Sermon Transcript: The Salvation of Nations 12/13/2020 Jeff Schwarzentraub 48 min read - Lord Jesus, we just give you praise, thanks and honor that we can gather today and Lord that we can worship your great name and Lord our prayer and our desire is that you would accomplish what you intend to accomplish this morning. Lord, through your living an active Word that you would speak directly to us and that Lord, we would be transformed. That we would be more conformed to the image of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ, and for those who are gathering and listening who do not know you Lord, that they would come into a relationship with you this season. And Lord, for what you're gonna do, we give you all the glory, honor and praise and now for all of us gathered who desire to hear the Lord, believe what he says about himself and us and by faith, will be willing to put into practice what he shows, would you agree with me this morning by very loudly saying the word amen, amen. You know, when we picked this series to do "Alpha and Omega" really when the Lord put it on my heart, a lot of people were asking me, "why not just start in Revelation? Why not just start in Revelation?" I felt it very strongly, we got to start in Genesis. And when I would tell people they'd go "aah, Genesis." How many have enjoyed Genesis 1 to 11, have learned something, this continues to be a great series and we've talked about all sorts of different things. We've talked about how God created the earth, we've talked about his relationship with mankind, we talked about man's sin, we talked about God's grace even when man sins, we talked about the formation of all the nations, we've talked about his, the flood because of man's sin, we talked about his restoration, his promises, his covenant after that, and last week we talked about the creation of nations. So, we took a look at how we got all these different cultures, ethnicities, people and everything else and we talked about the fact that when the world started, there was one language which has gone into over now 6,500 languages, and we also said, when God started the world there was one race, help me out, please pray you paid attention last week, how many races are there today? - [Congregation] One. - Thank you, there's one race today, the human race, that's what God created, and to understand that, gives us wisdom on the fact that we were all created by the same creator, God. We talked about how last week our skin color comes from our genetics and geography more than any place else and why it's important that we understand this because God created us and loves us. Then we took a look in Genesis chapter 11 verses one through nine it talked about, God said, "spread out over the whole earth, I want my glory to go everywhere" and what happened at the Tower of Babel? People decided this, no, we wanna settle, we wanna worship, we wanna live how we want, we wanna worship who we want and how we want and when we want and we wanna make our own name great. Otherwise we're gonna have to do what God wants. And God was so gracious, wasn't he? God was so gracious so, here's what God did to make sure he got done what he wanted. He changed the language and that way everybody automatically spread out over the whole earth. And that's where we're left, but it begs the question, God, if there's all these cultures and ethnicities and people all over the whole world then, how in the world are you gonna bring salvation to all these different people? Like, how are they gonna be in relationship with you if they're all scattered? And that's what God is gonna answer next, starting in chapter 11 and verse 10 of the Book of Genesis. I'm sorry, starting in chapter 11, yeah, 11 verse 10 of Genesis and going through Genesis 12:4 is where we're gonna spend our time today, and we're gonna take a look at the salvation of nations. What does God do to ensure that all people everywhere have an opportunity to call upon him as their personal Lord and savior. As we begin today, you're gonna see that this will be our last genealogy that we do for a while in Genesis. I mean, isn't it interesting to go through a book? I mean, if someone's gonna tell you, hey, we're gonna go through three or four different genealogies, so you can really understand the history, most people would just yawn, but hasn't it had been awesome to see what God has done and how he's laid everything out? This last genealogy that we're gonna take a look at is the genealogy of Shem or the Shemites or where we get the word Semites. This is gonna be the nation, that's gonna go from Shem all the way to Abram who's gonna become Abraham, who's gonna be the founder of the nation of Israel through where God is going to get his plan to bless all the nations of the world. So it's important that we read through this and we understand this so that we're ready to go. Now, for those of you that were in the 8:30 service last week, I butchered all the names. So I went back between the 8:30 to, kind of listened some more, read some more. It sounded a little bit better but I don't even know if I pronounce those names right. I mean, I just got through it. So we're going through one final genealogy. You're welcome to laugh if I pronounce these wrong but we wanna go through this because this is the Word of God and he's laying this out for us to show us something special here this morning. So Genesis chapter 11, starting in verse 10, here we go. It says, "these are the records of the generations of Shem. Shem was 100 years old and became the father of Arphaxad two years after the flood. And Shem lived 500 years after he became the father of Arphaxad and he had other sons and daughters. Arphaxad lived 35 years and became the father of Shelah. And Arphaxad lived 403 years after he became the father of Shelah and had other sons and daughters. Shelah lived 30 years and became the father of Eber and Shelah lived 403 years after he became the father of Eber and he had other sons and daughters. Eber lived 34 years and became the father of Peleg and Eber lived 430 years after he became the father of Peleg and he had other sons and daughters. Peleg lived 30 years and became the father of Reu. And Peleg lived 209 years after he became the father of Reu and he had other sons and daughters. Reu lived 32 years and became the father of Serug and Reu lived 207 years after he became the father of Serug and had other sons and daughters. Serug lived 30 years and he became the father of Nahor. And Serug lived 200 years after he became the father of Nahor and he had other sons and daughters. Nahor lived 29 years after he became the father of Terah and Nahor lived 119 years after he became the father of Terah and he had other sons and daughters. Terah lives 70 years and became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran." Now you may ask yourself, okay, why? Like, why is this so important? Because I met Jesus Christ, you know in a church or through our prayer church organization or through my Bible study leader, I know Jesus, I'm going to have, why is this in there? And here's why you need to know, that God's plan to save the nations involved a long-term plan from the beginning. God's plan to save the nations involved a long-term plan from the beginning. What we have in God's Word is God's spelling out, here was my plan all along. And I want you to see it, and as I'm unveiling it, I'm not keeping it a secret, so you can go back and you can study all the genealogies in God's Word and see how they all meld together. You've been through the ones in Genesis, Matthew 1 shows, from Abraham, this Abram that we're gonna talk about today all the way to Jesus Christ. In Luke 3, we learn Mary's history, the Virgin Mary all the way back up to Adam. 1 Chronicles 1, also chronicles some of the other genealogies and histories. They all meld together in the exact same way. Matter of fact, I wanna put a slide up this morning. It's not the greatest slide in the world but it'll give you an idea of all that we've been talking about because really we've covered