The Gospel to Abram

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I want to invite you to take out your Bible and turn to two passages.
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I want you to turn to Genesis chapter 12, and then I want you to also, if you would, just put your finger in Galatians chapter 3.
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We have been studying the book of Genesis now for a while, and we have gotten to chapter 12, and my goal today is to not only give an exposition of chapter 12, but also to point out its connection and fulfillment in the words of the apostle Paul in Galatians chapter 3.
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But before I do that, I have a few preliminary words to say, so just hold your Bibles open if you would.
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Over the years, I have heard several creative ways that people have used to begin evangelistic conversations.
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Dr.
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D.
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James Kennedy, in his evangelism explosion program that he created, was known for asking this question, and maybe you have heard it.
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If you died today, and you faced God, and God asked you why should you be led into heaven, what would you say? That was the question that Dr.
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D.
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James Kennedy thought was a good way to enter into a gospel conversation, and I have used that question.
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I think it's a good question.
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I've used that in some interactions with folks, but I will say this.
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It's sometimes intimidating to simply talk, if you're talking to somebody you don't know.
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If you died today, that's a hard way to start a conversation.
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Ray Comfort, a great evangelist and teacher, he's known for a little more subtle tactic.
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He says, are you a good person? That's the way that Ray Comfort is known for that, just simple question.
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Do you think you're a good person? Well, let's look at the word of God and compare ourselves to the word.
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Are we really good? No, we're sinners, and we need a savior.
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That's Ray's approach, and I've used that many, many, many times, but one of my favorite questions that many of you are familiar with, I have a wooden sign that I carved with this on it.
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I made t-shirts with this on it, and even last year on my birthday, I was given a mask, and the mask says it, so when I go out and I wear a mask, if I have to go wear a mask somewhere, it says it on there, it says, do you understand the gospel? Do you understand the gospel? And I have that phrase in so many places, whether it's on my mask or whether it's on the wooden sign or whether it's on a t-shirt, because I believe that question is good for believers or unbelievers.
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For the unbeliever, it gives me a chance to dig into the question, do you know the gospel? Do you know what it means to be saved and how to be saved? But for the believer, it gives me an opportunity, even if the person is saved, to have a gospel conversation.
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I say, do you believe the gospel? Do you understand the gospel? Yes, I do.
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Can you share it with me? How do you tell people the gospel? That's usually what I'll go next.
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If they say, yes, I'm a believer, well, can you tell me how you share it with people? Because that gives me an opportunity to see if they really do understand the gospel, and it's not like I'm giving them a test, but it's an opportunity to have a conversation.
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And I've found that while believers should know what the gospel is, sadly, they often have a hard time articulating it.
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Even had a preacher one time, when I asked him, do you understand the gospel? He said, that's hard.
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I said, it shouldn't be hard for you.
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It's your job.
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It's in the title, gospel preacher.
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This is your job.
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I'm trying to be ugly, but it's like, if there's one thing you ought to know, bro, this is why we make it our goal here every week to proclaim the gospel.
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Martin Luther said, I preach the gospel every week because every week my people forget.
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You know, I preach the gospel every time.
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The word gospel comes from the Greek word, euangelion, and it literally simply means good message.
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Angelos is the word for message, where we get the word angel, messenger.
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So angelos is a message, and to put the prefix eu at the beginning of a word in Greek means to add the good.
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So euangelion means good message.
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And so the gospel is the good message, or sometimes simply said, the good news.
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And it's often referred to as the gospel of Jesus Christ, because without Jesus, there is no good news.
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In fact, without Christ, there is no gospel.
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But when I say that, when I say without Christ, there is no gospel, that might lead some people to come to the conclusion that the gospel is limited to the New Testament.
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But my goal today is to show you that the gospel is actually the message of the Bible from the beginning to the end.
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The gospel is not limited to the New Testament, even though the gospel is all about Jesus.
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The gospel is throughout the Bible.
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In fact, if you were here several months ago, you remember in Genesis 315, we read Genesis 315, and we called it something, the proto evangelium.
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That's Latin, which simply means the first gospel.
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And the first gospel was what? When God spoke to the serpent, and he said, you're going to have a seed, and the woman's going to have a seed, and you're going to strike at his heel, but he is going to strike your head, where you will have a blow to him, he will have a crushing blow to you.
