Good morning. Good to be with each of you as we embark on this series. And we're going to look at a few different scriptures, as that video mentioned, looking at different characters in the Old Testament and in the Bible. One of those today we're going to be starting kind of early in the scriptures in Genesis, chapter 17 with Abraham and Sarah. Now this is something we're going to look at a promise that God had made and something that he was teaching to Abraham.

And so we're going to read that in just a couple minutes. But I want you to understand that this life, this Christian life that God has for us, and I don't just mean this to sound in some cheesy kind of catch phrase way, but God has more for you than you've ever imagined possible. Whatever you think you experience in life or in life in Christ, whatever you think you've accomplished or wherever you think you've gotten to, God has so much more for you than you've ever known. I heard a preacher say that probably about 12, 13 years ago, and I heard him say it a couple times. It wasn't my preacher that I sat under.

It was somebody that was. He was a retired preacher. He was a guest preacher at my church that I had at the time. I heard him say this a couple times. It seemed like he enjoyed saying it quite a bit.

And it seemed like after a while, that was kind of the point of some of his messages, was that he got to this place where he just said, what I want you to hear is that God has more for you in this Christian life than you can ever imagine. So we're going to be looking at that specifically through the lenses or the motif of Advent. Advent was this coming hope that the Messiah would bring Advent was that this hope? We saw in the Bible Project video earlier in the service that the tension of waiting and the expectation of what was to come, blending that together with the hope that Israel had in the Messiah, that all the promises of God would come to fulfillment in that one person, and that when he showed up, that he would not only save the people of Israel from their sins, but that he would be a life, that he would be truly the hope of the world, and as such, that God has more plans for our lives than we could ever imagine. Aaron and I were speaking before service earlier and we discussed this idea that the Holy Spirit is the thing that fills us, the Spirit of God that fills us.

And that when we settle in this life and we just settle for things that are just kind of mundane. Oh, I'M saved. Oh, I'm going to heaven. I'm not trying to downplay the joy of heaven. I'm just saying when all we think about this Christian life on earth is that it's only about eternity and not about what God has for us today, we're missing out.

We're missing out on everything God has for us. And what he does have is more than we can imagine. So I'd like to invite you, as we turn to Genesis 17, I'd like to invite you to start beginning over the next few weeks, if you haven't already in your life, to dream big. Dream what God might have in store for you. Some of you might be saying, well, I've already lived a lot of exciting things.

I'm telling you, he still has more for you than what you thought of before. Because if you are in your human mind able to dream it up, don't you believe that God could do so much more than that? So let's look at Genesis 17. We're actually going to read the first 22 verses. Genesis 17, 1, 22.

A lot of this you might have heard before, and some of it might be like, what is going on? So we'll talk a little bit about that. Genesis 17 When Abraham, Abraham, or actually here, his name is still Abram. Later, God changes his name to Abraham here in this. In these verses.

So when we switch it through those names, that's what When Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, I am the sovereign God. Walk before me and be blameless. Then I will confirm my covenant between me and you, and I will give you a multitude of descendants. Abraham bowed with his face to the ground, and God said to him, as for me, this is my covenant with you. You will be the father of a multitude of nations.

No longer will your name be Abram. Instead, your name will be Abraham. Because I will make you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you extremely fruitful. I will make nations of you, and kings will descend from you.

I will confirm my covenant as a perpetual covenant between me and you. It will extend to your descendants after you, throughout their generation. I will be your go, and the God of your descendants after you. I will give the whole land of Canaan, the land where you are now residing, to you and your descendants after you, as a permanent possession. I will be their God.

Then God said to Abraham, as for you, you must keep the covenantal requirements I am imposing on you and your descendants after you, throughout their generations. This is my requirement that you and your descendants after you must meet. Every male among you must be circumcised. You must circumcise the flesh of your foreskin. This will be a reminder of the covenant between me and you throughout your generations.

Every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised. Whether born in your house or bought with money from a foreigner who is not one of your descendants, they must indeed be circumcised. Whether born in your house or bought with money. The sign of my covenant will be visible in your flesh as a permanent reminder. Any uncircumcised male who has not been circumcised in the blessed of Brooklyn will be cut off from his people.