about 2000 years now since we started this book. And if you look at this slide that's gonna come up here any minute now I know it's coming. When you see it, what you see is, you see the years that each person lived in the genealogy all the way down through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob or Israel, you see where the flood is, 1,656 years after creation and how everything fits together. So here's what you see in a nutshell, from everything we've talked about from creation through Abram, 2000 years. Abram who becomes Abraham to Jesus Christ, 2000 years. Jesus Christ to now, about 2000 years, a little over 2000 years. So what do we have? How old is our universe according to the Word of God? Just a little over 6,000 years, according to the Word of God. Now, here's why these genealogies are important, because most people, when they go to the Word of God, right? They'll say stuff like this. "Oh, that can't be true, I don't know that I can believe that." Non-believers go to the Word and say, "Oh, that can't be true, I don't know if I can believe that." And we can get upset with them 'cause we're like, "no, no, no, Jesus is real, he's true." We believe John 3:16 that Jesus came and died. So that by believing in him, we can have life in his name. We believe all the New Testament. But then when it comes to other passages like Genesis 10 and 11, and people say, "do you really believe that?" Here's what we say, "aah, I don't really know." Do you really believe God created the world in six days? "aah, you know, it's kind of squishy." If it's squishy there, it's squishy in the gospels. And if it's squishy in the gospels, wait till we get to the Book of Revelation and see how squishy we can make it. Either all the Bible's true or it's not true. And, because Jesus calls himself the Word of God, for you to say any part is not true, what you're really saying is that I believe these parts of Jesus aren't true. And nobody would go on, no Christian would say that. So what you have here, if you study all the genealogies in the Bible, here's what you come up with. Now, if you do this study, and I don't wanna get into this 'cause it'll take our whole time, you might see one or two little complications and you say, "Oh, that's why the Bible is not true." If I had time this morning, I could spell out to you why everything fits and why it's true. And why based on genre or scribes or who was writing or what God was trying to accomplish why it could have been that way, some that I can't answer, we'll know in heaven but here's what I wanna be, as your pastor, I wanna be a man that stands before you and says this, "I don't read this book and say, oh, that can't be true." I read this book and said, "God said it, so I believe it and that settles it." So if I'm reading Genesis 1, that's God speaking to me. That's God speaking to us, I believe it's God talking to us. If God says, these are the descendants of Shem and the generations of Shem, the way I read that is, I just happen to believe that's true. That's where I'm gonna stand. Now, if I get to heaven, and God says, "yeah, you missed that one" I would rather be on the side of saying, "God, it just didn't seem that clear in your Word." I don't wanna be on the side of history that says, "I know you said that but, I just didn't think it could be." Right? And the reason we're starting in Genesis is if you have a hunger and heart for the Word of God and you will say in your soul, I'm just gonna believe what God says and let everything else fall into place, by the time you get to the gospels you'll realize that Jesus is the Messiah, and by the time we get to the Book of Revelation and we start walking it out, you'll say, "yeah, that makes sense too, because that aligns with everything we saw at the very beginning." That's been the purpose of the "Alpha and Omega" series. And so while we have this and why we have this genealogy is to show that God had a plan from the very beginning for God to form a nation through Abram who became Abraham and became the nation of Israel or the Hebrews. Now here's what we know and this may be a verse that you wanna write down, I've referenced it several times during the series, it's in Acts chapter 17, verses 26 and 27, so that we know our history, that we know our ancestry, and here's what it says, and, talking about God, "and he made from every," I'm sorry, "and he made from one man, every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, perhaps they might grope for him and find him though he is not far from each one of us." So God made every single nation from one man. All of you are descendants of Adam. All of you are sons and daughters of Adam in some way, if we trace our genealogy back. We also said we're all descendants of Noah and his wife cause post-flood that's who began to repopulate the earth. So we know our history and God makes it clear even in the New Testament, that what I told you all the way back in the Book of Genesis is true, so you can believe this. And that's why God's giving the history of all that he's giving. But notice what else God does. God also has a plan that for every nation of the world God wants to witness to every nation of the world. Did you know that? That God loves all the nations of the world, did you know that? Like every ethnicity, every skin color every diversity, every nation of people, God loves them and God wants to reach them. That's his heart. His desire's that all people would call upon his name. So even in the New Testament, in the Book of Acts, here's what he says. Acts chapter 14, starting in verse 16, he says, "in the generations gone by, he permitted all the nations to go their own ways, and yet, he did not leave himself without witness in that he did good and gave rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness." Here's what he's saying. God is witnessing and is a witness in every single culture. God is always doing things in every single culture to show that he is who he says he is. He sends rain, he provides food, so that whether you grew up in India or Israel or the United States or Canada or wherever you are that you could look and see that there's a God behind all that we see. Many people moved to Denver because they wanted to escape and they wanna go up to the mountains so that they can go like, "this is awesome, this is beautiful." That's God witnessing saying, I'm the one that created this. By the way, this is post-flood mountains. You should see how good I am. Like, I'm awesome. Everything I do is great. When you see things in nature, if you're a person that enjoys the outdoors and you're like, "aah beautiful, I love that, I feel so alive out here." Who's the one witnessing to that? It's God, I created all this, I'm God, I'm good. But God is even working down to our culture in ways that only we can understand. Missionaries have stories that are replete of them trying to get the gospel in different cultures that don't quite understand. One of the greatest stories is from a missionary named Don Richardson from a number of years ago, who wrote a book about this story, and he quotes Ecclesiastes 3:11 I believe it is that God has set eternity in the heart of man. That deep down inside of us we all know there's something greater than just this world. Every single one of us well, he felt called to a group of people that were people who headhunted and fought and war and, all these different tribes of people, and, as he began to translate the Bible into their language, and as he began to share the story of the gospel, he found out that one of the highest virtues and values of that culture, was betrayal. So imagine moving you and your entire family to a culture of people different than you, with different skin colors and different ethnicities and different foods and different lifestyle in order to share Christ, and you begin unveiling the Bible to them and you get to the story on the night that Jesus was betrayed and everybody in the culture starts cheering for Judas Iscariot. Like he's awesome. Like he's our man, that's who we are. That's our