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And the seed of the woman was the one who was going to crush the head of the serpent.
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The seed of the woman was the one who was going to vanquish the work of the devil.
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That which Satan brought into the world, Christ would come and destroy through his work on the cross.
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And that's the proto evangelium, the first gospel.
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God promised to send the serpent crusher.
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Well, in our text today, we're going to see another text that is an early reference to the gospel.
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And what's interesting about this text is this text actually has apostolic affirmation, meaning that Paul will use today's text in Genesis as his foundation for his gospel message.
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So that's why I want us to read Genesis and Galatians.
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I want us to see what Moses writes and then how Paul interprets what Moses has written.
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So with that, let's stand and we're going to read Genesis 12, 1 to 3, and then we're going to immediately turn to Galatians 3, 7 to 9.
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Genesis 12.
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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.
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And I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing.
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I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you.
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You I will curse and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
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Now to Galatians chapter 3, beginning in verse 7.
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Galatians 3, 7.
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Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.
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Abraham.
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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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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word again and I pray Lord that you would write its eternal truths upon our heart as we learn it today in Christ's name.
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Amen.
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Please be seated.
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In last week's lesson, we ended the prologue to Genesis.
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And by prologue, it's pretty long prologue, but that's what it was.
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Eleven chapters of Genesis are simply setting up the main story.
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The main story of Genesis actually begins in chapter 12.
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So Genesis 1 through 11 has been referred to as primeval history.
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But as we come into Genesis chapter 12, we are now at what is referred to as patriarchal history.
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We move from the setup to the story.
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We move from everything that was need to be known to get us to where we are to what this book is really all about.
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The patriarchal period begins with Abram, who would later of course be Abraham.
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We'll talk later about the name and why the name changed.
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We noticed in our last lesson that Abram was from Ur of the Chaldeans.
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Now the city of Ur was in the land, the ancient world known as Mesopotamia.
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Mesopotamia means between the two rivers and the two rivers that that's referring to are the Tigris and the Euphrates.
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So that area would be in what we would call modern-day Iraq.
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Abram was the descendant of Shem, who was a descendant of Noah.
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Remember, Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
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And Shem was the father, the ancestor of Abram.
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He was also the son of Terah.
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Terah was a descendant of Shem and he was Abram's father.
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He had two brothers named Nahor and Haran.
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And according to Scripture, his family were idolaters.
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Abram's family were idolaters.
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It says this very specifically in Joshua 24.
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It says, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, Long ago your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah the father of Abraham and of Nahor, and they served other gods.
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It doesn't mix words.
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They were idolaters.
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And based on several bits of evidence that we have, including the time period, the location, the names of Abram's family, it was likely that they were worshippers of the moon god.
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The Mesopotamian moon god, whose name was Nana.
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So if you're a Nana, if that's your grandma name, everybody chooses their grandma names now, your grandma name is Nana, that's the name of the Mesopotamian moon god.
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Just want to throw that out there.
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In the 1920s, Sir Leonard Woolley led an excavation of the ancient city of Ur.
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It took 13 years to do all of the archaeological work, all of the excavation work that was done.
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And his findings were recorded in newspaper articles all around the world.
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In the city where he did the excavation, they found a ziggurat.
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Remember what the ziggurat was? It was like a pyramid that had built on itself up to what we think that the Tower of Babel would have looked like, right? But there was a smaller one that was there in the city of Ur, and it was a temple to Nana, the moon god.
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And at the top of the ziggurat was the temple itself.
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Sir Woolley also discovered the Royal Cemetery of Ur, which held a cache of golden objects as well as human sacrifices.
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So the moon god demanded human sacrifices.
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One of the most notable finds was known as the Great Death Pit.
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Seventy-three bodies were found in one grave alone.
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The queen, Puabi, was laden with gold.
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She had a golden headdress.
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They found her in a golden headdress, and a bead-studded cape was laid over her.
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But surrounding her, seventy-two sacrifices were all around her.
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So when she died, all of her servants died.
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Now we don't know if they died willingly.
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I'm going to guess a few of them didn't.
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But they sacrificed, and they laid their bodies around her.
