One of the most influential books and famous books in American Protestantism in the 20th century was a book by the name of Christ and Culture, Christ and Culture. It was written by Dr. Richard Niebuhr. I'm actually just going to find out, is anybody in this room ever read Christ and Culture? Yeah, well of course Joe did. Okay, yes, Christ and culture. There's one of us who have read one of the most influential books in American Protestantism. Look, I would say this, we don't agree with Richard Niebuhr on a lot of things in relation to the richness of the gospel and truth, but it was a very influential book. He gave a series of lectures in 1949 on Christ and culture and then wrote his book and he was lecturing and writing about the different models that the church has, Christians have adopted in the way that we believe that we should engage with the culture, with the world. And let's face it, that's a subject that we all actually do have to think of and through as we as we live in this world as believers, we live in a world and culture around us that is in total conflict to who Jesus is and who he's called us to be. You see that, don't you? Particularly in the month of June, all around us, flags are flying everywhere saying where We believe in a different standard, in a different way. And so Niebuhr tried to look at ways that Christians engage with culture and broke it down into five basic models. Now, I'm not gonna go through the models this morning. It will bore you to death. Actually, he's not a very good writer. His book is a little bit hard to read through, and it'll bore you to death. But it is an important question that we have to ask. You know, he asks a number of different questions. Questions like this, do Christians, are we meant to fight against the culture? Is it just a war all the time where we're actually warring with the culture? Are we meant to transform the culture and try and make it better or more moral? Do we just maybe give in and capitulate and adapt culture and make the church just look more like the culture? Do we separate And do we hide ourself? Do we avoid the culture at all costs, just kind of separate from it? Or do we simply learn to live in tension, in the tension that we can have as God's people who are called to be holy in a holy world? We just live in that tension. Now, I'm not gonna try today to arrive at any one of Niebuhr's models. In fact, if you ask me later, if anybody's interested, I'm happy to tell you a model that I think is, should be number six in his book and I think it's more biblical I think it looks a lot more like Jesus and we can talk about that later but you'll hear a little bit of that today actually but I do believe that the church is and will be debating the question about how we're to engage with the culture until Christ returns. We will be. And the fact remains, we all do have much the same question. How can Christians live and relate to a world full of darkness, sin, and hopelessness? How do we do that? And this is why I love the narrative of Genesis so much. I love that we're going through the book of Genesis. Because week after week, as we go through the narrative of Genesis, God brings us to the subjects we have to actually think through. And here is one of them. And today we get to do it again with Abraham. Now, so as we approach the second half of Genesis 21 today from verses 22 to the end of the chapter, I want to suggest there's at least a partial answer, a partial answer to get us thinking about how the church engages with the world, with the culture. Let me give it to you, I think a sentence that describes the last half of this chapter, and it's something like this, in our terms, the church can live in peace with the world if we remember that we don't belong to the world. The church can live in peace with the world as long as we always remember that we do not belong to the world. Now last week we saw that God brought about his promise to Abraham and Sarah in the birth of Isaac in the first half of Genesis 21. Amazing section of scripture, a pinnacle section, particularly in the life of Abraham. And we also saw that God protected Isaac from any threat from Ishmael, and so God's plan, God's greater plan and promise to the whole world actually is protected. And I wanna see that this hope that we had from last week, God's promise and plan in the birth of Isaac, the line to Jesus given to Abraham and Sarah, this beautiful hope of this offspring is the meat in a sandwich. Either side, it's really hard not to see that Abraham has a dangerous encounter with Abimelech, either side of that. That's the sandwich, the two pieces of bread and they are a dangerous encounter with the world, with the meat in the sandwich being God's promised offspring coming in through. So Genesis 20, we saw that threatening situation with Abimelech taking Sarah, Then we have God delivers His promise of the offspring of Isaac and today we see Abraham again living through a threatening encounter with Abimelech. God delivers His offspring of promise in