Chapter 2, God Builds a Nation (Abraham)
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Handout
Main Idea of The Story: God is redeeming a people for himself from every nation, tribe, people, and language, for his own glory through Jesus Christ.
Chapter 2 of The Story: Gen. 12-36
Sermon Text: Gen. 12-22 (pp. 14-20)
Main Idea:
The story of Abraham is not a story of a man who was so good and deserving that God responded to him with blessing. Rather, the story of Abraham is a story of how God took an undeserving man, chose him as the object of his affection, poured out his grace upon him, and made him into someone great. The story of Abraham is not a summons to muster up our faith, but to “Lift up your eyes” and see the provision of the Lord. Abraham’s story points forward to a day when “The Lord will provide for himself a Lamb.”
Intro:
Intro:
Turn with me in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 22. Today, we’re going to look primarily at Genesis 22, but I’ll be referring back to other events in Abraham’s life that lead up to this point to help us understand how Abraham got to this point.
Last week, we looked at Genesis 1-9, the stories of Creation, The Fall, and the Flood. We saw that in the beginning, God created everything “very good.” God created mankind in his image as reflections of his glory and majesty and commissioned us to reflect his glory throughout his creation as divinely appointed kings and queens, to fill the earth with his glory and to exercise his dominion over creation.
We saw that the main character of The Story, the Bible, is not mankind, but God. Mankind, and all creation, exists to bring glory and honor to God. And, very quickly, we saw what happens when we forget that and try to make ourselves the main characters. Adam and Eve are deceived into thinking that God is holding out on them, that they would be better off if they got to call the shots for themselves, if they made themselves God. So, despite having all that they need and living in a literal paradise, they disobey the only rule they’re given and eat from the forbidden fruit.
Humanity and all of creation fall under the curse of sin. Suffering, pain, and death enter the world. Human relationships become plagued with conflict and tension, and our relationship with God—the primary relationship we were created for—is broken.
But, even in the midst of God’s judgment upon sin, he displays his mercy and grace. God makes clothes of animal skins for Adam and Eve to clothe them, communicating two important truths: first, that sin brings death and that its penalty can only be paid in blood. Animals had to die to cover Adam and Eve’s nakedness. And secondly, that God is gracious and will provide a way for sin to be covered. God makes a promise that one day, a male descendent of Eve will crush the head of the Serpent and reverse the curse of sin.
15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”
But, in the meantime, this terminal disease of sin is passed down to every subsequent human being, and humanity descends into a spiral of sin that just gets worse and worse.
Cain murders his brother, Abel, and humanity descends into depravity and violence until...
5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
7 So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.”
But, God chooses one man, Noah, as the object of his grace and mercy to continue the human race. God graciously and mercifully spares Noah and two of every living creature in the Ark, while he wipes out the rest with a catastrophic flood, demonstrating the severity of sin and the holiness of God.
Noah and his family are spared, and the earth is gradually repopulated. Many years have gone by, and we begin to wonder when the promised snake-crusher will come and make things right again. Then, without a whole lot of introduction, we meet Abram...
1 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.
2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
And this abrupt, unexpected blessing that God gives Abram becomes part of the theme of Abram’s life.
We’re not told that Abram did anything deserving or special before God’s calling, in fact, the opposite is implied. One of the themes in Abram’s life is that...
God’s Call is Gracious.
God’s Call is Gracious.
Grace = unmerited favor; a gift.
God’s favor is not earned.
God’s favor is not earned.
Abram’s family came from the city of Ur (Gen 11:31), which was a largely pagan area.
God later confirms that Abram’s family was pagan:
2 And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods. 3 Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan, and made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac.
And here is why this is important. Last week I stressed the fact that the main character of the Bible is not man, but God. And I told you that if you confuse that fact, you’ll misunderstand and misinterpret a lot of the stories in Scripture. And here we’re going to get our first test of that principle.
A lot of people read the story of Abram as an inspirational story of a great man who exercised great faith even when God called him to make some morally questionable decisions.