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So that's the type of religion that Abram grew up with.
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Seventy-five years of that influence.
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Do we know whether or not Abram was involved with idolatry? It's hard to imagine that he wasn't.
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But some Jewish sources try to whitewash Abram's past, kind of make it like he was the lone holdout.
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Everybody else was doing the idol worship, but Abram was the stand-up guy.
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We don't know.
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But what we do know is this.
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He was certainly well-acquainted with the idolatry of his day.
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He had probably stood upon that ziggurat and looked out upon the world.
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He probably had seen those sacrifices.
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This was his family's religion.
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And it was in the midst of that idolatry that Abram receives a revelation from God.
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God speaks to Abram.
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And this is our study for today.
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We're going to look at the call of Abram.
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And then we're going to look at the promise to Abram.
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And then we're going to look at the gospel to Abram.
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So that's our three parts, our three sections of the message.
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We're going to look first at the call.
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This is verse 1.
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Genesis 12, verse 1 says, 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.
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Now, when did this call come? We talked about this in the message last week.
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We don't know for certain if this call came in Haran or in Ur.
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I believe it happened in Ur based on later texts.
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There's some passage in Nehemiah.
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There's a passage in Acts chapter 7 that seemed to indicate that this happened when Abram was in Ur of the Chaldees.
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But what happened was he was in Ur.
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He went to Haran with his father and they stopped there.
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And that is where he leaves from to go to Canaan.
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Go to this land.
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And notice what it says.
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It says, The Lord, and by the way, that's the covenant name of God.
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You'll notice all capital letters.
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When you see the English Bible uses all capital letters, that means that it's referring to the covenant name of God, which is the name Yahweh.
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So this says specifically, Now Yahweh said to Abram.
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So God spoke to him.
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And notice what he says.
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There's three parts to this call.
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He is to leave all of the familiarity of his homeland.
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Go from your country.
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First and foremost.
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Then he is to leave all the connections with his family.
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Go from your kindred.
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And then he is to go and leave the safety of his home.
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Go from your father's house.
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I want you to just think for a moment.
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And next week we're really going to dive into the faith of Abraham.
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But just for a moment for today's sake, think about the level of faith one would have to have to obey a command like this.
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Most of us grew up here in the United States.
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Most of us grew up in relative comfort.
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Some of us had some difficult lives growing up, but we know our people and we know our place and we know what it's like.
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I'll tell you, a few months ago, I went to Phoenix.
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Man, it just didn't feel like home.
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You go out to Phoenix, there ain't no grass anywhere.
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Nowhere.
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Just dirt.
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Everywhere.
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It's hot.
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You walk out of the airplane, it was like stepping into an oven.
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And it's hot here, but it's different kind of hot over there.
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And so everything's different when you leave home.
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And everything's different when you're called to leave not only home, but also to leave the social relationships that you have become accustomed to.
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It's not like everybody's going with you.
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Now Abraham, we'll bring some people with him.
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And we'll talk more about this next week.
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Who do we think it is who went with him? You know, it says there was a group that went with him.
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Were they his servants or had some people actually been converted to Yahweh under the preaching of Abraham? There's some people who believe that may be.
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So maybe he's taking along with him other believers.
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Don't know yet.
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We're going to talk about that.
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But here's the point.
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Abraham is leaving the comfort of his normal life.
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He's being called.
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Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house.
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And the King James, I think, really stresses this in a way that's different than the ESV.
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The King James, get thee out of thy country.
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There's more urgency, right? And I think the urgency is actually there in the text.
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The urgency is to leave this place.
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Why? Well, we just went through why.
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Abraham's living in a place that is known for idolatry.
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It's known for, it's known for worshiping false gods.
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It is known for this.
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And the true and living God comes to Abraham and says, get out of there.
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Get out.
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God had a plan for Abraham.
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And understand this.
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It did not include idolatry.
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God had a plan for Abraham that did not include the worshiping of Nana, the moon god.
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Get out of that.
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To fulfill God's will, let's see if we can apply this to our own lives.
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To fulfill God's will, we had to leave behind the idols and go where He tells us to go.
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See the connection, right? God calls Abraham to do something hard.
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Leave behind the idolatry and go where I tell you to go.