the middle of the darkness of the world. Now, is that not exactly what we have with Jesus? Is that not exactly what God delivers His ultimate son of promise in the midst of His people living and encountering a dark and fearful world? In Jesus' time, there were the Herods and the Roman empires of the world. And we now, in Genesis 21, come to Abraham's second encounter with Abimelech. But this time, it's after Abraham and Sarah have seen God fulfill His promise. The birth of Isaac has happened. The line of God's greater promise and plan has happened. So open up your Bibles, Genesis 21. verse 22 and 23 to start with and let me read this for you. At that time Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, said to Abraham, God is with you in all that you do, now therefore swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me or with my descendants or with my posterity but as I have dealt kindly with you so you will deal with me and with the land where you have sojourned immediately Abimelech, and we're going to see that Abimelech, who comes to make this covenant, this deal, this agreement with Abraham, notices something in Abraham that I think we all need to see and consider for ourselves, and that's this. The church is the light of God's goodness in the darkness of the world. The church is the light of God's goodness in the darkness of the world. Now let's break this section down a little bit. Abimelech comes to Abraham from his home city of Gerar. Now Gerar was over on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, about where Gaza is. located and then Abraham was quite a distance west from that, halfway between Gerar and the Dead Sea and quite a journey to get to him and Abimelech doesn't come to Abraham alone. Notice that he brings with him the commander of his army. Now I'm going to say this to you, that if a king or a national leader ever comes to you with the commander of their army, with the military leader, I want to put it to you, it's not because he wants to have a pleasant conversation over tea and scones. Okay? I know that you guys don't have tea and scones anyway, but that's your loss. It's a blatant threat. It's a blatant threat. It's a statement of power, of authority. And he comes to Abraham to make a deal. And in fact, he's going to make a very strong contractual covenant agreement with Abraham. And he's attempting to set all the terms here. He's saying, if you look, he says, where you have sojourned at the end of 23, he's saying, he uses that word sojourn, you're sojourning. You're only a sojourner in this place. And this place is my claim. This is my place. And I want you to acknowledge that you live in peace with me in the land that I claim as mine. You're sojourning. It really is an attempt at dominance. Abimelech also, I want to suggest to you, would not be doing this outside of his memory, that the last time he encountered Abraham, he also encountered Abraham's God. God, when Abimelech took Sarah, Even through Abraham's deceit in that, he was doing the wrong thing and God called him a dead man. You're a dead man, you give that woman back. If he didn't give Abraham his wife back, he was going to die. And Abimelech's whole family line, you'll notice the word in here, posterity, his posterity was at threat. And so, He's now coming to Abraham and saying, if you're going to live in the territory that I'm claiming as mine, I don't want any problems from you or your God. You need to make sure that you treat me well. Never put my family, my posterity, my legacy, my name, my place at risk. Don't do it. Please don't do it. You need to treat me well. And I think what we see here that the most important thing to Abimelech is his place in the world, his name in the world, his ownership of the world, his family legacy, his wealth, his generational name, his position in the world. It all comes through in this word posterity and his concern for the land. And so he comes to Abraham with his military commander and making sure that Abraham knows you're a sojourner, You're in the land that you have sojourned. That's an intentional statement. This is my world, my world. Now, that's not really a foreign concept to any of us today. I live, you live, in a world where we're all of us surrounded by people who are attempting to assert their power, their dominance, and say, this is mine. Are we not? In all sorts of ways. You must treat me well. But there is something that Abimelech still has to acknowledge, and it's the first thing he actually says in verse 23, look at it. I see that God is with you in all that you do, therefore swear to your God. He's acknowledging Abraham's God, how can he not? He encountered him in chapter 20. Abimelech was told by God, when he was going to die for what he had done. Get Abraham to pray for you so that you will not die. Get this prophet to pray for you. And now he knows Abraham is in the hands of his God. He's watched Abraham in the land. He sees that Abraham has what his God has given him. He is prospering in the life that he has with his