what we see here in the scripture.
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It was a test of faith of Abraham.
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He says, go from your country and from your kindred, leave everyone you know, leave everything you've ever done, pack up and go.
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Leave Tara, your father, leave it all, go.
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Leave your father's land, leave your father's property, leave all this that has been accumulated in 75 years of life, forsake it and go.
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And the thing I mentioned last week, and I want to remind you all, is in a very real way, that mirrors our call from God.
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Because not only were we unregenerate before God called us to salvation.
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But also when God called us to salvation, when God called us to follow Christ, what was the command that Christ gave us to be willing to forsake all.
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And follow me, whoever puts his hand to the plow and continues looking back.
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Is not what what did you say is not fit for the kingdom of heaven? Why you can't plow a line while you're doing this, you're going to be going everywhere.
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And Jesus said the person who's continually worried about earthly things, the person who's continually worried about worldly things, the person who's not willing to forsake all that and follow after Christ is not really worthy of Christ.
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And boy, isn't that a hard thing to accept? The hardest person, I think, if we look in Scripture, the person who couldn't do it was the rich young ruler.
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Remember the rich young ruler, he came to Jesus, he fell down before Jesus, a good master.
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What must I do to be saved? And Jesus corrected him.
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He said, why do you call me good? There is none good, save God alone.
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He says in this, I tell you, he says, you must love the Lord with all your heart, love your neighbors, yourself.
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And he says, but hey, I've done this since I was a child.
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He said, don't you know the commandments? Love your, you know, love him, honor your father, mother, do these things.
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He said, I've done that since I was a child.
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First of all, he hadn't done it since he was a child because he was a sinner.
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And if I were to go through the Ten Commandments, if I were to go through just three of the commandments with you, you would understand that you're a sinner.
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And this man should have recognized that he was a sinner.
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He should have thrown himself on the mercy of the court.
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He should have said, you know what, Jesus? I haven't done those things and I am a sinner.
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But he didn't do that.
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He said, hey, I've done that since I was a kid.
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I'm grooving.
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I'm good.
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Nobody just said he said, good teacher.
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Right.
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And Jesus said, why do you call me good? There's none good except God.
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And he says, if you want to inherit eternal life, you've got to obey the commandments.
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And these are the commandments.
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And the man said, I did all this.
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What did he just say? He said, I'm good.
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Jesus said, no one is good except God alone.
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But the rich young ruler replied by saying, I'm good.
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I've done all these things.
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People often wonder, why did Jesus tell him to go sell all his stuff? Does that mean we're supposed to sell everything that we have, not own anything, live nomadic lives, go out and live in tents and not even own the tent, borrow the tent? We're not allowed to have anything.
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Is that what the story means? I think Martin Luther made a very good point.
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He said that this story cannot be universal.
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Because we see within the commands of the New Testament commands for business owners to behave properly.
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And he says, if you can't own anything, obviously you can't have a business.
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He said, if you can't have it, if you can't own anything, obviously you can't be an employer.
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You can't have employees.
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He said, it's very specific to this man at this time.
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What he needed was to get rid of everything because that was what was holding him back.
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And I tell you today, if what you have is holding you back, then jettison it, whatever it is.
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If your right hand is causing you to sin, this is my right.
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So go over here.
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If your right hand is causing you to sin, cut it off for it is better to enter the kingdom of God, missing a limb than it is for your whole body and soul to be thrown into hell.
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That's what Jesus teaches.
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He said there's anything in our life that's keeping us from him.
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Then, yes, it is good to jettison.
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It's good to get rid of it.
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It's good to forsake all for the kingdom of God.
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Because he who saves his life will lose it, that he who gives his life for my sake will find it.
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This is Jesus's teaching.
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And this is the command to Abraham.
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Go away from your family.
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Go away from everything.
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Take your wife and you go and know this.
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My blessing will accompany you.
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My blessing will go with you.
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Those who bless you, I will bless.
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Those who curse you, I will curse.
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We see that in the command.
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We see that in the covenant.
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God's promise to him is a promise of blessing.
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And we have received a very similar promise.
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Jesus said, if we follow after him, though we may suffer for a time, we may suffer in this life and we may have trials and tribulations, but there is a blessing that is coming.