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And notice this.
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He didn't tell him where he was going.
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Notice he says, look at the text.
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Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.
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That's future tense.
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God doesn't necessarily tell him where he's going.
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He just says go.
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I'm sure he gave him a direction.
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You can't just say go.
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You got to give him a direction.
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But the point is there is faith in the stepping and that faith would mark Abraham's life.
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Now is Abraham going to make some mistakes? Yeah, we're going to see one next week.
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Right out of the box.
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He's going to go to Egypt.
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He's going to get his wife into some trouble.
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We're going to see some mistakes right out of the box.
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Abraham's not perfect.
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But what Abraham does do and he becomes an example of throughout the text is he does live a life of faith.
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He does what God calls him to do.
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God says go and he goes.
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Calvin observed that Abraham's trust in God was more expressed through the fact that he is not told exactly where but just to go.
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In fact, Calvin says, this is cited in Kent Hughes' commentary, but I want to read it to you.
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It says, Calvin observed that this uncertainty forced Abraham to trust God's word even more.
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Calvin comments that God said, in effect, I command you to go forth with closed eyes and forbid you to inquire where I am about to lead you until having renounced your country, you shall have given yourself wholly to me.
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Abram was asked to believe and obey the bare word of God, something Calvin called the verbum nudum.
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That's my new favorite phrase.
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Verbum nudum is Latin for the naked word.
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The naked word.
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Just obey what I tell you.
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Abraham becomes the example of the one who just does what God says.
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Wouldn't it be great if we all were so convinced in the verbum nudum? It wouldn't be so great if we all were just convinced of the bare word.
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The Bible says it and we do it.
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God says it and we do it.
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That's what Abraham does.
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Go and he goes.
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John Frame said this, he says, when God tells us to do something, we need no greater rationale for doing it.
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When God says do something, we don't need any more rationale.
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He said it, that's it.
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And notice this, God makes no apologies for demanding obedience.
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God says go, not, hey, listen, Abraham, I know it's going to be tough, but we need to talk.
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No, God just says go.
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Just go.
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This call is very much like the call of the gospel in one sense.
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Jesus says what? In Matthew 10, 37, he says, whosoever loves his father and mother more than me is not worthy of me.
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What's Jesus saying there? That's difficult, but what's he saying? He's saying you can't love anything more than me.
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I've got to become number one.
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One thing we can say about Abraham, when God said go, he went.
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Why? Because that call from God became more important than his parents.
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It became more important than his family.
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It became more important than anything.
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God said go and he went.
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That's the call of the gospel.
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What does Jesus say? Don't put your hand to the plow and do what? And look back.
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Throughout the Bible, we talked about this yesterday in the Sermon on Perseverance, throughout the Bible there's always this danger of looking back.
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Remember Lot's wife? She beheld Sodom.
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She wanted her city.
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God says don't even look back.
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Jesus said for whoever will save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's sake will find it.
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The call of the gospel is really the call Abraham received, go.
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Do what I tell you to do, follow me.
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So Abraham abandons his homeland, his family, his father's house, he follows God's word and Jesus calls us to do the same and he makes no apologies.
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So number two, we look at the promise to Abram.
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Abram's given a call, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to a land that I will show you and then we get to verse two and there's a promise attached to the call.
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Verse two he says, and I will make of you a great nation.
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I will bless you and 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 or nations of the earth shall be blessed.
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Now this promise is made up of several I wills, depending on how you count it and how it reads in Hebrew and English, a little different.
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I think there are five specific I wills, but if you want to argue that there are more or less, we can have that conversation later.
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But this is what it says, I will make you a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great and you will be a blessing and I will bless those who curse you and I will curse those who curse you.
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I'll bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.
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Five specific I will statements.
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These are from God to Abram.
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First he says, I will make you a great nation.
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First of all, think about how absolutely difficult that would have been to hear for Abram.
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Because what does it tell us in Genesis 11 at the very end about his wife Sarai? She was barren.
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That's what it says.
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And that little sentence may not mean a whole lot in the context of Genesis 11 because it's part of a longer genealogy, but when it says, and Sarai was barren and now Abram is given a command of God, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you and I will make you a great nation.