culture. He was so frustrated, I mean, here, he'd given up his whole life to come share the gospel with this group of people, not only were they bad when he got there, now they're worse off 'cause they wanna worship Judas. This is what you gave your life's work to. And so, as he was praying and he was seeking the Lord and believing that God had a plan for all people, he noticed one day that when these two tribes were warring and the tribe that was gonna be defeated he saw the tribe that was defeated, take a young child from their tribe and present it to the other tribe. And he said, "well, what's that?" They said, "well, that's the peace child. When we're under attack by those that are more powerful than us, we have to give a young child to appease the other tribe." Peace child, huh? He sat down and shared how Jesus Christ was the Prince of Peace and he was the peace child given so that you, that were under the wrath of the Father could come to Christ and many people came to Jesus. Amen? Great story. Here's the truth, God's working in every culture. God's working in every culture throughout the United States, God's working in every culture around the world. God is not leaving himself without a witness because God wants all people everywhere to come to know him. And the beauty in Revelation 7 is when we see people from every tribe, tongue, and nation, worship him who is the one who has made the call? Who is the one that's wooing them back? It's the Lord, Jesus Christ, that's who he is. And so he's had a long-term plan from the beginning to bring all the nations to himself. And it's interesting because we see some of the same principles played out in the New Testament. I mean, post-resurrection when Jesus tells the apostles you know, "wait, cause I'm gonna dispense my Holy Spirit. He'll come upon, you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." And so they go into a prayer meeting and are waiting on the Lord, and as the Holy Spirit comes upon them and fills them, what do they begin to do? They begin speaking in other languages. So much so, that other people are hearing the powerful works of God in their own language in Jerusalem, and people are looking at the apostles and saying, "man, they're drunk." And Peter's like, "I'm telling you, we're not drunk, it's only nine in the morning." Which tells me maybe Peter drank in the evening but, another story for another time. Anyway, he said "it's only nine in the morning," but what was God doing? God was saying the gospel's for what? All languages. All people groups. Then we get to Acts chapter 7, where we get the first martyr, remember Stephen who stood up for his faith? And he was martyred by being stoned to death? And it says that, you know, the Apostle Paul was young and while Steven's being stoned to death and crying out, "I see the Lord," everybody's laying their coats at the feet of this young Saul, who's watching all this take place and here's what it says in chapter 8. "Saul was in a hearty agreement with putting him to death." It means this, as Stephen was being martyred, when he's getting pummeled with rocks, which would be brutal to watch I think, Saul's like, "that's awesome." When you talk about a wicked heart, it's Saul. It says, "and on that day, a great persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all," listen to this word, "scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria except the apostles," okay? "Some devout men buried Stephen and made loud in lamentation over him, but Saul began ravaging the church entering after, house after house and dragging off men and women, he would put them in prison. Now, Jesus told them that they didn't need to worry about the setting up of the kingdom but that the Holy Spirit would come upon them and then he said this, "you will be my witnesses." Well, where Jesus? Well, Jerusalem right here, Judea, the neighboring area, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. So that was God's plan. How did they do with this plan? They all hunkered down in Jerusalem. We have, not only do we have Jesus now we have the Holy Spirit and this is awesome. First church of Jerusalem, why would we go anywhere else? So what does God use? God uses the martyrdom of Stephen and guess what, because prosecution hit, guess where they go? We're going to Judea now, we're going to Samaria now, why? 'Cause prosecution hit and God's always gonna get his plan done anyway. Now, if you were living at that time and you were living under persecution, here's what you would have said, "worst day of our lives, we had to flee, it was horrible, it was awful." It was God's purpose and his plan to reach different people groups 'cause God always cares for all the people groups and God always cares for all the nations. Right? I mean, that's what we see all throughout God's Word that he wants to not only have people of different ethnicities and people come to know him but he's always working to scatter his saints out so that people can hear the gospel in their own language. God's always had a long-term plan from the beginning. Notice what else? God's plan to save the nations involved this, his clear choice of people that no one would expect. God's plan to reach the nation involved his clear choice of people that no one would expect. Now, check this out, in Genesis chapter 11, starting in verse 27, it says, "now these are the records of the generations of Terah. Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot," right? So Lot is Abram's nephew. So we see this played out because we wanna get to Abram and we see that his father is Terah and we see that Abraham had two brothers. Now check this out in verse 28, "Haran died in the presence of his father, Terah in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans. Okay, you talk about some family tension and some of you have experienced this in your own life, I mean, losing the life of a child, I mean, Terah lost his son, one of his sons. Abram was his brother, do you think there was some, pain in that family growing up? You think there were some things that they had to navigate through as a result of seeing this? We don't learn how he died, we just know that he died in front of his dad. Painful, extremely painful. So then, we don't know much about Ur of the Chaldeans I mean, most of us don't, we read our Bibles but we probably read over that but here's what you need to understand. Ur of the Chaldeans was probably at the time the most pagan place on the planet. Any religion being practiced, any faulty practice, any demonic practice took place in Ur of the Chaldeans. So, here's who God's gonna pick. He's gonna go to one of the most pagan places on the planet to pick a man to be the one who by grace, he's gonna form a nation with, right? Why in the world would he go there? I mean, it seems unexpected. Like why not go somewhere in the world where there's just a few people worshiping you and pick from one of them? Like why go to Ur of the Chaldeans and do this? And why pick from this family that's had all sorts of pain in their life? But as we keep reading, notice what happens in verse 29 and 30. It says, "Abram and Nahor took wives for themselves the name of Abram's wife was Sarai, Sarah and the name of Nahor's wife was Milkah and the daughter of Haran, the father of Milkah and Iskah. So that's who we have. Now, notice verse 30. Now, if you're picking, if you have a plan to pro-generate a race, to start a nation that would reflect your holiness and glory, why would you go to the most pagan place in the world and pick somebody like that, and then pick a guy whose wife as described in verse 30? "Sarai was barren, she had no child." So you're picking a pagan man and a pagan woman who can't get pregnant. Now, I'm not God, but if I wanted to start a nation, I would pick two people that were pretty fertile. Who does God pick? He picks two pagans that are infertile. Why? Because God wants to know, and he wants you to know, God already knows, God wants you to know, that when he does what he does it had nothing to do with them and had everything to