God. He obviously sees Abraham's faith. Maybe even he sees this beautiful, miraculously beautiful Sarah who was kept so physically young in her 90s that she had a son and gave Abraham a son. I think he sees both the material and spiritual blessing of God on Abraham. So it's like saying, Abraham, I want you to swear to me, but not to me, to your God. I really need you to go to your God on this one. I've seen it before, so you need to go to him. You need to swear to your God that you will deal kindly with me and recognize before your God who listens to you that this land is mine, this is mine, it's all mine. If he agrees with you, then I'm safe. Please do it, because I see how your God has blessed you. Please do it, because I see that your God is with you. Please do this, because if you acknowledge that to him, then I get what I want. Now I wonder, I just want to ask this question, I wonder if people around us see our God, and I'm talking to you, I wonder if they see that our God is with us in this world. Perhaps you look at a passage like this and you know that Abraham's got sheep and oxen, he's got a large number of people with him, it's not just him and Sarah and Isaac in the land, he's got a whole household and it's quite large. and he's got stuff, and you maybe look at someone like Abraham and you say, well that's all well and good, Steve, but I don't have lots of material blessing for people to say that God is with me. They can't just look at me from the outside and say, oh, look at this blessing. In fact, you might even say, my life looks pretty hard right now. And I want to say, even in that circumstance, I want to remind you, I still want to remind you that people can still look at you and see that God is with you. Do you not agree? We need to think about this. We still need to answer the question, how can people see that God is with us? We have a number of home Bible fellowships at the moment going through the book of Hebrews. What a beautiful book to consider this. When you go through the book of Hebrews, something about it blows me away. It's a theme that we've all noticed that comes out over and over and over again. The author of Hebrews often makes statements to show that God was building his promise and his plan through a physical people that would become physical family of families, a nation of families in the old covenant in a physical place with a physical representation that would shine out to all the nations. Included the temple, the whole lot. And so there are physical aspects of their life and worship, God's blessing to them that was seen from outside in as they look at the nation, but the book of Hebrews looks at all of it and says, it was mere shadows of a greater, a greater blessing and a greater God with you in Jesus Christ. It was mere shadows of what was yet to come. And that's what the author of Hebrews is trying to convince those he's writing to about. So God's physical family of nation from Abraham and his descendants would be a physical sign to the world around them as a nation in a place of what is to be God's people shining in the dark world. And as they live for God, the blessing of God would show in them as a sign to the other nations of God's goodness. The author of Hebrews makes that huge point. This is a shadow of a greater spiritual blessing in Jesus Christ who fulfills all of this. And as we are spread, you and I and all Christians in the churches all throughout the world today, we show that God is with us in Christ as we live within and spread across those nations. So the question is, we're no longer one group of people in one place, are we? One common place. We're all over the world. So the question still remains now, in the wonder of the fulfillment of Christ, how are people seeing that God is with you today? Let me help you by asking you some questions. Questions that I thought through this week, even for myself, please, you think through them right now. Does the world see in you a greater hope in Christ, even when your life is hard, and say God is with you? Does the world hear in you someone who loves to praise their God more than complain about their circumstances and say God is with them? Do people in the world see contentment in your life even when you have less material things than others and say God is with them? Does the world see patience and endurance from you in the face of people mocking and scoffing you because of Christ and say, wow, God is with them? Does the world see a genuine love for others that comes from God and say, wow, the way that they love, God is with them? Does the world hear someone excited to tell others about their precious savior and say, wow, God must be with them? Does the world experience your generosity in a way that it seems you really don't care about how much you have in this world, and they say, wow, God is really with them? And your generosity to the gospel, even. Does the world see someone who obviously knows what forgiveness and mercy means, and express it and practice it, and they say, wow, God is