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You have to imagine at some point there has to be thoughts in his mind, how is this going to take place? The wife of my youth, the woman whom I love, is unable to have children.
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Later he'll have a conversation with God and he'll point to an adopted son, Eleazar of Damascus, and he'll say, is this the one you're going to use for the nation? Is he the one? Because I don't have any sons.
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Is Eleazar going to be the one? And then, of course, we all know what's coming with Hagar, the handmaiden of Sarai.
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He's going to try to work his way a different way.
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That doesn't work out either.
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God's got a promise.
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God's got a plan, even for Sarai, even for the old woman who has no children.
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God has a promise and a plan for her.
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So Abram says, God says, I will make of you a great nation, even though he had no children.
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He says, I will bless you.
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Now, we know that that comes true because we see Abraham blessed throughout the Bible.
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He's blessed materially.
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It says in Genesis 13-2, he was very rich in cattle, silver, and gold.
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He's blessed spiritually.
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In 21-22, it says that it came to pass that Abimelech and Piskel, the chief of the captain of the host, spake unto Abraham, saying, God is with thee in all that thou doest.
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He was blessed socially.
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Genesis 23-6, Abraham says, Hear us, O my Lord, thou art a mighty prince among us.
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In your choice of our sepulchres, bury the dead.
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None of us shall withhold from thee his sepulchre, but that thou mayest bury thy dead.
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We see he's blessed socially, he is blessed spiritually, he is blessed materially.
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But might I also say he's blessed in a way that he would never even fully see, and that is he is blessed with a descendant who would save the whole world.
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And that's the third I will, I will make your name great.
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I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
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I want to ask this question, is there anybody in history that has a greater name, other than Jesus Christ, than Abraham? Honestly.
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Now you might go on to some college campus and they might pull out some scientist or philosopher, but I'm talking about in general.
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You understand that right now in the world there are three largest, the three largest monotheistic religions in the world are Christianity, sits around two billion, that would claim Christianity, Islam, which sits just under two billion, Judaism, which is only in the hundreds of thousands, or I'm sorry, hundreds of millions, not billions.
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But we see three monotheistic religions.
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You realize all of them claim Abraham as their ancestor.
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So when God says I'm going to make your name great, he ain't lying.
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And what's interesting about that truth is, go back to, in your mind, go back to two weeks ago when we talked about the Tower of Babel.
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You remember the Tower of Babel? You remember what their goal was when they built that ziggurat? You remember what the tower was all about? Making a name for themselves.
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They were building that tower so that their name would be remembered.
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God says to Abram, I will make your name great.
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See when we try to make our name great in the world, that's pride.
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But God, when we make his name great, he can use us for his purpose.
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And in that, he glorifies himself in us.
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So he says to Abram, I will make your name great.
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And then the final section, the I will bless and curse, this part I want to admit, and I don't want to get too far off topic, but I want to admit this part has been misunderstood and misused a lot.
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So if I could take a moment and put on my professor's cap, I just want to clarify something.
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Because the phrase that is said to Abram, I will bless those who bless you and who dishonors you I will curse, that passage is often used, particularly by dispensationalists, of which I am not.
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And if you don't know what that means, we'll talk later.
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But dispensationalists believe that God has two plans in history, a plan for the church and a plan for Israel.
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And that those plans run parallel but never intersect with one another.
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And that is a false teaching.
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Dispensationalism is not correct.
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As much as I love John MacArthur, he's wrong on this.
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And the danger of being wrong on this is it causes people to see ethnic Israel as the current people of God.
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And that is not true.
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The Bible says that we have been brought into the family of Abraham by faith and that we have been made the true Israel of God.
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The spiritual Israel, if you want to use that term, or true Israel.
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But here's what has happened.
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Many people today see Israel as a nation and they say, that is God's people, therefore we have to, in whatever way is necessary, we have to support them.
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Because in doing so, we're fulfilling this command that whoever blesses Abraham will be blessed and whoever curses Abraham will be cursed.
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See the danger there.
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Because for one, it's a misunderstanding of who the Jews are today.
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But it's also a misunderstanding of what this promise is.
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Now I want to, before you start throwing things, I see some of you are already gritting your teeth at me.
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Listen, I do think on a political and social level it's good that we have an ally in the Middle East and the ally happens to be Israel.