do with him. And isn't that who God always picks? The question comes up sometimes, why did God pick Abram? The question comes up sometimes, why does God pick Israel? Here's a better question, why did God pick you? Grace. It's grace. I mean, he had to pick somebody to start the nation, why did he choose that? Why, I don't know why, it's grace. It's always by grace that God picks people. It has nothing to do with us. It always has everything to do with God. I mean, think about what we're reading the New Testament. In Ephesians 2, eight, nine, and 10, what does it say? "For it is by grace, that you have been saved through faith, it's not your own doing, it's a gift of God so that no one should boast." In other words, if you've trusted Christ, by faith, understand this, it was God's grace that brought you to himself. It was God's grace that went before you to woo you to himself. It's God that did all the saving in your life. You had nothing to do with it. When you get to heaven don't brag about what you did to get right with God, don't think you went all over the world and checked out all the religions and said "I studied them all, Jesus is the way," no, you didn't. God picked you by his grace. It had nothing to do with you. 'Cause God always selects by grace. God's the one who does the saving. God's the one who does the sanctifying. God's the one who does the glorifying. It's all God. And notice what else we learn about God, God selects people and when he does, he cherishes them. And all this is by grace you've been saved through faith it's not your own doing, it's a gift of God so you shouldn't boast but, here's what it says, "for you are his," what? Masterpiece. Greek word's Poiema. You are his prized possession, he cherishes you. Now, he loves the whole world with, unconditional love, I mean, he loves everybody. He created everybody, we're all image bearers of God. But when you trust in Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, through repentance and faith, and you have life in his name, there's a different relationship. There's a covenant relationship. There's a relationship where he says, "no one can tear you out of my hand and I will never let you go, you're mine." Which means this, there's nothing you can do to make God love you anymore. And there's nothing you can do to make God love you any less. It's his love. Now, a lot of times in church, we'll talk about, we'll ask this question and we'll talk about, do you love God? Do you love God? What are you doing that show your love for God? Do you love God? Here's a bigger question, do you realize God loves you? Have you basked in the fact that he loves you? I mean, he loves you, if you're a Christian, he loves you. On your worst day, when you commit that same sin over and you're feeling shame run through your veins, here's what you need to know, I love you, nothing's changed, it hasn't changed. It hasn't changed. I have selected you by grace, it hasn't changed. Come to me. I'll heal that. I'll never stop loving you. Have you basked in that kind of love? 'Cause you're his workmanship. Workmanship as his masterpiece. But what else does it tell us? That he has a mission for you. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that what? You'd walk in them. It means when God saved you, he didn't just save you to settle, he saved you to send you. It means everywhere you go, you're on mission for him. Now here comes the question about, well, What's my purpose, what's my purpose? It don't matter. Here's your purpose. Your purpose is to honor God everywhere you go and walk with him daily, and if you do that, he's using you for his purpose. He's working out his purpose through you. Your job is to walk with him. Your job is to respond to him. We're gonna talk about how faith plays a role in that later in the message, but it's important that you understand that it's God behind the scenes doing the work. And here's the interesting thing, he always picks people that we wouldn't expect. Always. I mean, I love this, I love this. Because some of us get this idea and will talk like this, like, "man that person, they're gonna be the next Billy Graham, that person, she's gonna be the next so-and-so and he's gonna be the next so-and-so." God doesn't need any more so-and-sos, they've already lived, they're living or they've died. We don't need another Charles Spurgeon or John Wesley. All God's looking for is for you to be the most spirit-filled man and woman that you could ever be. That's all you need to be. And that should be peaceful to you. When I was feeling tagged by God to go in ministry my only picture of ministry was a pastor that wore a clerical robe and a clerical collar that kind of came out of his closet for an hour every weekend, talk for about 14 minutes, did a bunch of liturgy and rituals, loved old women and small group Bible studies and that was about it, and I remember thinking, old is a, it's a relative term now for me, but I'm like, I can't do that. That's not who I am, that's not my temperament. I wrestled with God, not about his call on my life, but about how I didn't fit with what in my mind was the call. And I'll never forget in the quiet time of mine one time, the Lord is like, "can you just be yourself and tell other people about me?" I'm like, "I can do that." Well, then just be you and tell other people about me. So that's what I've tried to do for the last 25 years. I can't be like anybody else and oh, I love that because it tells me in heaven there's no hall of fame for preachers. Like there's not gonna be like a hall of fame award where I don't even get invited to it, but those guys go and then they rank all these great preachers and they get all these awards and I sit in the back like "well, I was nobody." I mean, I love that when I get to heaven, God's like, "hey, all you had to do was be the best you and tell other people about me. That's your reward." Which means this, even if you're quote, one-talent person, and you give your best to the Lord there's 100% return on your investment, in the things of God. Isn't that good? 'Cause we compare ourselves too much to other people. Don't ever compare yourself or what you're doing with anybody else. Just spend time with the Lord and let him use you any way that he wants. And when you're doing it, how he wants that's what he chooses to do. And his clear choice of people, oftentimes nobody would expect. You'll hear people talk like this, perhaps you've talked like this. "If that person became a Christian, oh my goodness, they would turn the world upside down." Why? Well, everybody knows them, they're very good speakers, they're good this, they're good that. Study who God calls throughout the Bible and he usually calls people that you know, I wouldn't have picked that guy. I wouldn't have picked her. Why did you pick him? I mean, it seems like, 'cause God always chooses the shameful things of the world to confirm otherwise. That's why when you're feeling a tag on your heart to do something in the church or outside the church for the glory of God there always be that voice that goes off in your head and says, says this, everybody feels this, just so you know, you know, "you're not qualified to do that. Who do you think you are?" When you feel that and you're asking yourself those questions, that's why you should do it because when God comes through, it'll be obvious that it was him doing the work and not you. That's the beauty of it. If it's, I got to get my education and I got to have more money and I got to have more experience and then I'll be ready to, you'll never be ready to go. And then when you can do it, guess who got all the work done? You did. Just go. His clear choice of people that nobody would expect. God's plan not only involve the long-term plan from beginning, the clear choice of people you wouldn't expect, but notice this, God's plan to save the nations involved in unconditional promise that his plan would succeed. It involved an unconditional promise that his plan would succeed. God's promise will always succeed. And notice verse 31, it says