But the story of Abram is not a story about a great man following a morally questionable God, but of a great God who worked through a morally questionable man.
And certainly, Abraham IS an example of faith for us to follow, as Hebrews 11 makes very clear.
But, even more than just an example of faith, Abram’s life follows a pattern that displays the glory and goodness of God towards undeserving sinners, and it places another piece of the puzzle on the table that is building towards a picture of how God is going to redeem humanity from the Fall.
Abram was 75 years old, too! so it’s not as if God chose some young, strong, promising prospect with his whole life in front of him. He chose an old man who had probably spent his whole life serving false gods.
God promises Abram—in his old age, when his wife is barren and they’re both long past child bearing years—that he’s going to have a natural born son, and a huge family:
4 And behold, the word of the Lord came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” 5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
God promised Abram’s descendants an entire country:
7 Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.
And God doesn’t make these promises and watch over Abram because he’s such a great guy...
God’s call does not reflect the greatness of man, but the graciousness of God.
Sometimes when we read the stories of men like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David, it’s a little uncomfortable for us because some of these so-called “Heroes of the faith” were not even morally qualified enough to be a deacon or a pastor in a church today. Some of them we probably wouldn’t even call exemplary Christians.
Sometimes it’s almost like the Bible goes out of its way to make sure that you know that its human heroes aren’t the real hero of the story.
But, this is intentional so that we will remember that God is the main character of The Story, not men. If you don’t believe me, go back and read the tail end of Genesis 9 about Noah’s drunkenness.
Or, read the very next passage in your Bible in Genesis 12, right after God’s calling of Abram, where Abram journeys to Egypt. Abram gets there and, knowing that his wife Sarai is beautiful, fears that the men there will kill him and steal his wife. So, he orders his wife to tell everyone that she’s his sister instead. Which, of course, would mean that she’s available.
So, Pharaoh takes him up on the offer and takes Sarai into his harem.
15 And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house.
What a guy! Adam threw Eve under the bus, and now Abram is offering his wife up to strangers in a foreign land—men he believes are so evil that they’d murder him and take his wife by force!
Now, fortunately, before anything happens to Sarai, God strikes Pharaoh and his household with plagues and Sarai is spared and returned to Abram. But not because Abram showed up as a knight in shining armor to rescue her—no, the real hero who rescues Sarai is God.
And, this wasn’t just a one-time, momentary lapse of judgement, because Abram did it again in Genesis 20.
And, there are other examples of moral failure in Abram’s life. God had promised to give him a son as his own heir, but after he’d been waiting several years for God to fulfill his promise to give him a son, Abram and Sarai got impatient. Sarai tells Abram in Genesis 16 that since she’s unable to have kids, he should just take her servant, Hagar, and get her pregnant and have a child with her.
2 And Sarai said to Abram, “Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai.
And instead of leading with courage and refusing to break God’s design in marriage, Abram does it. Just like Adam took the fruit his wife gave him, ate it, and plunged the human race into sin, Abram takes the forbidden fruit his wife gives him and plunges his family into ruin and heartache. Hagar conceives and has a son named Ishmael and it becomes a source of strife in their family. And that legacy of polygamy and dysfunctional families gets passed down to his son and his grandson, too.
See, if you read the story of Abram and think it’s a story about how God uses great people to do great things, then when you look at your life and you realize that you’re not that great, and you see all of your sins and shortcomings, you may think that God can’t use you. He must be looking for someone that could be on the cover of “Faith” magazine or something. Someone heroic, righteous, smart, and fearless.
But Abram is not the hero of his story. God’s call on his life does not reflect Abram’s greatness, but God’s graciousness. God doesn’t call the righteous into his service, he calls sinners to repentance.
32 I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”
He doesn’t choose the strong and mighty to win the battles, but the weak, so that his strength might be displayed through the weakness of man.
9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
He doesn’t choose the smart and the wise to work through, but those who are foolish by the world’s standards so that God’s wisdom can shine through.
26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.
27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;
28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
So, the key to understanding Abraham’s role in this story is to understand that Abraham’s calling displays the grace of God, not the greatness of man.
