This message was given at Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. At the end, we will give information about how to contact us to receive a copy of this or other messages. Let's take our Bibles and turn to Genesis chapter 12. Starting at verse 1, this is God's holy word. Now the Lord said to Abram, go forth from your country and from your relatives and from your father's house to the land which I will show you. And I will make you a great nation and I will bless you and I will make your name great so you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. So Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. Now Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his nephew, and all their possessions which they had accumulated, and the persons which they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan. Thus they came to the land of Canaan. Abram passed through the land as far as the site of Shechem to the oak of Morah. Now the Canaanite was then in the land. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, to your seed I will give this land. So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. Then he proceeded from there to the mountain on the east of Bethel. and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and I on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord, to Yahweh, and called upon the name of Yahweh. Abram journeyed on, continuing toward the Negev. This is the word of the Lord. Adam falls and the human race and the planet are cursed. The human race actually degenerates even more into sin and rebellion and violence and so the world is judged by a flood. The human rebellion and hubris escalate even after the earth has been cleansed and the peoples are scattered. Cursed, flooded, and scattered. You get the picture of Genesis 1 through 11, right? The very blessing that was initially pronounced at creation seems to just be quickly fading out of sight. The blessing pronounced upon the first couple, the blessing pronounced over their posterity, the blessing pronounced over the created world seems to be fading quickly out of sight. And what we might expect is after the Tower of Babel, we might expect there to be further sin and further judgment and the story just to get worse. But instead, what happens is there is a shift. From Genesis 11 to Genesis 12, there is a shift. In fact, it is a huge shift. It is an historical shift. It is a seismic shift. In fact, you cannot exaggerate the shift that takes place in Genesis chapter 12. Because what's going to happen is that God in order to bless the world, which he is absolutely intent on doing. He is intent on blessing this world, and so what he is going to do is he is going to shift his focus from the nations to one man. I love the way Ralph Davis puts it. For God so loved the world that he called Abram. In Genesis chapters 12 through 25, we see the story focusing on the patriarch, Abram, who will later become Abraham. The entire unit from 12 to 25, which I mean, this is, you know, Abraham gets a lot of airtime, right? And the unit itself does two significant things. The first is, it explains one of the most significant events in the history of salvation. And that is the covenant with Abraham. That all by itself ends up standing, looming large over the history of salvation. And Genesis 12 to 25 is going to explain to us and expound for us that glorious covenant. But the second thing that this section does, 12 to 25, is it portrays the ups and the downs Abraham's life of faith. And what's going to happen is that 12 to 25 is going to so present Abraham as a model of faith, both positively and negatively, that Abraham will serve as an example both to Israel and ultimately to us, to all who will believe, all right? And so that's what's going on. And let me just say that In preaching, you don't have to make a choice between what you're going to emphasize. You don't have to say, well, since all scripture is about Christ, the only thing I'm gonna talk about in Abram's life is how he points us to Christ. That's important and we'll do that, but you cannot read the New Testament and not realize that Abraham is also an example of the life of faith. And so, we're going to enroll with Abraham in the school of faith. And Abraham is going to go through a number of stages in this school of faith, in his educational process, and he will start out in the preschool of faith. But by the time we get to chapter 22, he will be in the graduate school of faith. Now, Abraham is a unique figure in covenant history. But Abraham also stands as Abraham the believer. And we're gonna find that there are things that are absolutely remarkable about Abraham's faith, and then we're gonna find that he is made out of the same stuff as us. In fact, next week, he won't do nearly as well. Now, the Abraham of covenant history embodies the promise of God, both for the land and for his seed. And in fact, one of the amazing things about Abraham in terms of covenant history is that Abraham will actually stand in direct opposition to Adam. Adam, through his disobedience, brings a curse upon all of his seed, but it will be Abraham, through his faith and obedience, who will bring a blessing upon his seed and indeed upon the nations. To say that Abraham is the significant figure of the Old Testament is not an exaggeration. Just consider these numbers. I counted myself, actually. Outside of the book of Genesis, Abraham will be mentioned another 50 times in the Old Testament. And in fact, of Abraham, he is the only Old Testament person who will ever be called God's friend. Isaiah 41, eight, but you Israel, my servant Jacob, whom I have chosen seed of Abraham, my friend. If you want to be known as something, my goodness, the friend of God is what you want to be known as. Right? And here's Abraham. Moses doesn't get called the friend of God. David doesn't get called the friend of God. Abraham is the friend of God. I wanna learn from him. We get to the New Testament. Guess what? 70 times in the New Testament, Abraham is mentioned. 