that, "Terah, the father of Abram, took Abram, his son and Lot, the son of Haran, his grandson and Sarai and his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans in order to enter the land of Canaan. And they went as far as Harran and they," see that word? "They settled there." And we have no idea whether they were going into the land of Canaan or what they did but they were settling in Ur of the Chaldeans but God's gonna make an unconditional promise to this man. And here's what he says. "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, and 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." Now, did you notice how many times did I read that? You read the word, I will, I will. I will, I will, I will? What's God saying? This has nothing to do with you, Abram. I'm gonna do this because I'm God. This is an unconditional covenant. Covenant we've learned is promise. It means this, what I'm going to do through you, Abraham, Abram who's gonna become Abraham, what I'm gonna do through you is so unique and I promise I'm gonna get it done. And what's he promised him? Notice what he makes the promise to Abram for. He says to him, "go forth from your country, leave your wealth," to what? "To the land that I will show you." So what's he promised him? Land. He promises land to the nation of Israel. We see Joshua have the people enter the land. But just so you know, your biblical history, Israel has never taken over all the land that they were supposed to take over. Ever, not in world history, ever. Even under the golden days of David, they didn't take over all the land they were supposed to. But I wanna tell you this and when we get to the Book of Revelation you'll see it, one day, they will, why? Because when God makes a promise, he always fulfills it. One day Israel will have all the land they're supposed to and guess who's gonna come rule from that land in the city of Jerusalem? Jesus Christ himself is gonna step his foot on the Mount of Olives and enter the temple through the eastern gate. That's what's going to happen, why? Because when God makes a promise, it's always fulfilled. That's why it's really interesting 'cause when you study biblical history and you study this land, this nation of Israel, this land that they have, do you ever notice how it's always like fought over and even to this day, it's like, well, who owns it and who owns that, why? Because God made a promise that he was going to do it. And that's why we see in the line of Shem or the, you know, Shemites or the Semites, there are those who are anti-Semites and what do they want? They wanna wipe Israel off the face of the earth and take their land. Why? Because whether they know it or not, that is God's land, that is God's habitation, and that's where Jesus Christ is coming to rule and reign from when he returns. That's why there'll always be a fight in Israel until Jesus Christ gets back. What else does he tell him? He tells him, "I'm gonna make you a great nation." I'm gonna make you a great nation. As a matter of fact, later in the Book of Genesis he's gonna tell him, "look up at the stars. If you can believe it, when you look up at the stars, that's the number of your descendants." I mean, it's unbelievable. This is what I'm gonna do. So he makes him a promise of descendants. Now, again, remember his wife's barren, she can't have a child, but God's gonna make him this promise. And then he says, "I'm gonna bless you." I'm gonna bless you. I'm gonna put my favor on you so much so that those who bless you, I'll bless, those who don't bless you, I won't bless. I would say this, even as I read that, that's why I think it's important even as Christians to support the nation of Israel. And that's why I do, because I'm gonna support, who God supports, period, end of story. Right? So, that's what we see, and is this called the Abrahamic covenant or the Abrahamic promise. Now, oftentimes with a covenant comes a sign, you say, "hey he made a promise, he made a covenant, he would never flood the world again to Noah and he gave a sign of the rainbow in the sky. Is there any sign for this? Answer yes, go to Genesis 17, you can read about it. It's a covenant of what? Circumcision. That the first-born male on the eighth day would get circumcised. That's why in the New Testament you see Jesus going to the temple on the eighth day to get what? Circumcised. To what? Show that he's part of the covenant that he established. Right? Everything God promised, he is going to deliver on. And if you just think about this for a moment, I mean, there's all these names in the Old Testament and we can read about the Moabites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, we read about all these people. We read about the Israelites. Have you ever sat on a plane before and ask somebody, "hey, what nationality are you?" And they're like, "I'm a Girgashite." They don't exist anymore. Moabites, gone. Why are there still Israelites? Because God had a purpose and a plan and as a matter of fact, in the Old Testament he promised them he would bring them back to the nation, and on May 14th of 1948, guess what he did, he brought them back to the nation of Israel, everything in our world centers around that little bitty itty-biddy plot of land for everything else that's happening everywhere else, why? Because God is still going to do what he promised that he was going to do. That's how you know that God's faithful. And it's interesting because if you study the nation of Israel with all their blessings and curses, I used to have a really, really, really hard time with that. Because if you think about the nation of Israel what was the purpose of their nation? What is the purpose of their nation? It was to be the nation, that would be a light to all the other nations. So when other nations looked at Israel based upon how they were acting, they would know that the God that Israel served was the most powerful, omnipotent, creator God that their people needed to worship too. So, if Israel was, obedient to God and worshiping God and doing what God wants and all people saw them doing their worship correctly and how they lived and how they acted and they noticed that God was giving them food and giving them rains and taking care of them then all the nations could look on and say, "whoever their God is, we believe he's the God of the universe." But if Israel was disobedient, then there would be curses that would come to the nation. I'll never forget, I took a class at Dallas Seminary. I remember it was on a Wednesday afternoon from 12 to three, every single week and, it was a very hard class to go to because it was all on the prophets, major and minor prophets. And as I would study these, it was really on the minor prophets, but as I would study these, I would read about all that God did and some of the stuff that I would read where, when Israel got taken off into captivity, it wasn't like, "okay let's walk the captivity." I mean, they were mistreated, they were impaled, they were carried by hooks in their noses, and I would think, God, these are your people. Like, why are you treating them so bad? And then the more I understood the covenant and the promise I understood why, because God was saying to Israel, "if you don't obey me and you don't do what I want and you live your own way, then I'm gonna curse you in such a way that all the other nations of the world will look on and say, see the way I'm treating you harshly and say, "whoever their God is, whatever they did wrong, we don't wanna do that, their God is the most powerful God in the world," why? Because what's the purpose of the story of the Bible? God wants to get his glory through all the of the world. And God was using Israel to do that. Post-Jesus's resurrection, what did Jesus do? He established the church to do that. Where we have in Genesis 10 and 11 or 11 and 12 God goes looking for a man to start a mission. What do we have in the New Testament? God brings a man, himself. The second person of the Trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ who dies on the cross for