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So from that perspective I would say we should maintain that alliance.
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From a political perspective I think it's beneficial.
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But the idea that Israel as a nation has some secondary way of salvation outside of Jesus Christ is heresy and damnable so.
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Because if we go to Jews and we do not give them Jesus, we are leaving them in a position where they cannot be saved.
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No Jew is saved simply by being a Jew.
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Somebody says, well do you believe that God may one day bring revival to the Jewish people? I hope so.
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But apart from Christ, there will be no salvation.
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So do not use Genesis 12, 1-3 as an excuse to demand support for the national people of Israel.
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Because that's not what this is about.
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That's not what the command is.
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Again, if you want to talk about that more later, we can.
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But just as long as you understand who are we, we are the sons and daughters of Abraham by faith.
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Jesus said that, Paul teaches that, and you say, well does that mean the church has replaced Israel? Get rid of that word replaced in your mind.
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Why don't you use the biblical word? We have been grafted in according to Romans chapter 11.
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Abraham was the root of the tree and we, like a wild olive branch, have been grafted in.
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It's not a replacement, it's an expansion.
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The gospel was never meant to be held in one nation.
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It was meant to go to all nations and be grafted in to that.
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Lot to consider.
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Again, I probably just lost some friends, but whatever, right? I love Johnny Mac.
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He's right on a thousand things.
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You can be wrong on one thing, it's pretty big, but you can be wrong.
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And if you come here today and you say, well this is what my study Bible says and this is going to be right, I'm going to tell you, don't trust the study Bible that much.
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I wouldn't do that for R.C.
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Sproul and I'm not going to do that for John MacArthur.
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R.C.
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Sproul baptized his babies and guess what, he was wrong too.
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Those are the two men I probably respect more than just about anybody in the last generation of preachers.
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But do not uphold a man higher than the word of God.
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No matter if it's me or anybody.
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Do not put a man above the word of God or the study notes in your Bible above the text itself.
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All right, I'll get off my soapbox.
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Well, I'll stay on it, but I'll move on because we're still here.
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But that's an important reality.
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That truth is important.
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All right, number three, we're going to look at the Gospel of Abraham.
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We know what the promise is, I will, I will, I will, I will, but now let's look at the final statement.
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This is in verse three and this is what the Apostle Paul indicates is the Gospel.
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Look at it.
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He says in verse three, I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse.
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And by the way, that word curse, interestingly enough, if you go back in Genesis, it's used only three other times.
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It's used of the serpent.
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It's used of Cain and it's used of Canaan, the son of Ham.
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So there's an idea here.
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It's the people of God versus the people who are opposed to God.
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That's who's going to be cursed because guess who is the supporter of Abraham? The people of God.
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Guess who are the ones who are not the not the people of God.
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They're under the curse.
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See? And then he says, and in you all the nations of the world will be blessed.
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Where do we see that? Go over to Galatians.
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Now we're going to start running to the end because this is, this is what Paul says in regard to that.
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We've already read it, but I want to give an exposition very quickly of verses seven to nine.
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And by the way, this is the Holy Spirit interpretation of Genesis 12.
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This is not my interpretation.
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This is Paul writing and this writing is inspired by the Holy Spirit of God.
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It is infallible.
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It is inerrant.
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And this is what it says.
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First in verse seven, it says, know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.
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Didn't I just say that? So now you know it didn't come from me.
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It is those who are of faith who are the sons of Abraham.
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What kind of faith? Faith in Christ.
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That's the faith.
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If you want that, just, just go back and read the whole book.
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Galatians is all about that.
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He says, it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.
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And the scripture, this is so cool, sorry, it really is, because this says the scripture preached to Abraham.
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Notice what it says.
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It says in the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles, preach the gospel.
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So the word preach there is the verb.
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The preceding noun is scripture.
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It says the scripture preached the gospel to Abraham.
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Guess what? There weren't no scripture in the time of Abraham.
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Who was the first one to write scripture? Moses.
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How many years was that? About 400 years later or more, right? About 500 years later, actually.
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So you got it.
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Moses is writing 500 years later.
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But you see what Paul is doing is Paul is equating scripture to God here.