70. 30 of those are in the Gospels. He is mentioned eight times in the book of Acts, nine times in the book of Romans, and now think about how small Galatians is compared to Romans, and nine times in the book of Galatians, and 10 times in the book of Hebrews. Throughout the New Testament, the focus on Abraham is, guess what, twofold. First, the covenant made by God with Abraham is one of the emphases that we see in the New Testament. But then we also see, in the New Testament, Abraham's faith both as a model of sola fide, justification by faith alone, right, and also a model of the life of faith. And so we're gonna spend time in the near future looking at the covenant that God makes with Abraham. But today, what we're going to do is we're going to look at God's call of Abram, all right? And when we get to chapter 12, you know, we had the tail end of 11 that kind of sets the table for us. And you've got Terah, and you've got his sons, and one of his sons is Abram. And of course, this Abram comes from a family of moon-worshiping pagans. Okay, they probably had little crystals hanging from their rear view mirror in their chariots or whatever they drove, all right? Look at 1132. And Terah, last part, and Terah died in Haran. Now, the Lord said to Abram. Now, here's the thing about what happens when we read the Bible, you know, we're familiar with the Bible, we're familiar with the storyline of the Bible, is that we lose the awe and the wonder of transitions that we become very, very familiar with. Again, you cannot exaggerate the significance of this simple phrase. Now the Lord said to Abram. This is out of the blue. In fact, Old Testament scholar, Alan Ross says that this passage, Genesis 12, is the central passage in the whole book of Genesis. It's the foundation of the Abrahamic promises and it's the beginning of the nation of Israel as a worshiping community. Okay, you can't get more important than that. And so, the call comes, and I say it comes out of the blue. There is absolutely nothing to indicate in the text that Abram was somehow seeking after God. In fact, we have every reason to believe that this is not the case. And so I would call the first part of this, let goods, kinda, and kindred go. The Lord said to Abram. I'll just tell you that this simple line actually should stand out to us as a mystery of mysteries. You know who else was alive, by the way, about this time? Job. Job. Job would have made a pretty good candidate, don't you think? I mean, he was this righteous guy doing everything right. And yet, when God is about to act in cosmic redemptive proportion, He picks a moon worshiper. Why Abram? Someone's may say, well, he is a part of the line of Shem. Okay, true enough. He is a part of the line of Shem. But you know what? There were lots and lots and lots of people who by this time in history, who were members of the line of Shem, descendants of the Semitic line. And you know, I am absolutely positive that God could have found somebody from the line of Shem that wasn't worshiping the moon. Now what's funny about this, I say mystery of mysteries. Jewish tradition does their best to try to sanitize Abram. In fact, they have extra biblical Jewish writings and there is one section where you have Abram in Haran and you know what he does? He is seen rebuking his father for worshiping the moon God and not worshiping Yahweh. And so you have Abram as this magnificent hero, okay? It's not true. It's not true. We sometimes, in fact, have a perception of Abram that actually tends to also miss the point. Let's just put it in straightforward terms. God calls Abram while Abram is a pagan. God calls Abram not while he was seeking after God, but while he was involved in his father's pagan, moon-worshiping religion. And in fact, Joshua will reiterate this truth over and over again in chapter 24 as he is about to leave the scene and remind the children of Israel where they came from. And so God's word comes to Abram. We don't know how it comes, text doesn't tell us, but God calls. And you know what should ring through our minds? If I could put a plug in for 1 Corinthians, consider your calling brethren, not many mighty, not many noble, God has chosen, what, the weak things of the world. God has chosen the base things of the world to confound the wise. So, when and where does this call take place? And there is some debate, and to be honest, the debate doesn't... capture my imagination whatsoever. Some argue that this call goes back to when Abram is in Ur of the Chaldees, and what then you end up having is the whole family migrating with Abram after the call of God. And there are reasons why, you know, it seems that that was Stephen's understanding. Now I'm not sure that that's actually how we have to interpret that. Others actually see the text as more chronological, going from Genesis 11 to 12, and that this call comes to him when he's in Haran. Remember, Haran is, in fact, a center for moon worship. But here's the word of the Lord, and it comes to Abram, it comes out of the blue, and here is the command, go