all of our sin, who is buried, who gets up. And then, what is the command? What is Jesus's command? He says, "all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, therefore," what? Go, make disciples of who? All nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey all I've commanded, I'll be with you always till the end of the age. What's Jesus's message to his church and all the people that believe in his name? Go where? To all the nations of the world. Christians, did you hear what I said? Who here is called the missions, who is a Christian? Keep your hand, put your hand up, if you're really a Christian, put your hand, keep your hand up if you're called the missions. If you put your hand down you don't know the Bible. Everyone of us has called to all the nations of the world. You say, "well, I don't know how I would do that." Here's the problem. We're gonna see what gets in the way sometimes, it doesn't mean that you have to get on a plane and go somewhere, what it means is you need to be praying about God, how can you use me to reach all the nations of the world? Now, the beauty of all this is you go to a church that has a heart for reaching all the nations of the world. So through Brave Global or Brave Media or other opportunities we're gonna have as a church, you're gonna have opportunity to go. You're gonna have opportunity to give. You're gonna have an opportunity to be a part of what God is doing globally, 'cause our heart for a church is not building more people in Denver to come to our building, our heart is making disciples of what? All the nations of the world, well, why? 'Cause it was jesus' command to every single believer. Now last week we talked about differences of culture and we talked about the same race, but we have different color skin and we have different ethnicities and all these different things. How do you keep all those differences aligned? You wanna know how? Mission. When you stay on mission, everything aligns. When you get off mission, it doesn't. Let me give you an example. For those of you that have spent time studying the persecuted church through like Voice of the Martyrs or other places you'll know, that when those groups are gathering, they realize they're doing it illegally and they're doing it underground and they also realize that by being who they are that they could get in prison, they could get beaten, they could even be murdered for their faith. Now, if you're a part of a community like that where you gather this week and then, next week there's, five people aren't there 'cause they're in jail, and four of them have been beaten and one was beaten to death, and then you're gathering the next week, let me tell you what your conversation's not gonna be about. They're not gonna gather and say, "I don't believe he used this color of carpet. Why, who chose that?" Nobody's gonna gather and say, "I didn't feel warmly greeted when I came in. You know what, compared to other churches I've been to the coffee's just not as good. They don't have as much of a coffee shop. And you know, when I went downstairs to the kids it just seemed like they were a little shy on workers. I hope somebody else will pick up the slack." Those conversations don't happen. You know why? 'Cause we're doing this 'cause our lives are on the line, and the gospel's on the line and we got to do this. I'm not telling you pray for persecution, it's coming, just so you know. I don't know when, and I don't know how but it's coming, but I can tell you this, we're called to stay on mission. 'Cause of the reason that you're here is to glorify God and to be his vehicle, to be used to all the nations of the world, we won't have time to get involved in petty little conversations, and we'll have so much unity, that we'll be praying with and for one another, that God will use us in the spread of the gospel for his glory. And that's what God wants us to be about. And that's what we see here. God makes an unconditional promise to Abram that he's gonna give them a land. Now, hear me. I love where we live. I love the United States of America. I'm an American citizen. God has never made a covenant with the United States of America. He's made a covenant with Israel. You need to know that, it's different. And so because of that, we see Abraham as the father of the nation of Israel. So, that's why it's such a big deal when Jesus comes on the scene, this will give you a little more context because everybody in Israel knows, Abraham's our father. Every one of us as Jews knows that we're all descendants of Abraham. Every one of us. That's why it's interesting in John 8:56, Jesus makes this startling statement. He said, "your father, Abraham, rejoiced to see my day and he saw it, and was glad." Notice what Jesus doesn't say, he doesn't say my father, Abraham. Jesus was Jewish because he was born of Mary but he didn't have a father 'cause his father was in heaven. Right? Your father. Your father, Abraham, rejoiced to see what? My day, and guess what? He saw it, and was glad. What is he saying? I'm God. I'm God. I'm the Messiah who stepped my foot on the planet. You say, "well, how do you know that?" Notice what the people say. This verse has more meaning to me this week 'cause I read it in the first service, "so the Jews said to him, you are not yet 50 years old, and you have seen Abraham? Wait, wait, wait, wait, Jesus. You're not even 50, and you've seen Abraham?" Notice this Jesus's response. Jesus said to them, "truly truly I say to you before Abraham was born, I am." What were the Jewish people saying? We know Abraham's our father based upon Genesis 12, the Abraham at covenant we know the whole nation came through him. Here's what Jesus said, "before he was even born, I was the one that created the whole world from the very beginning." Go back and read your Hebrew scriptures from Genesis 1:1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That was me. I'm way bigger than Abraham because I'm God. And I'm the promised Messiah, and I'm standing before you. That's what he's saying, now, notice how these Jews responded to him, having the God of the universe stand right before them, "therefore they picked up stones to throw at him but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple, why? Because Jesus was claiming he was God. And he was bigger than Abraham. And he created Abraham. And the reason they're alive is 'cause he's giving them breath to breathe, right? God's always had an unconditional promise that his plan would succeed. Just know this, for those of you who are believers in Jesus Christ, when we get to heaven, guess what? Everybody that's supposed to be there is gonna be there. Because God knows who he wants. And he's gonna make sure that they're there. It doesn't mean that people in hell, God didn't want, but just know, he's gonna bring everybody there. And Romans 1:20 says that all men will be without excuse. Because even on judgment day, God's gonna say, "I gave you rain, I gave you food, I gave you this, you never even came one step toward me and I was trying to scream to you that I'm the God of the universe and I would have revealed myself but you didn't want anything to do with me." And what's more tragic is when we talk about the nations of the world, let's talk about the United States of America. What's even more tragic is I'll hear people say stuff like this, "well, it's not fair to other countries 'cause I grew up in the United States and I grew up going to church and I've been in church my whole life and that's why I'm a Christian and other people aren't." Friends listen to me and hear me crystal clear on this. I know people that have grown up going to church, that are my age, that are still going to church that aren't Christian. It's not where you go and it's not who your surroundings are, it's who the person is that you're responding to, the God man, Jesus Christ. There's gonna be many Americans on judgment day that are shocked, that just because they got water sprinkled on them or got dunked in a tank or walked an aisle or signed some card that they thought