He has failed to carry out my requirement. Then God said to Abraham, as for your wife, you must no longer call her Sarai. Sarah will remain. I will bless her and will give you a son to free her. I will bless her and she will become a mother of nations.

Kings of countries will come from her. Then Abraham bowed down and laughed.

Hundred years old and Sarah buried a child at the age of 90. Abraham said to God, O that Ishmael might live before you. Ishmael. By the way, Ishmael was the son that he had had through his wife's servant, lady named Hagar. We'll talk about that in a moment.

But Abraham said to God, O that Ishmael might live before you. Verse 19. God said, no, Sarah, your wife is going to bear you a son and you will name him Isaac. I will confirm my covenant with him as a perpetual covenant for his descendants after him. As for Ishmael, I have heard you.

I will indeed bless him, make him fruitful, give him a multitude of descendants. He will become the father of 12 princes and I will make him a great nation. But I will establish my covenant with tithes of Sarah will bear to you at this set time next year when he finished speaking with Abraham, God went up from him. Let's pray. God, we thank you for your word today as we dig into it, as we explore it.

Lord, we pray that your Holy Spirit would join us, that he would meet with us, that he would speak to our hearts and our minds and show us what it is that you have for each of us from your word today. Lead us and guide us in this study and in this message and also in our lives throughout the next few weeks as we explore everything that you have for us. Lord, may we know what it means to live out more than we could ever imagine as Christ fills us with his love with his life. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

So Abraham's story, if we look at that, Abraham's story started like this. We don't see the origins of him as far as his birth or his young adult life or anything like that. But as an older guy, God meets with him, he speaks to him, and he says, I want you to get up and move. Now, I know a couple of you had to move recently, a couple of you against your will, but how do you do such things to us? And so when you move, it's a lot of work.

It's a lot of work. And so you think, like, man, an older guy happened to pack up his family, his stuff, his belongings, his animals. I mean, they didn't just have. They had herds and they got to move all of that. It's not just like, call up two men in a truck and they take care of it.

Like, you're caravanning along, you live in tents, you have animals, you have to bring food to them. You have to do all this stuff. And like, we had a drive recently while we were out of town on vacation and driving back. Sometimes, just like being a few hours in the vehicle is rough, especially when you have a child that's not like a little bit fidgety and not happy with whatever the circumstances might have been. And we're thinking, oh, my goodness, it's just a few hours.

We can make it right. Like, we can survived it. It was difficult. It was touch and go for a little bit there, but we made it home. We're here, God is good, you know.

So Abraham is moving in stages, meaning he was journeying for a while and had to stop, sit down, tent for a little bit, and then kind of rest, get ready to go again. My generation is called the Oregon Trail generation now. Not that we traveled the Oregon Trail, but for those of you who are apparently just a few years either side of my age, there was this computer game we played in. We had these little Apple computers, and I think it was like an Apple 2D or something like that with the model. And that was how we learned computers, was on those things.

And we had this game called the Oregon Trails. Anybody ever played that? You were an educator, right? Like, yeah, okay. And so it was great.

And you would just, like, you had to use the keyboard. You didn't even have, like a mouse for it. You had to use the keyboard and a space bar and all these things. And it was just asking these choices that you had to make. You know, people that grew up Mostly in country or suburban households.

Like, how much food do you want to pile in your wagon to travel the Oregon Trail? You know, you could get bullets for feeding wild animals. And you should carry extra clothing and wagon axles and wagon tongues. Now, here's this river you've got across. It's five feet deep.

You think you should just go through it? I'm like, yeah, let's do it. You know? And I would always flip over the wagon because apparently that water was too deep. And we could have gone three days up to a bridge.

Then the Oregon Trail did build a bridge across the river. I don't understand why I'm supposed to be making these decisions. But we would just travel the Oregon Trail on this computer game with a black screen and green pixels. It was the best. But everybody always died of dysentery.

Somebody in your party will die of dysentery. To this day, I still don't know fully what dysentery is, but I know I've died of it a few times. And they would always give you two tones. You could write epitaph on the tombstones that nobody would ever see because it was just deleted. It wasn't like video games today, where the network, you know, where people around the world see it.

As soon as that game was over, it was gone. But my memory has those tombstones all along the Oregon Trail. And so, you know, if you push too fast, you know, you know, people start getting a little bit sickly. The animals are weak. You gotta find watering holes for them.