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Isn't that amazing? Because God is the one who preached the gospel to Abraham.
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But how do we know it through the scripture? The word of God is God's word.
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I know that sounds redundant, but it's true.
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The word of God is God speaking.
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And when God speaks in His word, whether it's here or whether it was the words to Abraham, it's God speaking.
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God is preaching the gospel to Abraham.
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And how did He do it? He did it by telling him that through Him all the nations of the world would be blessed.
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Paul is arguing, by the way, if you want to know about Galatians, the whole book of Galatians is on the subject of the full inclusion of the Gentiles in the gospel.
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You see, because the people in the Galatian area, which I believe was southern Galatia, which would have been the churches of Lystra, Iconium, and Derbe, all those ones we read about in Acts 12 and 13, where Paul is going through the southern area, which would be currently Turkey.
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As he's going through there, he's preaching to these churches, he founds churches there.
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Then he comes back later and he finds out that a group of people came in called the Judaizers and the Judaizers come into the Galatian region and try to convince the people of God that they're not fully the people of God because they have not kept the law.
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They have not been circumcised, they were not keeping the dietary restrictions, they were not keeping the Mosaic covenantal law.
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And they said, if you don't do that, you can't be saved.
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So Paul writes Galatians to them with one message.
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That is a false gospel.
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And any man who brings you another gospel other than the gospel that I have given to you, let him be cursed.
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That's Galatians chapter 1, 6-9.
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If anybody brings another gospel than the one I've given to you, let him be accursed.
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Then we get to chapter 3 and Paul is just simply expounding the idea of what it means to be part of the people of God.
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What does it mean to be a part of the people of God? We get to verse 7.
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Know then that it is those of faith, and that would be faith in Jesus, who are the sons of Abraham.
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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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You understand this? We talked last week about the tree and the branch.
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Genesis 1-11 is all about the tree of the world.
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Starts with creation and it goes through Adam and it goes up through Noah and it goes through all the descendants, Shem, Ham, and Japheth and into all those 70 branches, those nations that came out of Shem, Ham, and Japheth and then one branch.
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The one branch was the branch of Shem, which would go down to the one singular branch of Abram and the family of Abraham.
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And that branch would begin to expand out and that branch would become Abram, Isaac, Jacob, and the sons of Jacob.
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Jacob was also called Israel, so it would be the people of Israel.
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And the people of Israel had one purpose.
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The people of Israel were to glorify God as the sons of Abram, looking forward to the final perfect son of Abram, who would come and would redeem the tree.
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You see, the branch going out wasn't to go out and be alone, but the branch was to come back and redeem the whole thing.
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Sorry, I'm getting excited.
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But it wasn't about creating this other thing, it was about saving the first thing.
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That which was lost will be redeemed through the Son, so that in Him, all the nations of the world will be blessed.
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You see, Christ is the Gospel and the Gospel was given to Abraham.
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When Abraham was told, hey listen, in you, all the nations will be blessed.
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We began our sermon today talking about the Gospel.
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What is the Gospel? The Gospel is the good news about Jesus Christ who came to save sinners.
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How are sinners saved? By repenting of their sin and trusting in the Gospel.
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And Abraham was saved the same way.
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He went out from his country and his kindred and his father's house and he believed what God had told him, that through you, all the nations will be blessed.
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Abraham believed the Gospel.
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So Kent Hughes says this, he says, so the Gospel was announced 4,000 years ago to Abraham in darkest Ur with the shadow of the great ziggurat above and the death pits below.
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The Gospel announced in advance to Abraham and fulfilled in Christ is now the church's responsibility to proclaim so that the so-called Gentile Psalm, the shortest Psalm in all the Psalter, will be sung by the nations.
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And this is what it says, Psalm 117, the Gentile Psalm, praise the Lord all nations, exalt him all people, for great is his steadfast love toward us and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.
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Praise the Lord.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for the promise to Abraham, which we enjoy as sons of Abraham by faith.
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And Lord, now as we turn our attention to the receiving of the supper, Lord, help us to remember that in this supper, there are people all around the world from every nation, tribe and tongue who are taking this supper along with us.
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And Lord, all of these nations are blessed through Abraham because of Jesus Christ.
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And it's in his name we pray, Amen.