was their fire insurance, that they're not in heaven 'cause they don't know Christ, and they never wanted Christ. And they didn't respond to Christ. Right? That's a tragedy in our nation. Just because you live in America, doesn't make you a Christian any more than walking into a garage makes you a car. Like we need to respond to the gospel of Jesus and the grace that God gives, which is why I put at this fourth point, from the Book of Genesis. Not only has God given unconditional promise and choose people that we wouldn't otherwise expect and he's got a plan from the beginning, but notice this, God's plan to save the nations involved those whom he called to trust him, even when uncertain. God's plan to save the nations involved those whom he called to trust him, even when uncertain. It means this, God's calling you to trust him, even when you don't know what's going on. Notice verse four, God tells Abraham all this stuff, "so Abraham went forth as the Lord had spoken to him and Lot with him, now, Abraham was 75 years old when he departed from here." He was 75 y'all. Well, I'm too old to follow, 75, and he begins his plan. Has his baby at age 100, that's going to count. He was 75, but what did he do? He by faith, did what God asked him to do. Well, what did God ask him to do? I'm gonna tell you what God asked him to do, the same thing God asked you to do. First one is this, belief. It's always faith. It's always belief, it's always trust. He gives him the whole Abrahamic covenant and said, "here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna give you land, I'm gonna give you great nation, I'm gonna bless you, I'm gonna make your name great, you'll be a blessing to other nations, all the nations of the earth are gonna be blessed through you. What's he first got to do? To believe that he heard God and that he's hearing the truth because if in Abraham's heart at that time, he's like, "I don't believe that, that's never gonna happen and I'm not gonna respond to that." No, he believes it. How often does God speak to you through a sermon or through his Word where you're like, "I kind of, I don't know that I believe." It all starts with belief before anything else will ever happen. Then notice what God asked him to do. After he says, believe, then he says this, "leave." Who's he got to leave? His country, his relatives and his father's house. In order to see what God's gonna show you, you've gotta leave where you're currently are. That's why steps of faith are hard. They can be little, they can be big, but everyone you have to believe that God said it and then you gotta take a step in that direction. Because for many of us, we wanna see the reward of what God's saying, it's almost as if Abraham would look God in the eye and say, "okay, listen, my wife's barren, she can't have kids, I mean, show us that We'll get like one or two kids and then we'll start believing that stuff. Hey, show us that when we go to this country, where exactly is it on the map? 'Cause I'd like to know where to go 'cause I need to know how to pack, 'cause if it's gonna be warmer or colder, I mean, we should know those things. I mean, there's all these things that I gotta know." Notice why they we're blessed, in Hebrews chapter 11 in this great hall of faith. It's really interesting. It says, "by faith, Abraham when he was called, obeyed God, by going out to a place, which he was to receive for an inheritance," and love this, "and he went out not knowing where he was going." Faith always involves not knowing where you're going. Hear me on this. If you know everything that's going to happen in the next 10 years, it is not faith. I love talking to people that feel prompted of God and say "I know God's calling me to do this but I don't know anything about this. I don't know how to do it. I don't know, I don't have the education, I don't have the money, I don't know how to do, I just feel prompted." I'm like, "that is a call. Get involved there, do it." But I don't even know what it even looks like. Good, that's faith. The people I'm always concerned with and sometimes I'm meeting with pastors and they got a 20-year plan for their church. And here's what it looks like, and here's all the donors and here's the money we're gonna have every year, and here's how it's gonna play out, and for me, I think, well, that paper that you've written on is really nice and it's a cool drawing, but it's just excrement 'cause you don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. Right? I mean, at the end of the day, many of us don't take a step because we don't see what God wants. You have to believe and then leave. When we moved out here to plant the church I didn't tell the Lord, "okay, we don't know anything about Denver, show us the building that we're gonna be in, show us the people that are gonna come, show us what the bank account is gonna look like. You know, Kim wants to live here, I wanna live there, show us the house, that way we can agree on it. I mean, we got to have everything, what are the schools like?" All this kind of, no. I didn't know what was gonna happen, we just moved. Where are we gonna meet? We don't have a place. Where we're gonna office? We don't have a place. Where are we gonna get money? We don't have any of that either. I mean, I don't know, we just go and then God shows up. God will not show up in your life if you're begging him to see everything first. We walk by faith and not by sight. Some of you are waiting even though you felt prompted 'cause you think, well, until I go to do this, until I get this education, until I become that, quit waiting, you'll be dead first. And you'll be standing in front of Jesus saying, "I was preparing my whole life for this mission that I never ever did." Get involved now. So you are God's masterpiece for good works that he created for you to do. You have to believe and leave and then number three is this, you receive. See, in order for Abraham to get what God wanted, he had to take steps in that direction and what I love about this story, is if we had time to go through the entire Book of Genesis, Abraham and Sarah are just like me and you. We get this false idea like, Abraham had a covenant and he's such a good guy. I mean, in the very next chapter, because he and his wife had the same father and a different mother, who, it says in the Bible, that Sarah or Sarai was beautiful. And in the Bible, when it talks about physical characteristics, it's really trying to specify, it means this, she was a hottie, right? I mean, when you read about Joseph and Potiphar and it says, Joseph was really good looking it means dude, the guy was chiseled, I mean, he was great. Had I been in scripture based upon our dialogue last week it would have said what? I'm bald, so, at the end of the day the scripture makes specific notations to talk about the person, she was really beautiful and so, when Abraham goes where he's gonna go he's like, "hey, they're gonna see you, they're gonna see you, my wife and they're gonna mistreat you, someone's gonna tell me you're my sister," which was a half truth. When God tells Abraham at age 70, I mean, before he even, I'm sorry, before we even get there, God's plan's not working out. How many of you have felt called by God and it's not going the way God said it was gonna go? It just, it hasn't happened yet, ever happened to you? If it hasn't just take some more steps of faith, it will, I promise. So they'd be excited to have this pow-wow with him and his wife, and they have a conversation that my wife and I will never have in a million years, this was the conversation. We can't seem to get pregnant, why don't you take somebody else and see if we can get a baby that way. So he takes Hagar, and who's produced? Ishmael. Why? Because he was disobedient to God. Now, through Ishmael, who does God create? Well, that's where you get the nation of Islam. So in Abraham, you have Jews, Christians and, Islamic peoples that all look to Abraham as the beginning of what they were doing. But don't you love that Abraham wasn't like, "yes, God, I'll do whatever