We gotta find food for the oxen that are pulling the carts and all this. You had to really think in this game, Abraham had the same thing, but in real life, in a lot bigger operations, he has the wealthy guy, he has lots of animals and people, and he's moving them. And they got to go in stage and moves and moves, and he goes in this big harp and finally ends up coming down into the land of Canaan. Crash. Loading through a lot of his story.

There's some things to go on there that he does with local people. He goes down to Egypt for a while. He comes back up. Eventually his nephew Lot separates off from him, goes to the land of Sodom and Gomorrah. There's a whole story there that we don't have time to get into today.

It's really interesting, though. And then Abraham, though, he finds himself here now when he's 75 years old, God promises that he's going to have a son. And he says that this son is going to Be a big deal, you know, this son is going to be one that many nations come from. Now Abraham's thinking soon in 75, but okay, you know, maybe we'll see. Well, time passes.

About a dozen years passed, and nothing has happened as far as this whole having a son came. Now, this is a lesson for me. When God promises something, when he gives you a promise, I want you to think that there's a time in your life. Is there a time in your life where God gave you promise? You can be thinking on that.

Is there a time where God gave you a promise and has that promise been fulfilled yet? Or are you still hopefully awakening the outcome of that, the fulfillment of that promise? And so Abraham, he kind of falters a little bit in his faith. Although interesting in Hebrews chapter 11, which we're supposed to look at, oddly enough, in our Bible study on Wednesday this week, if we get to it. I guess we didn't quite finish chapter 10 last time, but we'll see if we get there or not.

But it talks about these people that had this great faith. And they mentioned that Abraham never faltered in his faith. It's like, well, there was that whole thing where his wife said, hey, God said, we're going to have a son, but you don't have a son yet. So take my servant girl and have a son through her, and then I'll adopt that son as mine. And that way you're having a son.

We'll have a son together. And Abraham thinks, well, my wife said it's okay. So, you know, I'm just gonna leave with the servant girl. Fine, Sounds great. You know, it ended up not being a great idea, like it wasn't a great plan.

There's a lot of contention after that. Go figure. The younger, you know, younger foreign lady, she was distant servant, you know, the young foreign lady. And then his wife. And what did he have?

You know, they didn't like that too much. Later, Sarah says, we gotta get rid of her. She's like, hmm, but she's got my son. Fine, do whatever. So they drive her away.

Well, actually, she ran away. God meets up with her and says, hey, go on back. I'm gonna take care of you. I see you. That's a big moment in the story where God says to Hagar, the servant girls, he says, I see you.

I see what you've gone through. I see how you've been mistreated. I see how Sarah has done this to you. I see that this was never your plan for your life. But here you Are anyway.

But I see you, I see you in this. I will provide for you. I will take care of you. She comes back. She comes back home and she's there and she submits to her master Sarah.

And then eventually God shows up again and he says, okay, Abraham. Well, Abram, still for a moment, he said, okay, Abram. There was that whole thing there. You kind of fall to the lost faith. But don't worry, I, God, am still faithful.

I made this promise on OCU and I will fulfill it. He said, this time next year, your wife is going to bury you. A son. He says, okay. Now I know he's crazy.

I'm 99 years old. The first time it happened when I was 75. It seemed like an age as possible. You know, we've all seen some of those on like a billionaire kind of guy, you know. And then he finds his like 30 year old wife and she's like, I want a baby.

He's like, oh boy, I'm really old for this. But I really like having her around. So I guess, you know, we'll see. And so this is what's going on. But you know, God says, like, you're going to have a son.

He says, I'm almost 100. He's almost 90. Like this doesn't make sense, God, but okay. And finally, a year later, here's the son, Isaac being born. Now, Abraham had tried to bargain with God.

He thought, I know it's a lot of work raising a kid and I'd kind of be happy to just not go through that infant stages again. Like, I don't think we have the energy for that. And so he says, God, if only Ishmael, the son of Hagar, if only Ishmael could be the one who lives under your blessing. If only you could basically make him the son of the promise. And God said, that's not how it works.

I told you what I was going to do. You went around that and tried to do it your way. It didn't work so well. I'm still blessed that. By the way.