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I like if you look back at the Hebrews passage, it said, Abraham looked forward to a kingdom not built with man's hands, but one that was built by God.
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There's a lot of theology in that because, you know, Abraham never had much when he got to that land God promised to him.
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In fact, he never really owned anything in that land, even though God had given it to him and to his descendants.
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Abraham didn't have a lot in that land.
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He didn't really have a place to stake his own and call his own.
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He was always moving around.
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But yet that wasn't the land that God was concerned about.
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God was concerned with that heavenly place that he had prepared for Abraham.
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He had given him the physical land for his offspring and for that nation that would be called by his name.
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But Abraham had spiritual eyes to see something more than just physical land.
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Abraham had eyes to see beyond that.
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And Abraham believed that God would be true to his promise of blessings.
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So we see the command or rather the condition of Abraham prior to the call was that he was an unregenerated idolater.
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And we see the command which accompanied the call.
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God opens his heart.
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He believes the gospel or he believes God's promise.
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And he says, go forsake all and follow me.
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Now, what I really wanted to focus on today and all of that was introduction, what I really wanted to focus on today was the third part of this, and that is the content of the call.
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Abraham's call was found in Genesis chapter 12.
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And there is a very important part of it that I think people miss when they read it.
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And I want us to look at it today and I want us to have keen insight into something very important.
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We've read Genesis chapter 12, verses one through three, that's the call of Abraham.
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But I want to show you something in that if you'll hold your place in Genesis chapter three, I want you to go to Galatians way back in the New Testament.
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If you get to the prison epistles, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, you'll find this at the beginning.
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It's one of the short little epistles.
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I want you to go to chapter three.
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Paul uses a lot of examples from Genesis in the book of Galatians.
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And we're going to reference this as the weeks go on, as we're talking about not only Abraham, but Sarah, his wife, because Galatians makes Paul and Galatians makes a big deal about her in chapter four.
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But just quickly, I want to show you something that I think is very important.
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Galatians chapter three, verse seven, says, No, then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.
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Remember what Jesus said to the Pharisees, they said, Our father is Abraham.
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And Jesus said, No, for if you were sons of Abraham, you would have believed my words, but you really are of your father, the devil.
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Now, were they physical offspring of Abraham? Absolutely.
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And they could call him their physical ancestor.
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But Jesus makes the point in that passage that being a descendant of Abraham is not only about being a physical descendant of Abraham, but there is a spiritual aspect that there are spiritual sons and daughters of Abraham.
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And those are the people who share the faith of Abraham.
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Look here, it says, No, then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.
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And then it goes on to say something very strange, but hopefully I'll be able to make it make sense.
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It says in the scripture, what is the scripture, the Old Testament? At this point, the New Testament is being written.
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He talks about the scripture in Greek.
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It's the graph and the graph, the scripture, the Old Testament writings and the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying in you shall all the nations be blessed.
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So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
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Now, let's just do a little exegesis here very quickly.
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It says that the scripture preached the gospel.
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Now, the scripture itself doesn't really speak.
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The scripture is words on a page, but yet at the same time, the scripture is read among the people of God, and as such, when the scripture is read, the scripture is God's word being spoken to the people of God.
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OK, for instance, when the beginning of our service, when we stand, why do we stand? Stand for the reading of God's word.
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Before I preach my sermon, what do I ask? Stand for the reading of God's word.
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Why? Because we believe that the words on the page are not simply the words of men.
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We believe that the words on the page are literally the word is the word of God, that this is God breathed, according to 2nd Timothy 316.
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It says that all scripture is theanoustos or God breathed.
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So in this passage, when it tells us the scripture preached the gospel, what it is saying is that when this text of scripture was written down and when was it written down? It was written down well after Abraham.
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Because who wrote Genesis? Moses, Moses wrote Genesis and Moses lived well after Abraham, when Abraham heard the message, he heard the gospel.
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But yet when Moses wrote this down for us, he wrote it down so that subsequent generations would hear the gospel.
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This is why it says in the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, In you shall all the nations be blessed.
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Now, if you go back just quickly and look at Genesis chapter 12, I'm sorry.
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Yeah.
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Genesis chapter 12 and in verse 3, it says, I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you.