forth from your country. More specifically, go forth from your fatherland and from your relatives. The idea is you go forth from the place where you have settled and go forth from your relatives and from your father's house. And what this call is, is it's a call of radical separation. In fact, the repetition of the preposition from indicates a sense of radical disassociation. There's to be a clean break. This is a new start for Abram. And in fact, you look at it, and what you realize is that God's call to Abram, which was a radical call of separation, is very analogous to the call that Jesus puts upon his own disciples. and leaving everything behind for his sake. And so as Luther wrote, let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also. Now, let me just tell you, this is a big deal. In the ancient world, especially the ancient Mediterranean world, ancient Mesopotamian world, sorry. The security that you had wasn't in your immediate family or even in the people you surrounded yourself with. Your protection, your security was actually connected to your larger clan. What God is actually telling Abram to do is to make a clean break, as it were, with his clan. He's telling him to make a clean break with all that he is familiar with, all that he holds dear, and it is, in fact, a scary call. And so he says, you need to go forth from your country relative's father's house to the land which I will show you. Now, this is a little unsettling if you're a planner. Some of you, you can't take a vacation unless you know exactly where you're gonna stop at every single place. You have to have it written out. You can't just go, in fact, you have to have a destination. You have to know how many miles it is, okay? This, this is me. We plan a trip, I know, okay, you know what? That first night, we're gonna make it to Albuquerque, trust me. Dad, we have to go to the bathroom. Don't care. Get into Albuquerque, all right? This is set in stone. And so here's God and he tells Abram, hey, you need to leave, you need radical separation and just head out and I'll tell you where you're going after you leave. Go to the land that I will show you. Now, by the way, the two pillars of the promise are gonna be land and seed, all right? So both of those things fit in. But here, we are reminded by the writer to the Hebrews who says, by faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive foreign inheritance, and he went out, you know the phrase, not knowing where he was going. So the call of God comes, and then in verses two and three, we see God's promise to bless Abram. Notice he says, first, I will make you a great nation. Now his name, Abram, means exalted father. God's gonna change his name later to Abraham which is going to be a father of a multitude and of course We already have a little bit of insight into the backstory here and that is his wife Sarah is barren And so God says to Abram, I will make you a great nation. And so the one who is married to barren Sarai is promised to become a great nation. Well, you know what? You need an important piece of the puzzle if you're gonna be a great nation, and that is namely offspring. And this great nation, by the way, is God gonna fulfill this promise? And the answer is yes. But Abram will never live to see this part of the promise. Abram will be long gone by the time his posterity makes up for a great nation. But make no mistake, God's promise hinges on Abram's ability to have a son. And then he says, and I will bless you. Now, a lot of times we kind of read this in just sort of a generic way, and Abram is going to be incredibly blessed by God. In fact, the very one who is supposed to go around being a blessing is going to be blessed. We're gonna see some interesting little situations and incidents where Abram is blessed by those around him simply because it is the hand of Almighty God that's actually doing, bringing about the blessing. But when God says here, I will bless you, the blessing again has to center upon Abram's seed, a son. The promise, of course, again, has that quiet background of Sarai's barrenness, and so if you're Abram, you're thinking to yourself, if I'm gonna be a great nation and I'm gonna be blessed of the Lord, then I have a huge obstacle in my life, and that is Sarai, my wife, is barren, and so right away, God's promises come, as it were, right up against things that seem to be obstacles. So Joyce Baldwin says, it is situations of human helplessness that provide occasions for God's power to be demonstrated and recognized. Then he says, and I'll make your name great. Of course, to have a great name is to have fame or reputation, but there's more to it than that when God makes this promise to Abram, because name is more than fame. Name denotes character, and name is oftentimes the revelation of a person's character. And what God is promising Abram is not only would he make his fame great throughout the world, which would be true, but he would also make him into a great person. than the next line. And so you shall be a blessing. Now, what's interesting is in the Hebrew text, this is actually an imperative. God is making promises and then he says at this point, and so you shall be, that's what we should understand, you shall be a blessing. So once God blesses Abram, Abram is in turn to turn around and be a blessing to others. So New Jerusalem Bible for instance says, I shall bless you and make your name famous, you are to be a blessing, exclamation point. Bruce Waltke puts it like this, God blesses Abraham to be his blessing bearer. And