Have you ever had a moment in your life like that where you just kind of stepped out on your own? You didn't really listen to God and you think, I blew it, it's over. Have you ever done that? I guess you haven't been trying hard enough. If you haven't, you know, like we've all been there at some point where we say, okay, God, I asked you, I didn't hear an answer.

So I'm just going to go ahead with what I think is best. And sometimes I would give you that advice, because if you don't hear a clear no from God and it doesn't seem to be opposed to his will, then do that. But in this case, it's clear that Abram and Sarai were taking God's promise into their own hands. They were trying to make it happen by their own might and their own power. I never suggest to you to do that.

Nonetheless, God took to them in that moment and still chose to be a blessing through them. He chose to use Ishmael as a blessing. And so God did that. And he still honored that son. He didn't reject that son, but he did say that God still had his plan and that Abram and Sarai, who would become Abraham and Sarah, would birth this son who would be the one that God had chosen to bless not only their family and give them multiple descendants so that he would also use that son to be the one who is the blessing of nations.

And so, as such as that happens, Abraham is bombarding with God and says, just let him be the one. And God says, no, I'm going to bless you through your own son, Isaac. Now, God had made a covenant with Abraham. And that covenant was something that we don't understand covenants very well, by the way. In our society or our time, a covenant was not just a promise or a legal contract.

I mean, it was similar to legal contracts that we made, but it was usually a greater party and a lesser party making a covenant of peace with one another. And involved in that covenant was blessings that were spelled out that would be given from the greater party to the lesser party. So God being the greater party, making a covenant or a promise with Abraham that he would give him these blessings. One would be a son, the other would be that they would have land. Remember, he had moved out of his father's household, traveled in stages as he journeyed, didn't own anything but his possessions.

And now God says, I'll give you land. I'll give you a place to put down roots. I have that prayer in my life, like I live in a church parsonage. Thank you for that. I don't own any land, and I like the idea of owning land.

Someday I want to have a place where I can just say, this is my piece of ground. You know, there's just something about that. And so Abraham, he has this promise that you're going to not just have these tents, but you're actually going to own the land they sit on. You're going to be able to build roots here for your family, for your household, for your future. And God, in fact, says, this whole land is going to be yours.

I'm going to give it all to you. Because the people in the land of Canaan's land, they have not been worshipping God. They revealed himself to them. They gave to God. They did all these horrible, detestable things.

And God said, we will come again.

You'll have this land. And Abraham, he believed God. He took that on faith. Even though he had a hiccup along the way, he still took it on faith that God was going to answer that through the. To what he had promised.

And so as he had the promise that he would have offspring, that his offspring would be numerous, and that he would have land, there was also a little sub clause in there where God said, and one of your offspring will be a blessing to the entire world. Abraham was willing that it could be through Ishmael that that would happen. He was willing that through Ishmael that somebody would come along. That somehow maybe he's a good thing for the world. But God said no.

Through the descendants of Isaac, not only will your offspring be reckoned to them or attributed to you through them, but through one particular offspring you can expect more than you ever could imagine. Because there was this miraculous birth that Sarah had when she birthed Isaac. But later on, there would be another one. A young girl, not one who was advanced in age, young girl named Mary. And that he would have this miraculous verse that would be the ultimate fulfillment of that promise from hundreds or thousands of years ago to Abraham.

That through that descendant of this girl named Mary who was faithful to God. And she said, I am the Lord's servant. May it be unto me as ye have spoken, she gave birth to the one who would be the Messiah, the Savior of the world. I wonder about us today. See, we're not necessarily under that covenant that Abraham has.

We're not under the covenant that Abraham lives in, that we have to follow all those things. He went on for quite a few verses about the whole circumcision thing. And that's not the covenant that we live under. That's not anything that we must observe. And yet Jesus didn't tell us that there was a new covenant.

This is a covenant based in good sacrifice. This is when we partake in communion together, when we celebrate that meal together. What we're doing is we are taking into ourselves the mark or the sign of that covenant that Jesus Christ has. It's a superior covenant. It's A covenant that was designed not just for the descendants of Abraham, but for the entire world.

You can see that the sense that he wasn't going to undo anything from the old law and the law of Moses and the covenants that God had made, but that he was going to initiate a new covenant, a better covenant, one that would envelop anyone who would receive him as their Savior. And so, as we commemorate that by reliving the Lord's Supper in a small way every now and then, what we do, that is to say, this is a covenant that I impart. That Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of that covenant God had made with Abraham, that he was the one descendant that came through Isaac. That was going to be the blessing for the entire human race, for all who will be free of him. To those who believe in his name.