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I will curse and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
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That last section, what we would call Genesis 12, 3C, because there's three statements made there.
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I will bless those who bless you.
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That's 3C, A.
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I will dishonor those who dishonor you, I will curse.
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That's 3C, B.
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And then finally 3 or rather 12, 3C is in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
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So what do we see here? We see that the scripture is preaching the gospel and the gospel is this, in you, Abraham, God is speaking to Abraham, in you all the nations will be blessed.
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And Paul says that's the gospel.
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Now, would it be proper to say that now after the cross, after Jesus has come, that we have a more full understanding of what the gospel is? Absolutely, we understand more about how God is going to bless all the nations.
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We understand about how God is going to bring this blessing through Abraham and through his posterity, yet the core, the kernel, the seed of the gospel is what God said to Abraham, through you all the nations will be blessed, through you all the nations will be blessed.
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And how through Abraham are all the nations blessed? Because Abraham down the line from his seed comes Jesus.
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Abraham had Isaac, Isaac had Jacob, Jacob had 12 sons, one of them's name was Judah.
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And what is Jesus called? The lion of the tribe of Judah.
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In you, Abraham, shall all the nations be blessed.
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It's going to take time, but that's the promise of God.
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That's the gospel in its pre-birth.
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That was the gospel.
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People ask me all the time.
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People say, Pastor Foskey, if Jesus is required for salvation.
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And there were people who lived before Jesus came, how were any of those people who came before Jesus saved? Here it again, here the question again, if Jesus is required for salvation, faith in Jesus.
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And there were people who lived before Jesus, how then were any of those people who came before Jesus saved? Beloved, hear this and hear this now, the faith, the content of the faith has always been the gospel.
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The content of faith has always been the gospel.
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Jesus began preaching Mark chapter one and he went about preaching, repent and believe the gospel.
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Paul says in Romans chapter one, verse 16, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe to the Jew first and then to the Greek.
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You see, beloved, the gospel has always been the object of faith.
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The gospel given to Abraham was that through you, all the nations will be blessed.
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That is a pretty broad statement, but Abraham believed it.
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And the Bible says Abraham believed God and it was accounted unto him as righteousness.
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Later on, we would see more and more information about this gospel begin to unfold.
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We would see more and more of this gospel begin to come out.
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And finally, by the time of the New Testament, what was everyone longing for when Jesus came? The Messiah.
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Why? Because they knew that the Messiah was supposed to come.
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It was not a surprise when Jesus was called the Messiah.
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In fact, the Bible says that at that time, many people were claiming to be the Messiah because everyone knew that this person was supposed to come because the gospel promised it.
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The message throughout the Old Testament, from the beginning to the end, all the way back to Genesis chapter three in verse 15, where the Bible says what we call the proto evangelium or the first reference to the gospel.
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When God said to the serpent, you will bruise his heel, that he will crush your head.
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That is the first reference to God sending one who would destroy the work of the devil.
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So we have from the very opening of Scripture, the promise of God that he was going to send a savior.
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Later, Abraham gets this promise through you, the savior is coming through you, the blessing is coming.
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And then later we would see in other books like Isaiah, it would talk about the suffering servant.
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And then later in books like Micah, it would say and he will come from Bethlehem and then it would tell us these other things about him.
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He would be sacrificed.
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They will pierce his hands and his feet and they will surround him like dogs and they will cast lots and divide his belongings.
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And all of these things happened to Christ because these were all little glimpses into the life of that Messiah who was going to come.
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They were like snapshots of prophecy that when Christ finally came, these snapshots came together and we see the life of Christ pictured in the Old Testament, how that promised Abraham through your seed, the nation shall be blessed.
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And then Christ comes and what does he give? Christ gives a promise to anyone, no matter what nation they are from, no matter what people group they are from, no matter what color they are, no matter what language they speak, no matter who they are, if they place their faith in him, they will receive eternal life.
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And that is how all the nations are blessed through the seed of Abraham.
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Abraham believed the gospel, the Old Testament patriarchs believed the gospel, the prophets believed the gospel, and when Jesus came, he came to fulfill the gospel.