then verse three, I will bless those who bless you. The one who dishonors or treats you lightly, I will curse. Now, what God is saying is, I'm going to treat people, I'm gonna treat nations according to their treatment of my friend Abraham. Those who seek to bless Abraham will be blessed by Yahweh. Those who show contempt to Abraham will be cursed by Yahweh. God's disposition towards people was based on their disposition towards Abraham and his seed and so ultimately it is in Christ Jesus. We should be, let me just say this, we should be very careful about applying this statement to a modern unbelieving nation when the seed of Abraham is in Jesus Christ. We should be, we should see this as those who bless, those who are in Christ will be blessed, and in fact, does not Jesus himself teach this? If you give a drink of water to the least of one of these, you've given it to me, all right? Now, I'm all into being Israel's friend, believe me, but take the passage in context, and it's biblical context. And so then God says this, and in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. The very thing that God has intended to do from the beginning of creation, which is to bless all the families of the earth, the first 11 chapters of Genesis show that this is, that it's just simply not working out. And so what God does is he chooses this one man, this one family, from which will come one nation, so that through his seed, all the families of the earth will be blessed. And I will tell you, the apostles did not miss this. The apostles actually preached in Acts chapter three this very text and applied it to Jesus Christ. And in fact, the apostle Paul did not miss this because in Galatians chapter three in verse eight, he says, the gospel was preached beforehand to Abraham when it said, in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed. Paul actually saw in this very phrase, the gospel itself. Why does he see in that very phrase, the gospel itself? Because it is in the seed of Abraham that we have its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ comes to bring blessing to all the families of the earth, all the people groups of the earth, all the nations of the earth. So no longer is there this ethnocentric worldview that says Israel is at the center of the entire globe. Now there is a sense in which the coming of Jesus breaks down all the ethnocentricity of Old Testament Judaism and says, now I've come not just to bless a people, I have come to bless the peoples of the earth. And it is this very promise that is the reason you're sitting here today. Think about it. You're sitting here because God said in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed. Now, as far as I can tell, my ancestors were a bunch of German barbarians. Where'd your people come from? Any covenant claim for Germans? No. No. Certainly no covenant claims from those from the Dominican Republic. But there's a promise. There is a promise that says in Abraham, all the families, whether the Germanic hordes or The Dominicans or those from Chile or wherever will be blessed. And so here we are today in Mendon, Nevada, 4,000 years after the promise was made. Recipients of that promise. Wow, I can preach on this a little longer We used to sing a song. We had to stop singing it because a certain individual is destroying all the furniture. Father Abraham. Some of you remember now. Father Abraham has many sons. Many sons has Father Abraham. I am one of them and so are you. Let's just praise the Lord. And then that's when it got out of control, right foot, left foot, and chairs were flying, so. But the truth of the song is underscored by the Apostle Paul. So those who are of faith are the seed of Abraham. How can that be? Because if you believe in the one who is the seed of Abraham, Jesus Christ, and are in him, then you are the seed of Abraham. All the families of the earth shall be blessed. I love it. It's absolutely magnificent. And what we see is that God absolutely, utterly, unconditionally obligates himself to Abram. We have actually four direct I wills from God to Abram, which are just straightforward comments, straightforward promises that he makes. And so here's Abram, and this is what happens after he receives this call. So Abram went forth. as the Lord had spoken to him. Now you have to understand this is really an amazing thing. I mean, there's a sense in which the only thing Abram understands about Yahweh at this point is what he has spoken to him and his word comes and his word comes with power and actually then Abram hears the word, he hears the promise and then he just simply acts on it. He goes forth. Alan Ross again says, Abram's obedience was not just simply an act of faith, if we dare speak of such, his was the conversion of a pagan. Abram was advanced in years, probably prosperous and settled, but in a thoroughly pagan world, the word of the Lord came to him and he left his world and his relatives to follow the Lord's command. Consequently, he becomes the epitome of faith in the Bible. And here's the biblical picture of faith. Faith lays hold of the promise of God and then acts. In other words, faith has as its pulse obedience. The promise of God, here's at least what Abram had started to put together was that these promises are connected to the character of God who has revealed himself to me and I find that trustworthy and now I'm going to do what he told me to do simply on the basis of the fact that he told me to do it. Do you understand that is the sum and substance of what it means to be a Christian? Do