Now, there’s one more thing that we learn about God’s gracious call from the life of Abraham...
God’s grace is costly.
God’s grace is costly.
Now, at first you might think that I’m referring to all the sacrifices Abram had to make as he followed God. God told him to leave his family and homeland in Gen. 12 and go to “a land I will show you.”
Later, God gives Abram the covenant of circumcision and commands him to circumcise himself and every other male in his family and lineage. Talk about costly!
Or, you might think when I say that grace is costly that I’m talking about what God asks of Abraham in Genesis 22.
See, 25 years after God first promised to Abram to make him the father of a multitude of nations, Abram and Sarai finally have a baby, Isaac. His name means “laughter,” because Sarai literally laughed out loud when she overheard God promise that she would have a child, and because Isaac’s birth brought joy and laughter into their home.
Well, it’s not long before tension between Sarai and Hagar arises, and Hagar and Ishmael are sent away, making Isaac Abraham’s only child. By the time we get to Genesis 22, Abraham is well over 100 years old and Isaac is likely a teenager. And then God’s call comes again. But this time, it’s different...
1 After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
2 He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”
Abraham and Sarah had been infertile for decades, then after God promised to give them a child, it was another 25 years until the fulfillment of that promise. They’d been waiting all their lives. All their hopes and dreams were wrapped up in Isaac. He was their only son. He was their joy, their laughter.
How could God ask such a thing? All of those promises had seemed too good to be true: God was going to give them a family in their old age, make him into a mighty nation, give him and his descendents a wonderful land, and bless the whole world by fulfilling his promise to bring the snake-crusher through his lineage. But, apparently it would come at a steep cost.
Or, so it seemed...
But, by this point in Abraham’s life, he had seen God work enough to know that God was faithful, he always kept his promises. Abraham knew that in all his years of following God, there had been many times God’s promises didn’t make sense or seemed impossible, but never once had they failed to come true.
Abraham had left his homeland and family all those years ago and set out in faith, and God had rewarded him handsomely. Abraham was a very wealthy guy and even had his own child now. And in all this, Abraham had learned that God’s call is always gracious, and that all God required of him was to have faith.
Faith is our response to God’s grace.
Faith is our response to God’s grace.
When Abram had first moved to the land of Canaan, it hadn’t taken long before a conflict arose between his servants and the servants of his nephew Lot.
Now, at this point, Abram doesn’t have any children. Lot, his nephew, is the closest he’s got. But, apparently Abram and Lot have become quite wealthy by this point and have so many possessions that the land literally isn’t big enough for the two of them.
So, they have to separate because their sheep and cattle and livestock need more land. Abram had given Lot first pick on where he wanted to settle, and this is what Gen 13:10-11 tells us:
10 And Lot lifted up his eyes and saw that the Jordan Valley was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, in the direction of Zoar. (This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.) 11 So Lot chose for himself all the Jordan Valley, and Lot journeyed east. Thus they separated from each other.
Now, the reference to the Garden of Eden and someone liking what they see ought to raise some red flags. If it didn’t, then the ominous note about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah certainly ought to!
The last time that someone made a choice based upon how desirable something looked didn’t end well for humanity.
6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.
So, Lot made his choice based upon how good it looked to him, which turned out to have some pretty disastrous consequences for Lot.
Then God says this to Abram:
14 The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, 15 for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever.
But God had trained Abram not to focus on the situations and circumstances that he found himself in, but to always...
Look to God.
Look to God.
And this becomes a theme in Abram’s life. Abram found himself in some pretty tough situations and circumstances, where things didn’t aways make a lot of sense.
But, in those moments, God reminded him to look to him and remember the grace that he had shown him and reflect on the promises of God.
5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
God had taught Abram over his life in those moments where things didn’t make sense and his situation looked impossible, “Don’t look at the situation, look toward heaven and number the stars.”
Some of us need to learn this lesson, too. Now, God hasn’t promised you or any of us innumerable descendents—that promise was for Abraham. But, God has made us many other promises. “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” “I will sustain you.”
