Who Truly Worships the God of Abraham?

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Hey guys, it's Pastor Keith Foskey, and welcome to Week 5 in our Family Worship Series.

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Now just a reminder that this series can be used in one of two ways. Either you as the parent can watch this video and use the information contained within to prepare your family worship time, or you can simply play this video during family worship time as an aid to what you're already doing.

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Now as we begin today, we want to talk about the ending of last week. At the end of last week's video, I left you with a memory verse.

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The memory verse was Genesis chapter 6 and verse 8. So in a minute, I'm going to give you a time to pause the video, where you can go around the room and ask the students, ask the family, who all remembers

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Genesis chapter 6 and verse 8? Also, I want to ask you this question. During this series, we're focusing on six important people from the

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Bible. Who remembers all six? All right, so Genesis chapter 6 and verse 8 says, but Noah found favor in the eyes of the

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Lord. So if you remembered that, you did a great job. Also, the six people that we're going to be looking at in this series are

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Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus.

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The two we've already looked at are Adam and Noah. So today, we're going to be looking at the person of Abraham.

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Abraham is one of the most recognized people in all of human history. He's recognized by both religious and non -religious people as having one of the most important places in world history.

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The three largest monotheistic religions in the world, which are Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, all look to Abraham as the one who was the patriarch of their faith.

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In fact, all three religions claim to be worshiping the God of Abraham. The problem is they all three believe different things about God, and therefore they can't all be worshiping the same

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God. As Christians, we believe that we're truly worshiping the God of Abraham because Jesus Christ told us that if we believed in Abraham, we would also believe in him.

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Now, there's way too much about Abraham's life that we can cover in just a short video. So the things we're going to focus on today are, we're going to focus on Abraham's promise from God, we're going to focus on Abraham's children, and we're going to focus on Abraham's covenant.

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Then out of that, we're going to look at some theological truths regarding Abraham. So when we talk about Abraham's promise, we're talking about the promise that God gave him in Genesis 12, verses 1 to 3.

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It says, Now you'll notice that in this text, he's actually called

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Abram. The word Abram means exalted father, but God would later change his name to Abraham, which means a father of the multitude.

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And that leads us to the next thing, which is Abraham's children. Abraham didn't have any children at the beginning of his story, even though God promised him that he would be a great nation.

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Part of the drama of Abraham's life is him asking God, what are you going to do? I have no children.

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You tell me I'm going to be a nation, but I don't even have any kids. And at one point, he thinks that perhaps

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Eleazar, his adopted son, is going to be his heir. Then later, he has a child through a handmaiden, and that child's name was

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Ishmael. But neither of them were the promised child that God was going to give to Abraham.

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In Abraham's old age, God gave him a son named Isaac. And from Isaac came

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Jacob, who would be called Israel. And from him would come 12 tribes, who would be known as the nation of Israel.

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So now let's talk about Abraham's covenant. A covenant is a special agreement that's made between individuals, which involves promises and expectations.

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In the Bible, we see God making covenant with a few special people. And one of those people is

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Abraham. In the Abrahamic covenant, God promises him that he would have descendants that were as numerous as the stars of the sky, and that he would have a special land that was called the promised land, or the land of Canaan.

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So the Abrahamic covenant included land and descendants, or what we sometimes say the land and the seed.

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You can read about how God made this covenant in Genesis chapter 15, verses 1 to 21.

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Now there are some really important theological truths which we learn through Abraham. In fact, the

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New Testament often looks back to Abraham to tell us about these important theological truths.

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And so today we're going to look at three of them. The first one is the promise to Abraham, which included the gospel.

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If you have your Bibles, go to Galatians chapter 3, beginning at verse 7, and we're going to read through verse 9.

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Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.

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And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preach 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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This is a hugely important verse because it says in it that God preached the gospel to Abraham.

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And what was the gospel? The gospel was that through Abraham, all the nations of the earth would be blessed.

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And what that's talking about is it's pointing forward to the work of Jesus Christ, because Jesus is the seed of Abraham.

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Jesus is the promised one, the one through whom the world would be blessed. And so Abraham received that promise, and Abraham's promise included the gospel.

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It says it right there in the text. It says the scripture, "...for seeing that God would justify the

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Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, In you shall all the nations be blessed."

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Notice something else that's in this verse. It says that the family of Abraham includes all who trust in Christ.

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This is why Christians sing the song, Father Abraham. Father Abraham had many sons. I am one of them, and so are you.

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How do we become children of Abraham? By trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are the spiritual descendants which

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Abraham was promised. We are the reason why he was promised a descendant that would number the sands of the sea, because it includes all who trust in Christ.

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And one day the spiritual offspring of Abraham will inherit the new earth, which fulfills the promise of the land which was given to Abraham.

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Abraham is also an example of justification by faith. The Apostle Paul teaches that we are justified not by what we do, but by believing in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And often when he's arguing for this particular theological truth, he uses

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Abraham as his example. We see this in Romans chapter 4, verses 1 to 3.

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It says, What shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

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For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.

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And that's a quote from Genesis chapter 15, verse 6. When Abraham was given his promise by God, he believed

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God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. That's what justification is.

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Justification is being declared righteous by God. And how are we declared righteous?

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We're declared righteous by what's called imputed righteousness. The righteousness of Christ is given to us as a gift.

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Christ was perfectly righteous, and therefore when we trust in him, his righteousness becomes our righteousness.

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Finally, Abraham is also an example of faith being accompanied by works.

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James chapter 2, verse 18 to 24 says, But someone will say,

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You have faith, and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.

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You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?

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Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?

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You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works.

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And the Scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. And he was called a friend of God.

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You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

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Now something important to note here is that some people believe that Paul and James are contradicting each other at this point, but that's not true.

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They're simply looking at faith from two aspects or two perspectives. Paul wants us to recognize that faith alone saves, but James wants us to know that saving faith will never be alone, but it will always be accompanied by good works.

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This theological truth is summed up perfectly in Ephesians chapter 2 verses 8 to 10.

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For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

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For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which

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God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. So we see that the relationship is that we are justified by faith, and faith is demonstrated by works.

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It says in the text, we are God's workmanship, created for good works, that we should walk in them.

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So there's a purpose in our works, and they do have value even though they are not the reason for our salvation.

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One of my favorite resources is Seeds Family Worship. They provide scriptures set to music on their

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YouTube page, and it's absolutely free for you to use at home. So I encourage you to go and look up Ephesians chapter 2 verse 8.

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You'll find a song that will help you to memorize that scripture. So I hope you enjoyed our time today.

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I know we took a whirlwind tour through the life of Abraham. It's a lot to look at, and we only did it in a short amount of time, but it's important to remember that as important as Abraham is, he's not the main person of the

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Bible. He points ahead to someone greater than him, and that person is Jesus.

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So as we're going through our six important figures, we've already looked at Adam, Noah, and Abraham.

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Next week we're going to look at Moses, the week after David, and then we're going to spend several weeks looking at the person of Jesus Christ.

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So stay with us as we continue to go through this fun time of family worship. Thanks for watching.