you understand that being a Christian isn't, being a Christian, there are implications of what it means to be a Christian for sure, but being a Christian is boiled down to the fact that the promises of God are yes and amen in Jesus Christ, and I put my faith in the God who was promised, and therefore I act upon those promises. I act upon that faith. Now just like Abram won't do it perfectly, Neither will we. Now what happens? Lot went with him. Now, I don't know why Lot goes with him. I've boiled it down to three options. Perhaps Lot got converted too. Okay, possible? I think so. Perhaps, by this time, Abram had been the one who adopted Lot since Lot's father had already died. This is a part of Abram's family. Or perhaps, Abram's packing up his stuff and loading his camels and his station wagon or whatever he had, and Lot says, Uncle Abram, what are you doing? And Abram says, I'm going on a road trip. And Lot says, Awesome. I can get out of Heron. Can I go? Abram says, sure. The text then tells us not only Lot went with him, it also tells us that Abram's 75 years old. I mean, here he is, roughly Dave's age, and it just underscores It underscores the radical nature of his obedience. He's not some spring chicken that is ready for an adventure. This guy wakes up in the morning with some aches and pains. This, yeah, this guy is up there. And so at the time when the prestige and status of being an elder was coming upon Abram, God says, you get up and go. Now, the detail is actually underscoring, one, the radical nature of the obedience, but secondly, it's also underscoring what we might consider to be some of the obstacles that he's going to encounter right away, because God's promises are made, but guess what? The clock is ticking. So we're talking about an old man. And Sarai and Lot and all their possessions and all their persons. Okay, so when I said, let goods and kindred go, Abram was willing to let most of his goods go, but he did want to pack up some stuff. This is a financial risk. This is a financial risk. In fact, this whole venture is risky. Now what's interesting is it says, and all their persons. Umberto Casuto, who's a Jewish commentator, argues that the persons mentioned in the text are not slaves. They are actually proselytes or converts indicating that Abram had already been sharing his new faith in Yahweh while in Haran. And they set out. Now, verse, at the end of verse five, thus they came to the land of Canaan. When we were in Israel, So, as Abram's coming down in the northern part of the territory of Canaan, it's where the tribe of Dan would have settled, there's a gate. It's magnificent. It's actually an arch and it blew archaeologists away because they didn't think that arches in terms of architecture went back that far. But there are steps that go up so that everybody going into the land of Canaan would have passed through this gate. And it was actually just unbelievably incredible to stand there. and to look at those stone steps and to realize that 4,000 years ago, Abram, following the call of God, would have probably stopped with his camels and family in tow and looked at that gate and wondered, what awaits me on the other side? Maybe there was a sense of anticipation, maybe there was a sense of fear, but the fact is, is that he goes and he arrives. And verse six, Abram passed through the land as far as the site of Shechem to the oak of Morah. Now the Canaanite was then in the land. Now the oak at Morah, Morah in Hebrew means teacher, and many commentators point out that something like the oak of Morah was probably a pagan shrine where Canaanite priests or prophets probably would teach their idolatry. And so here's what you have to realize is that what Moses is painting for us is that Abram leaves the land of idolatry has a clean break with his idolatrous past, goes into the new land that God is showing him where to go, and guess what? When he arrives, he is once again deeply in a pagan land. And then we see this little tiny detail. Now the Canaanite was in the land then. Accursed people were in the land where Abram is supposed to be a blessing and so you have a barren wife Okay, you're 75 years old God's gonna give you a land and you think it's going to be vacant and instead Canaanites are there Bad neighbors These these are not the kind of people you want your kids playing with okay, and Yet here's Abram The Canaanites were in the land The man who embodies the blessing of the Lord goes into a place that's filled with people who are cursed of the Lord, representing the fact that as he goes in, there's opposition, there's hostility, and once again, yet another obstacle to Abram's faith. And that's what's happening, is these are obstacles to Abram's faith. The life of faith is never a straight, smooth path. Okay, verse seven. Ha ha, thank the Lord. The Lord appeared to Abram and said to your seed, to your descendants, I'll give this land. So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. And so God first speaks, now God appears. And what God does in the appearing is he comes to reconfirm his promise to Abram. What does faith need to survive? It needs to be reassured and reconfirmed Repeatedly with the promises of God and God knows Abram and he comes to him and there is no doubt I am sure that there was something similar to when Paul is in Corinth and and and there had been So much opposition and the Lord appears to him in that night and says, you know what? Don't be afraid Paul I have many people in this city just reassuring him you're in the right place