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It's been said like this, and I think it's very true, the Old Testament saints look forward to a coming sacrifice, the New Testament saints look back to a done sacrifice, but both sides of the cross look up to the cross.
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Both sides believe that it is through that sacrifice that they would receive eternal life.
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The gospel is the content of Abraham's call, he believed the gospel, and because of that, he was saved.
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Now, I want to begin winding to a close, but I want to I want to ask that you go back in your minds a few moments when we sat to communion today and we came together around the table and we had communion today, I asked you to meditate on a question.
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The question was, what is the gospel? Now, we talked about it, we said the gospel in its kernel form, if you want to call it that, if you call it its pre-birth, was simply the promise to Abraham that a blessing was coming.
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And we said the gospel began to expand and expand upon itself until finally Christ came.
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But I want to ask you today, if I were to ask you one on one, can you define the gospel? What would you say? Because, beloved, the gospel is still the content of our faith.
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The gospel is still the foundation upon which we believe.
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And I ask you this, would you know the answer? Heard a guy say one time, the gospel is that Jesus loves you.
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That may sound good and cute and nice, but that ain't it.
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The gospel includes the love of Christ.
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But don't distill things down to the point in which they have no meaning.
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You need to understand that we stand on the shoulders of those who come before us and we can see further into God's revelation than any who has ever come before us.
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I asked a question one time, I said, who knows more about God's revelation, us or Moses? And people got upset.
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Oh, well, Moses, Moses stood there and he actually was kept in the cleft of the rock.
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And God, pastor, he got to see God's kinder parts.
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And as such, he had more revelation than us.
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Moses didn't know the name of Christ.
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Moses did not understand.
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The cross.
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We stand on the shoulders of Moses, we stand on the shoulders of Isaiah, we stand on the shoulders of Micah and all the other prophets, we stand on their shoulders and we look at a much broader picture of revelation than any who have ever come before us.
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We have the entire Old Testament and New Testament.
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We have a larger, more broad, more expansive picture of the gospel than any that have ever come before us.
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Yet the average Christian, if I were to ask them to define the gospel.
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Most would be left with their tongues tied.
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So I ask you, what is the gospel? What is the gospel? Does the gospel distill down to the simple phrase, Jesus loves you? This I know for the Bible tells me so, I shudder to think that with all the revelation that we have, that we have to distill it down to a colloquialism, to a song, to a phrase, to a bumper sticker.
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Do we not understand more now than has ever been understood before in the gospel? Because we have the entirety of the word, we should.
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And for a moment, I want to explain what the gospel is.
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I don't want to leave you wondering if you came today and you don't know what the gospel is, if you came today and you're not certain what the gospel is, if you came today and you're you're still on the fence and you say, well, maybe the gospel is more than Jesus loves me.
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This I know, but I don't know what it is.
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Sometimes when we ask people, what is the gospel? They'll give us the technical answer.
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What is the technical answer? What is Evangel? What is that? Good news, right? That's what the word the Evangel or the Evangel, this is the good news.
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And they'll say it's good news.
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But I will tell you this, beloved, if you do not understand sin and you do not understand the righteousness of God and you do not understand the holiness of God and you do not understand the justice of God, then you don't understand the good news.
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You don't.
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Because before you can understand the good news of the gospel, you must understand the bad news of your sinful condition.
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It is impossible to grope for a savior when you think you need no savior.
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And that's the problem with most of the world.
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They are satisfied in their sin.
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They are satisfied in their own righteousness, and they think that their righteousness is enough.
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How many people have I ever asked, what will you do when you stand before God? And he says, why should I let you into heaven? And they say, I am a good person.
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This is what people say because it's what they believe.
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And if you can stand before God and think that you're a good person, then you don't understand the gospel.
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Because the very reason why Christ came into the world was to save sinners.
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The very reason why Christ came into the world was because sinners needed saving.
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If we could somehow do it on our own, if we could somehow pick ourselves up by our own bootstraps, if we could somehow stand on our own laurels, we would not need a savior.
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But the very fact that God sent his only son into the world because of sin indicates to us that sin is a major problem.
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I want to give you an acrostic to help you remember something.
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I really do not like to distill things down to so simple that they lose meaning.
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For those of you who know me know that I would I would rather wax on long than to try to distill something down to a bumper sticker and hope it sticks.