with them? Does the world see your holiness when you are surrounded by sinfulness? Unapologetically. And they say, wow, God must be with them. Does the world see that you would rather serve your God than keep your job? And say, wow, God must be with them. Do they see that God is with you? want to suggest to you that Abimelech is about to see even that with Abraham... he's going to see that Abraham absolutely cares more about his God than his physical place in the world. And if he doesn't see that God is with Abraham in that way yet, he's about to, a Bimelech who cares so much about his name, his wealth, his family, living on his land, he's about to see that Abraham actually doesn't have to fight for him about this land, about this place in the world like that. There's no fight. Abraham is actually very happy not to put any obstacle in the way for Abimelech to live out his posterity in the world. I'm happy for you to have it. Abraham, notice, does not need his own military leader with him to talk to Abimelech. And believe me, Abraham's got his own army. We saw it in Genesis 14. Listen, as we come to verses 24 to 30, we have no reason to war with the world as we live for a greater purpose. We have no reason to war with the world as we live for a greater purpose. Verse 24 to 30, and Abraham said, after being asked, will you do this, have this agreement with me? And Abraham said, I will swear. When Abraham reproved Abimelech about a well of water that Abimelech's servants had seized, Abimelech said, I do not know who has done this thing. You did not tell me, and I have not heard of it until today. So Abraham took sheep and oxen and gave them to Abimelech and the two men made a covenant. Abraham set seven new lambs of the flock apart and Abimelech said to Abraham, what is the meaning of these seven new lambs that you have set apart? He said, these seven new lambs you will take from my hand, that this may be a witness for me that I dug this well. Abraham is giving Abimelech the response to his insistence upon a covenantal agreement to act peacefully toward him. They're gonna make a horizontal covenant agreement toward each other. And I wanna suggest to you, look at Abraham's answer, verse 24 there, the first one. Abraham's answer is actually something like this we would hear today. Absolutely, yes, totally, no problem. The reason I say it like that, in the ESV I see that we just have the words, I will swear, do you see that, I will swear? That's not a wrong translation, that's an exact translation. There's one word in the Hebrew text that all of that one word, if you were to just translate it straight, means I will swear. That's that word translated, but actually before that one word is translated, there is also the singular pronoun. And so it actually reads, I, I will swear. And when you have that, it's an emphatic, It's an emphasis in the text. So that I becomes an absolute, which brings significant emphasis. So it's like Abraham is saying, absolutely yes. Do you see how much he's agreeing to do this? Totally, I'll do it. I'm willing to make an agreement with the world right here to act peacefully in cooperation with the world. Now I wonder if that makes some of you very uncomfortable. Because we really do get a little bit nervous, cooperate with the world. But we're not called to be completely separate. Anybody who says we're to just completely separate, have nothing to do with the world, they're not seeing this in scripture. The reality is that Abraham does not really have, he doesn't have reason to trust Abimelech. It's not like Abimelech is some wonderful, trustworthy guy. Yes, we had that situation in Sarah where he says, my integrity, God. I did it, I gave her back. But it wasn't Abimelech's own integrity. Do you remember? It was God restraining his sin. Do you remember that from Genesis 20? It's not like Abimelech has his own wonderful, holy integrity. The only reason he did anything good back then is because of God warning him and restraining him. Abraham's confidence is not in Abimelech. Abraham has no trust in the world, though he's happy for Abimelech to enlarge his borders, he's happy for Abimelech to make this claim that Abraham is now sitting on, he's happy for that, he's happy. Abraham doesn't have to oppose him. In fact, Abraham has already proven that if he wanted to oppose him, he's got a pretty effective army. In Genesis 14, he went up and defeated Catalaoma and the other four cities that were with him to rescue Lot. And let's remember that Abraham has God on his side. Surely Abraham could just say, no, no, no. I want to be here, I don't need your authority over me, I don't need your dominance over me, I don't need to be subject to you. He does not do that. He doesn't even say, no, God has promised me this land. And it's true that God has promised he and his descendants that land, isn't it? God has promised this. God's already promised that it will be for my generations after me, they're going to inherit this land, but Abraham knows that it's not gonna be, God has