You're doing the right thing and here the Lord just appears to Abram and reconfirms this promise. You know what? This is your land Okay, whatever you say, whatever you say. Now, this appearance makes a huge impact on Abram. How do I know that? Well, it says, In verse eight, Abram builds an altar. First time he builds an altar and he calls upon the name of the Lord. Now, this just kind of sounds maybe like some sort of little religious activity. So, you know, the Lord appears to Abram and Abram goes into the closet and does his devotions. It's not, that's not what's happening. He builds an altar the land of the Canaanites. By building an altar, what he is doing is he is, as it were, staking the claim that this land belongs to Yahweh. Right? There is no mistake about it. That's what he's doing. He's going to sacrifice, he's going to worship, and he is demonstrating to all who would see him that he was a worshiper of Yahweh, and Yahweh's altar goes right here because this land is his. And then it says, and he called upon the name of the Lord. Now, that might sound like he just prayed. There's been a tremendous amount of research done over the years on this expression, call upon the name of the Lord. And in fact, when Luther translates the Bible into German from Hebrew, the Old Testament, you know how he translates this passage? And Abram preached the name of the Lord. And I think that's exactly how we should understand the Hebrew verb, is that there is, it's not just calling upon his name as in a sense of praying, but it is a proclaiming of his name. And so here's Abram, the worshiper, and Abram, the preacher, proclaiming the name, the character of Yahweh. Man, this guy is serious. He is in earnest following God. Then we have one little detail, Abram journeyed on, continuing towards the Negev. He starts out at the top and works his way down to the Negev, which is in the south. So what do we see in this text? We see, first of all, that God sovereignly and graciously calls Abram, not because Abram was some kind of kindly old Jimmy Stewart figure that God just couldn't help but to like. That's how we think of Abram, right? Just sort of this really affable, nice guy who you just can't help but like him, and so no wonder he's God's friend. I mean, he's Jimmy Stewart. No, he's pagan, he's an idolater, and God speaks powerfully and effectively to him, calling Abram, notice, calling Abram out of pagan darkness into God's marvelous light. This, by the way, is not only an act of a sovereign call by Almighty God, it is a missionary move by God. And that missionary move shows he is concerned not just with Abraham and not just with Israel, but he will be concerned with the nations of the earth. And so for God so loved the world, he called Abram. Abram also points us to Christ in at least two ways. First, I already mentioned this, through one man's faith and obedience, he ends up bringing the blessings to the nations, just as our Lord Jesus Christ, as the last Adam, through his act of obedience, brings justification and life to the nation. Paul also makes it clear that what's proclaimed to Abram is the gospel. It will be the seed of Abraham, Jesus Christ, who ultimately brings the blessing of Abraham to the nations. And then finally we see that Abram shows us the life of the obedience of faith. He hears the word of God, he believes it, he acts on it, he worships and then he proclaims it. One writer says, those who truly believe the word of the Lord will forsake all else. to become worshipers of the Lord and to serve in His program and to bring blessing to the world. The question that we should ask in light of Abram's life this morning is this, do you walk by faith or do you walk by sight? Those who have come to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior and their King live a life of faith. on the promises of God. And sometimes those promises seem impossible. Sometimes those promises seem incredibly unlikely to come true. But faith doesn't calculate on the basis of what it can see. It calculates on the character of God who made the promise. And he is absolutely trustworthy in every facet of life and in the life to come. So are you walking by faith or are you walking by sight? Abram's life actually tells us the way that you answer that question is not what you say, but what you do. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for Abram. We thank you for your sovereign call on his life. And Father, just as surely you've called us. Lord, we don't fit into redemptive history in the same way Abram does, but Lord, we've experienced your call, we've experienced your promises, and we pray, Father, that we would honor you by a life of faith, a life of trust. Lord, not simply a life of positive thinking, but a life where we have a confidence in what you have said with your mouth, you will do with your hand. Father, we thank you that all of your promises are yes and amen in Jesus Christ, and we pray for those, Lord, who are here today who have yet to put their faith and trust in the Lord Jesus, the very embodiment of that ultimate promise. We pray, Father, that today that you would draw them irresistibly to the Lord Jesus, that they'd put their faith in him and find new life. And we ask this in the one who is the seed of Abraham, Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord. Amen. We hope you've enjoyed this message from Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. To receive a copy of this or other messages, call us at area code 775-782-6516 or visit our website gracenevada.com.