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But in this instance, I want to give you something that I give every one of our karate students.
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You all know we have a karate class that comes here on Thursday nights and every one of those little kids comes and we do karate together.
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But I also, after every class, I give them the gospel.
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And because it's not always it's not always where I would have 30 minutes to wax long about what propitiation is and what penal substitution means and what all these things is, sometimes I don't have that, but I have this acrostic.
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I want to share it with you and you may think it's oversimplified, but I tell you, it gives you everything you need to expand out as far as you want.
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What's the acrostic? It is the gospel, G-O-S-P-E-L.
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OK, so that's the acrostic.
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G, God created us for a relationship with him.
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That is why we were created, we were created.
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Now, by relationship, we get it.
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We get confused a lot in our world because we hear the word relationship and everybody thinks, oh, huggy, kissy, that's not what I'm talking about.
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The relationship with which or for which we were created was worship.
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We were created to worship God and to glorify him with our lives.
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That was the relationship for which we were created.
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So God created us for a relationship with him.
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Number two, our sin separates that relationship.
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That's the end, but it's good that it doesn't stop there because that could have been where it stopped.
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Don't you know that if not for the grace of God, when we sin and offended his holiness, he could have stepped back, left us to ourselves and every one of us would be deserving of hell.
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Our sin separates us from God.
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What's the S? Sin cannot be repaid or forgiven, whichever word you want to use.
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Based upon our works, it can't.
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No matter how many works you do, I don't care how many soup kitchen soup kitchens you serve at, how much money you give to the poor, how many old ladies you help walk across the street, how many groups you are attached to.
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I don't care because the Bible says that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.
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Sin cannot be repaid because of our good works.
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It would be as if a rapist stood before a judge and the judge says, you're guilty of rape.
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And he said, yeah, but hey, I teach Sunday school.
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And the judge went, well, wow, you get out free.
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No, good works do not cancel out our sins.
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Sin cannot be repaid by good works.
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The P is a longer one, but it's the most important.
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Paying the price for sin.
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Jesus died, paying the price for sin.
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Jesus died.
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And rose again to eat everyone who trusts in him alone will have life forever.
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It doesn't matter what color you are.
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It doesn't matter what kind of family you were born into.
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It doesn't matter what nation you were born into.
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None of that matters because the promise to Abraham was what through you all nations will be blessed.
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And we read in the book of Revelation, chapter five, that people from every tribe, tongue and nation will be standing before the throne worshiping on the last day.
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Everyone who trusts in him alone, you can't trust in him and your works.
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You can't trust in him and Buddha and Mohammed and all the rest, hoping that one of them is right.
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You have to trust in him alone because he is the one who did the work of salvation.
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We'll have life forever, and that's the last one, letter L, life forever.
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Is with Jesus and have that simplified? Yes.
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But does it encompass the most important part of the gospel, and that is we are sinners who need to be saved and apart from Christ, there is no salvation.
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And distilling it down, that's the gospel, as I said, we stand on the shoulders of giants.
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We see a broader picture of revelation that has ever been seen before.
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Yet at the same time, the gospel is the gospel that Abraham believed.
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Through his seed, through Jesus, all the nations will be blessed because all who believe in Christ.
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We'll have eternal life.
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So I ask you today one more time, meditate upon the gospel and ask yourself this question.
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Do I trust the gospel? Or do I trust myself, do I trust my mama's faith, do I trust my church attendance or my church membership, or have I submitted myself forsaken all and followed after Christ? With that question on our hearts, let us pray.
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Our father and our God, we thank you for this opportunity of having heard your word.
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We pray, oh God, that the message has been true to the truth.
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And is standing upon it.
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And Lord God, if there is one among us who has never heard the gospel, who has never heard their sinful condition and why they are so everyone is so desperately needing to trust in your son.
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I pray.
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In accordance with your will that you would move on their heart and draw them to yourself, for Lord, we are confident that you have promised that your word will never return void.
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And when it is proclaimed, you use it to minister to your saints.
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And to call people to yourself.
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We love you, we thank you, we praise you.
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For all that you have done and are going to stand with us now as we sing Amazing Grace.
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And if you have a need for prayer, please.