already told him, until the wickedness of the Amorites have come to a fulfillment, until he judges the Canaanites out of the land. If there also is ever a time, I wanna put to you, that Abraham can simply trust God without trying to get God's promises in his own way, It's now after seeing that all of these attempts to get his offspring his own way failed and God gave him Isaac, right? Oh, my way fails, God's way is the only way. So now he can truly trust God's way. He doesn't need to try and fight for this future promise that God has given him. So Abraham can trust the Lord. He trusts a greater promise. Abraham is kind of able to chill. We can chill. He doesn't have to grasp onto the world. Did you know Jesus gives us beautiful, beautiful pictures of this in the life of Christ in the Gospels? Let me give you one. Remember, Jesus was with the Pharisees. The Pharisees are always trying to trap Jesus, trying to test Jesus' allegiance to God rather than the world. Mark chapter 12, verse 14. Wow. Do you remember Jesus' answer? Whose inscription is it on this coin? Give to Caesar. What is Caesar's? and give to God what is God's? Do you hear that answer? So chill. That's Jesus not trying to find any contentment in the world, not trying to battle for the world, it's already God's, it's already His. The battle is bigger, the battle is something for so much greater. Let Caesar have his day. I'm here for a greater promise. You know what I love, brothers and sisters, what I really, really love? It's texts of scripture that help me give up my stressiness in the world and just chill in the greater promises of God. I love it. And there are so many of them. Now there's an issue Abraham does bring up. And he needs to, verse 25 and 26, he talks about, he says, your servants have seized the well that I dug. Your servants of Bimelech have seized the well that I dug. Now, the word here for seized is translated as robbed or stole. It can be also to take violent possession of. It's likely that they came and did exactly that, took violent possession of this well. And I think it's important to consider here that Abraham really does need this well. He's not living in an area filled with lots of beautiful, fresh bodies of water. If he doesn't have a well, he dies. Everything with him dies. So the well is no small thing. And Abimelech, he can come and try and make all the deals of peace that he wants, but if he thinks he can claim this territory and let Abraham die, that's another thing entirely. That's not a true agreement. So Abraham says, let's have a true agreement. If you want peace, I need water, and I dug this well, and your servants came and took it. And Abimelech's answer, look at verse 27, it's just to plead ignorance, just total ignorance. I didn't know. And you didn't tell me. And until today, I didn't understand. It's your fault, Abraham, you didn't tell me. You didn't do this. Think about this. Abimelech's servants, they're Abimelech's servants, the king who believes this is his land and his place, and they operate for the king, because they're his servants, and he says, I don't know that they come and do this to you. And he's pleading ignorance. I can't see Jerry Butterworth. Jerry Butterworth's not in here, is he, right now? That's good, because we can talk about him when he's not here. Jerry Butterworth loves cookies like crazy, right? He eats cookies, and it doesn't matter whether they've got two inches of mold on them. He'll eat them on the front seat of his car after five weeks. Can you imagine Jerry Butterworth as a kid? Like, it's not hard, right? But, you know, I can imagine his mum coming to him, Jerry, did you eat that cookie without asking? And little Jerry, no, I never saw it. Why didn't you tell me there was a cookie? And then his mom replying, well, what's that chocolate all over your face, right? And I think Abraham is getting us to look at the chocolate on Abimelech's face right here, right? What's that chocolate all over your face? You're a king and you don't know what your servants are doing and a well is really important in this area? Come on, man. But Abraham still does this deal, doesn't he? He still has this treaty, this covenant. He gives a generous gift back to Abimelech, oxen and sheep, but look at what he does. He adds seven young ewe lambs. That's the ancient way of making an addendum to a covenantal agreement. It's like the amendments to our constitution. It's a witness clause. And in this witness clause, this is one that is saying, these you lambs are given as a witness to your agreement that I dug this well. I dug this well. If you want me to live in peace in this land, if you want peaceably, me to be peaceable in the world with you, Abimelech, let's make a proper covenant to make that happen. And Abraham's doing everything he can to make a peaceful agreement with the world power around him so that he might actually live in peace. So in verse 31, therefore that place was called Beersheba, because there both of them swore an oath. Beersheba, by the way, means well of