you want, I'll leave, I'll go, I'll be," he did though. He went not knowing where he was going. He'd never been to Canaan. He didn't know what the weather was like. He didn't know what the topology was like. He didn't know anything. He just went, 'cause God told him to go. When Sarah is told by Abraham and by God that, you know, now she's 90, we've already been through all this drama in the family, and now God says, I'm gonna give you the promise, when I come back next year, she'll be pregnant and give birth to a son who you're gonna give his name, who you gonna name him Isaac, she laughs. She's like, "are you kidding me? There's no way." But notice if you get to Genesis 11:11, it says, "by faith, even Sarah herself received ability to conceive even beyond the proper time of life since she considered him faithful, who had promised." Well, she certainly didn't consider him faithful when he first told her she's gonna get pregnant, she Laughed. And we read about, in another Book in the Bible that, she thought Abraham was as good as dead. The dude is 100 years old and I'm 90, there's no way. What was God doing? Saying, my plan, is always gonna work and I'm doing it in such a way that I'm gonna get all the glory. In your life know this, If you're on the team Jesus, because you've responded by faith to him, he's got a purpose in your life. Your purpose is to Walk with God every day and bring him glory and as you do that he will prompt you time and time again to take a little step of faith here or a little step of faith here, and you won't know what it looks like. You think you do, and it will go entirely different direction. There's nothing wrong with strategizing. We have a strategy, we wanna put campuses all over the city of Denver, we wanna get radio out all over the place, we wanna plant churches, but we hold it with open hands. We didn't have a plan to plant an inner city church. But then there was a guy who started coming to our church named CB Bartholow that preached for me a couple of weeks ago, and he said, "hey, would you ever consider planting me? We got to know him, saw his humility, his gifting. Now we're planting beacon in the inner city of Denver. That wasn't our plan, whose plan was that? God's, I love God's plans, they're fun, because it's what God shows us in the moment. And for some of you, I'm just telling you, take a step of faith, take a step of faith. Now you can be a Christian, by believing that Jesus Christ is God's one and only son but you can't live to the full without taking steps of faith. You can't enjoy God without taking steps of faith. That's why James says faith without works is dead. God didn't save you so you could sit like a lump and be like "I know I'm a Christian and I know I'm gonna heaven." So what? God saved you, so that you'd be part of his mission walking daily with him, learning, wrestling, growing, through all your mistakes and shame, through all and guilt and through all of your joys and satisfactions and doing it right. God's growing you and growing you and it's usually only in the Christian faith that we don't give people the grace to grow. I mean, we give people grace to grow when they're little kids learning to walk and fall down we give people grace, they're learn to ride a bike and fall over, but in church it's like, someone's a Christian for like two months, and they screw something up or do something we would never do at year 30 of our Christian walk and we're like, "aah, I can't believe you'd do that." I totally believe you'd do that, 'cause I know your heart and it totally wicked. And apart from Christ, you can't change. So let me show you how Christ can come into your life and he can help you. I can't change you, I'm not gonna shame you 'cause I'm just like you and apart from Jesus there go I. That's the gospel. That's what we're growing people in. But understand this, there's a lot of you that attend our church or our worshiping online, that loved the Lord, that at times feel prompted and the moment you feel prompted, somebody else comes, the devil comes in and speaks in your mind, "you can't do that You're not qualified for that, there's no way for that." And here's what God would say, "I know, that's why I picked you, 'cause when it happens, everybody will know it's me. I didn't pick you for your own glory. I picked you to make my name great." And that's the beauty of the gospel. Those whom called, he called to trust him, even when uncertain. And here's when the call becomes certain, when uncertainty becomes certainty, you know what happens? When you die, and you meet Jesus face to face and you begin to ask him, "but why do I have to go there and what went on here and what went on there? I don't understand that time I went through that significant pain, and why did those people act that way against me and why do we have to do that? And why didn't we have," we won't know until we get to heaven. There's never a time where your call becomes certain, why? Because the Word of God said that word is a what? Lamp unto my feet and a light into my path. It doesn't say it's a strategic plan for the next 70 years and I'll show you everything upfront. There's enough light to be here and then how do we take the light? We take a step of faith. You take a step of faith and you get light for this, take a step of faith and you get light for this, but you don't know back here because, that second step is totally darkness when you're back here. And even if you embark on the same journey as someone else, I wanna be a pastor, I wanna adopt, I wanna go through in vitro fertilization, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, somebody else's story will be entirely different than your story. I wanna get married, I wanna have kids, I wanna buy a house, it'll be totally different because God takes you through your own journey for your own curriculum to bring him glory. But what are we called to do? As we do that, we're called to let God grow our heart for the nations. I love our church 'cause I know we have a heart for the nations. Every time we go somewhere and we invite people to join us every, there's usually more people that sign up than we have availability to go. And I'm just telling you, you're part of a great church. And one of the reasons that you're part of a great church is from the leadership on down, we have a hunger for the nations. It doesn't mean that everybody here needs to go get on a plane and go somewhere but you have an opportunity here, through Brave Global, to be part of planting churches all over the world. You have a chance of being part of Brave Church here to take the gospel out on the radio and podcast all over the world. You have a chance of being part of Brave Church here to reach the entire city for Jesus Christ. God called us for something awesome. He called us to reach the nations. And when we reach the nations, that's when we have unity in our body and that's what God's calling us to do. So the call today, is this, where has gotten been prompting you to take a step of faith? Because I believe with my whole heart if all of us would seek after God and go after him with everything we had that God would put us on a mission that's broader than any of us could ever expect to touch more people than we could ever touch so then, 50, 100, 150 years from now, wherever or whenever we're all in heaven, that we can sit down and eat popcorn with Jesus and he can show us on the big screen, here's what I did, with your meager efforts 'cause I'm awesome. I wanna be a part of that conversation. I wanna be a part of that church and I'm so glad that you are too, because we're gonna reach more and more people for Jesus. We're gonna see God grow them up, and then we're gonna send people all over the world with the good news and the hope of Jesus Christ. So what's the ask? The ask is, what's the step of faith that God's asking you to take that you've been a little fearful of? Believe that it's him, leave your current comfort and trust that you'll receive from God when you take that step because that's what our God does, amen?