Sometimes, though, we get in tough situations where it looks impossible. It seems like God has forsaken you, forgotten his promises, given up on you. In those situations, remember what God taught Abraham. Look at the stars. When we look at the stars, we’re reminded of the power of God. Stop staring at the circumstances you’re in and “Look toward heaven, and number the stars.”
26 Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name; by the greatness of his might and because he is strong in power, not one is missing.
27 Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”?
28 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. 29 He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.
30 Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; 31 but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.
So, God tells Abram, “If I can create all these, know them by name and number, can I not give you a child?”
So, having learned this lesson, when God told Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac...
3 So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. 4 On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar.
Can you imagine the weight of that journey, three days of travel knowing the whole time what was coming at the end? And then the weight and emotion he must have felt when he looked up and saw that mountain? Abraham looked at the mountain (Gen 22:4), but we know that he didn’t fix his eyes just upon the mountain, he looked up to the heavens...
10 For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.
So, Abraham looked to God and he...
Believe his promises.
Believe his promises.
Abraham had learned to take God at his word. When God promised him a child...
6 And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.
Faith is simply believing and trusting God for what you can’t see right now.
Now, a lot of times we think of faith as something that we “do.” I’ve even heard people say that “Faith is the only good work that can save you.”
But the Bible doesn’t count faith as a “work” or something that we “do,” but as something that happens within us as a response to God’s grace.
Think of a vaccine or your body’s natural immune response to a virus. If you are exposed to a virus or get a vaccination, your body naturally responds to that exposure by producing antibodies. Now, that’s something that happens within you, but it’s not really something that you exert effort and consciously do. It’s an “immune response.”
So, when I say that faith is a response to God’s grace, I mean that it is something that happens within us in response to God’s grace, in response to looking to God and looking at what he’s done in your life.
When you experience or reflect upon God’s grace in your life, you grow in your assurance that God is going to do what he says. Faith is trust. You can’t force yourself to trust someone, it’s just a natural response to their trustworthy actions.
So, as God pours out his grace upon Abram, Abram’s faith is kindled. Faith isn’t an action, per se, but a response of our soul to God’s grace.
Look up to the heavens, remember all that God has done for you, and take him at his word. That’s what faith is.
But, even though faith isn’t an action—if we truly believe, that faith produces actions in our lives that are consistent with faith, just as it did in Abraham’s.
Act on faith.
Act on faith.
Obedience is just faith in action.
So, because Abraham believed God, he acted accordingly.
5 Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.”
Now, you might think that Abraham is just maintaining the ruse so as not to alarm the servants and his son, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I think Abraham genuinely believed that somehow, Isaac would come back down that mountain with him, because Abraham believed the promise of God.
This is the consistent pattern of Abraham’s life.
8 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.
9 By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.
10 For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.
Abraham was looking to God, remembering his grace and mercy in his life, he believed God, and so he acted on that belief.
So, the pattern of Abraham’s life is that God graciously calls him, and Abraham responds in faithful obedience, because he truly believes.
6 And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together.
7 And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”
8 Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together.
9 When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.
10 Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.
Now, we’re focusing primarily upon Abraham’s faith here because that’s what Scripture focuses on, but Isaac acted on his faith, too. Isaac by this point was probably old enough to have put up a fight if he’d wanted to. He was old enough to carry the firewood, which would have been a fairly substantial amount of wood. He was also old enough to know the process of the sacrifice and recognize that they were missing a crucial element—the lamb. The word that is translated “boy” is often used to mean “youth, adolescent, or young man.”
Abraham by this point is over 100 years old, certainly no match for a strong teenage boy that had a mind to resist. In all likelihood, Isaac climbed up on that altar himself, or at least didn’t put up a fight.
Now, you can imagine all the questions that must have been racing through his head as Abraham lifted that knife. I think one question might have been a question we’ve seen before—“Did God really say...?”
Or, how can Isaac be the child of the promise, the one through whom a nation would come, if he died before he ever had kids?!?!
17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, 18 of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.”