oath or well of sevens. The word is so close, could either mean oath or seven, but the well of oath. And right there, right there is where that agreement was made. And Abimelech, is able to say, this is my land, and Abraham's happy for him to have it, but in one way, that well is the first stake in the promised land that Abraham has. But I wanna ask, what does it say about Christ and culture? What does this say about Christ and culture? And what it says is, we don't have to war. It's not the church against culture. We don't have to hide. It's not the church avoiding culture. We don't have to capitulate to sinful ways. We don't have to give ourselves over to culture. We can actually live at peace with others out of the outflow of God's goodness to us. And that's exactly what he does. In fact, we can show God's goodness to others. And I want you to hear what the apostle Paul says to the church in Rome. Something that we all need to hear, just a very simple phrase, Romans 12, 18. If possible, as far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. If possible, as far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Now, that's not all we get in the New Testament. We have Romans 13 that says, hey, listen, obey the rules of your land. You can do that, as the church. First Peter 2 that says, honour your leaders, honour the rulers. You can do that. as the Church. 1 Timothy 3, pray for them that you might live peaceably. We can do that and should do that. You know, I've used this many times as a bit of an illustration but can we just be reminded that 2020, during COVID, was the test of the Church in how we do that? And do you know how much I think, generally, across this country, the Church failed? It's why I'm not on social media anymore. Since that time, I didn't want to keep looking at the church with eyes that were disappointed. Christians should have been the most calming, chill voice on the planet during 2020. Instead, I looked on social media and saw a bunch of angry people filled with absolute nervousness and anxiety about what was happening in the world. And against the culture around us. if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Brothers and sisters, when we are content in the greater promise of Jesus, we don't have to get stressed about what we have or do not have or what is happening to us in this world. We don't have to get stressed. In fact, we can even give and be generous to the world. We don't have to hold on to ourselves. We want to actually give generously to the gospel, which the world needs most. We can love the world's kids at VBS for a week. We can help give some parents once a month what they need, resources that they need at Baby Bear. We can do deals in business that actually favor the other person. We can give up our perceived rights for the sake of another. The reality is that we belong to an entirely different world, and that's what Jesus saved us into, his kingdom. The one that will never be destroyed, because this world will be destroyed. And it's under God's judgment, Jesus came to give us forgiveness and reconciliation with God that we come into a new and beautiful kingdom for all of eternity. We can give up stuff in this world. And let me tell you, it should show in our temperament. And what I see, and why I use the word chill so much, is this, in this passage, I see a very cool and calm temperament from Abraham that I think we all must have. Do you remember what Jesus said to Pilate? Remember when Pilate was confronting him when Jesus was about to be crucified, taken to be crucified, and Pilate had asked him about, are you a king, are you really a king? And in John 18, verse 36, remember Jesus answered? My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from this world. Jesus even went to his death and paid for my sin in order that I don't have to be so concerned about what I do have or don't have in this world. because he has won for me forgiveness of my sin, reconciliation with God on the cross, a kingdom that is eternal and glorious and not of this world. I have something so much better, and if you have repented of your sin and come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, then so do you." Your eternity. is worth so much more than any stress you have about living in this world. So let's finish as we come to the last verses, and I want to put this to you. The church lives knowing that our best life comes later. The church lives knowing that our best life comes later. Look at verse 32 to 34. So they made a covenant at Beersheba. Then Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, rose up and returned to the land of the Philistines. Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba and called there on the name of the Lord, Yahweh, the everlasting God. and Abraham sojourned many days in the land of the Philistines. So there's this covenant agreement, it was made between the man of God and the man of the world. And look what happened, Abimelech and his military leader, they go back to the region that will become known to later people as the land of the Philistines, the land of godlessness, really. The original readers would understand what they're seeing there. And when the agreement was done, they, look at the words, Abimelech and Phichol rose up and returned to their home. Home, look at that word, home. They went back home. Where is their home? In the world, in the godlessness of the world. But Abraham, you'll notice there's not words that say Abraham rose up and went to his home. There's words that say Abraham sojourned many days in the land. Sojourned. Sojourned, pilgrimed. Look at verse 33, at what Abraham does. He planted a tree. A nice tree, a tamarisk tree, one that grows and provides lovely shade. Something that he would later be able to sit under and remember that God is the one who sustains him. God is the one who keeps him, even as he looks at the well that he dug. This is God's well, this is God gave me peace in this land with the Bimelech in the world, and you know what? It's God who gives me peace beyond this world. Why can he say that? Because of what he calls God. Look carefully, he firstly calls him Yahweh, the Lord, the covenant-keeping God, the faithful God of steadfast love, but then he says the word in Hebrew, el olam, el, God, olam, forever. God everlasting. If you were the original readers of Genesis, the Israelites going into the promised land, I wonder if you were really taking note of this. Yeah, it's a land, it's got geographical borders, but what's so important about this? We're going in to be with God everlasting who is beyond this land. God everlasting. That's what we're called to. That's the big nature of this call. And whatever Abimelech and Phicol come to get out of Abraham, Abraham can sit under the shade of a beautiful tree in memorial, that he's planted in memorial, that represents that Abraham has a much bigger eternal hope than Abimelech and Phicol will ever have. Isn't that glorious? I wonder if you ever take time to sit under what represents God's goodness to you and just think about the wonderful aspect of his eternal love for you. Brothers and sisters, that's why it's so important that we do keep reminding ourselves of what is said about Abraham in Hebrews 11. So I'm just going to really finish today by by just reading through Hebrews 11 from verse eight to 16, because I just think it sums up beautifully everything that we've seen in Genesis 21. Just listen to this, Hebrews 11, eight to 16. 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, 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. By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive even when she was past the age since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one man and him as good as dead were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. These all died in faith. not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus, oh, I've got to stop. Do you speak thus? Or does your speech sound more like my home is here and everything that I have in my life is about here? How do you speak? People who speak thus made it clear that they are seeking a homeland. Now if they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return, but as it is, they desire a better country that is a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. Can you imagine, just as we finish, just imagine, Abimelech and Phycol sitting together, and they're on their way home from this treaty. And Abimelech, feeling pretty good about himself, turns to Phycol, hey, did you just see what happened? Yeah, we might have had to give in on that well. Kind of caught us on that. but we just solidified the borders of our land. We just made sure this guy knows it's our land and it's my posterity that's important, my country. He won't give us any trouble now. And you know what? That's their best life now. That's as good as it gets for them. Can you imagine Abraham turning around to Sarah, maybe even later years with Isaac, And he says something different. You know, we're gonna keep sojourning, just sojourning in this land and serving God. But just remember, God's promise, his payment for our sin, it guarantees us a greater home than we can ever imagine. So let's keep trusting in God. Let's keep His promise and let's keep knowing that He's gonna be faithful with His promise and He's gonna do exactly what He said He's gonna do for us and let's just deal as well as we can with the people of the world. Just do the best we can. Let's always know though that this life and this land even right here, it's not as good as it gets for us. We absolutely have a better home yet to come. How about you? What's more important in your mind? What are you telling your kids? How are people perceiving your life and words? Is God with you? The church can live in peace with the world if we remember that we don't belong to the world. We have something so much better to see, brothers and sisters. One day everybody who is in faith in Jesus in this world is going to see our Saviour and King face to face forever. Let's pray.