It seemed like God was asking him to believe two contradictory things: that Isaac was the child of promise, or that God wanted him to kill him. How could God ask him to believe both? And yet, he did. Hebrews tells us how Abraham reconciled these seemingly conflicting beliefs and callings:
19 He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.
Faith is when you realize that just because you can’t explain how two things God says are true can both be true doesn’t mean that they aren’t both true. Somehow, God makes them work.
And the last lesson Abraham had to learn was that when Abraham responded in faith,
God Provides what he Requires.
God Provides what he Requires.
God had plans for Abram and his descendants. God wanted Abram to have children and become the father of a nation. Somehow this nation factored into God’s plans for humanity. God wanted him and his descendents to bring a blessing upon humanity.
But God doesn’t just command Abram to get busy and make it happen. Every time God communicates his plan to Abram, he makes it crystal clear that God himself is going to make all this happen.
5 No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.
1 The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised.
God wanted Abraham and Sarah to begin a new nation, but only God himself could make that happen. And he did, when at the ripe old age of 100 (Abraham) and 90 (Sarah), Sarah gives birth to Isaac.
So, Abraham acted in faith because he knew that when God asks you to do something that is beyond your strength or ability, he always provides for himself what he requires.
And so, even though he didn’t understand how it was all going to work out, Abraham knew that somehow...
8 Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.”
10 Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
12 He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”
13 And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.
14 So Abraham called the name of that place, “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”
God asked Abraham to offer a sacrifice that was too costly for him to give. But that is because God never intended Abraham to offer up his son Isaac on that altar. A sacrifice was needed to atone for Abraham’s sins, true. But Abraham couldn’t pay his sin debt himself, so God provided the sacrificial lamb himself.
And you and I are called upon by God to be reconciled to God, even though you lack the ability to reconcile yourself to God. You are commanded to have faith, even though faith is not something that you can just create within yourself. You are commanded to follow God in obedience, but left to your own devices, you are not able to follow God.
You and I have a sin debt that demands a sacrifice, a sacrifice that is far too costly for you and I to pay ourselves. We can’t wipe our own slates clean. We can’t make ourselves righteous.
But God knew that. And he never intended for you to pay the price yourself. God always planned to provide for himself the Lamb for the sacrifice.
And so, 2,000 years after Abraham was called upon to offer up his son on the mountain of Moriah, 2,000 years after God provided a lamb for himself for Abraham’s offering, God once again provided for himself a Lamb.
In the land of Moriah, a city would later be built upon that mountain. That city would be named Jerusalem. There, on that mountain, the Son of God would carry the wood for his own sacrifice up the hill. And when the Father asked it of him, the Son would willingly climb upon the wood and offer himself up in faith. Instead of being bound and laid upon the wood, he would be nailed to it.
But this time, there would be no one to take the Son’s place, because he was taking the place of many sons. This time, the Father would not spare his son, but freely give him up for us all.
There, on the same hill where Abraham was called upon to trust the promise of God, God the Father offered up his Son, his only Son, whom he loved as the sacrificial Lamb of God so that your sins could be forgiven.
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
On the mount of the Lord it was provided.
Earlier I said that God’s grace is costly. Well...
God’s grace is costly, but not to you.
God’s grace is costly, but not to you.
To you, his grace is free, because Christ has paid the price for you.
All that is asked of you is to Look to God, believe his promises, and act on faith.
Adult Devotional Questions:
Adult Devotional Questions:
What does the story of Abraham reveal about the nature of God's grace and his choice of individuals for his divine purposes?
How can we apply Abraham's call to 'lift up your eyes' to our daily challenges and uncertainties in faith?
In what areas of your life do you need to respond to God's promises with faith and obedience?
How does the connection between Abraham's story and the promise of a lamb relate to the New Testament message of Jesus?
Family Devotional Questions:
Family Devotional Questions:
What does the story of Abraham teach us about God's grace in our lives?
How can we trust God like Abraham did, even when we can't see the whole plan?
What should we do when we face problems instead of focusing on them?