He's given us the right to become the daughter of God. And so we are adopted into God's family, and we're part of that new covenant that Christ has given us. And when we partake of communion, what we're doing is we're saying, this sign, this symbol, marks us as part of that covenant that God has had for us. So we celebrate that not only in communion, but also in Advent. As we look at the hope that we have, you see, we aren't just left to our own devices after we're saved.

Like, you have that moment of salvation where you say, okay, Lord, I recognize I'm a sinner. I recognize that. That Jesus died for me and that he offered me a new life. And that through that I have hope for the future, for eternity. The truth of the matter is that Jesus Christ offers us more than just that.

Again, I don't want to belittle eternity and say it's just some small thing. Praise God for that. Praise God for the eternity that we have in store. Maybe sometimes we don't sing enough about heaven. In this particular church, I watch services for a church that seems like every week.

That's all the songs they ever sing. It's a good old Baptist church in the building they have is talking about the hope that they have. Don't see enough smiles on our faces. We should get excited about it. If you don't have a smile on your face, maybe you don't have that hope.

And it's like, okay, I need. If you do need to know that hope, today is the day of salvation. As scriptures tell us. Today is the day that you can choose to walk in the salvation that Christ offers you. The things that God has in store for you beyond salvation, the thing beyond that moment when you receive Christ, he actually has power for your life.

He has help for your everyday. He wants to do things in you that you can't explain other than by saying, the Holy Spirit of God dwells in me. The scriptures tell us that our bodies are considered a temple of the Holy Spirit. Now, temples were something, you know, you would go to observe, worship acts or rituals for whatever deity those temples represented. But because it was considered that that temple was the dwelling place of that God or that deity.

Now many people put the hope falsely in God that was made up by human minds, but truly the God of Israel, the God that we worship, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit that we worship and we teach about and we preach about. You see, when God had his temple in Israel, it wasn't considered that that was the place where he dwelt. It was just considered the place that he met with the people. They could come there to meet with him, but they understood that God dwelt through the entire earth. Think about the guy Jonah, when he ran away from God and he was in the boat and everything's going crazy, and all these experienced sailors are fearing for their lives.

They're throwing over their cargo like that's their payday. They're just trying to get out with their life. That's all they care about at this moment. Jonah Isle in the bottom of the boat. And they said, jonah, what are you doing, man?

Get up and pray to your God. Maybe this. Maybe he'll take notice of us and do something. Oh, big storm. This is my fault.

I'm running away from my God. He's the God of the land and the sea. He created them. And they're like, what? Are you serious, dude?

Like, you're messing with that God. That sounds a lot more powerful than the local deity that I worship when I'm home at court. Because these sailors get a bad reputation sometimes. Sometimes it's justified. They're like, well, I left home.

My God is over there, and I take care of him when I'm home. But when I'm gone, I can do whatever I want when I'm away. Like, whatever port I'm in, I can have fun there and do anything I want, because my God doesn't see that. But, Jonah, your God sees all of it. Like, whoa, why would you do anything against that guy?

You see, God's dwelling is in the entire world. He created it. He sees it all. And so when they had the temple in Jerusalem that Solomon built the temple, wasn't the place where God dwelt. It was just the place he said, I will put my name on.

You can worship me there. You can bring sacrifices and offerings there. But I don't dwell in temples made by human hands. The earth is my throne. There are heavens and my throne.

The earth is my footstool. It says in the Psalms, you know, like, I don't need. I don't need this one local place to call home.

That's where the Holy Spirit resides within our midst. You see what God had promised through the coming offspring of Abraham, what God had promised through that one and through the blessings that Jesus would bring, namely the Holy Spirit. Because Jesus says, when I leave you, it's for your good, because then I can send the Holy Spirit. What God was doing through this whole process of what he had promised Abraham and Sarah, God was doing so much more than anybody could ever imagine. All they could imagine was that in one little place, there's a little d God, a little deity that's there, and they can just do some things, but that little God is not upset with them and hope that that's good enough and that they could go over here and they could do whatever they wanted.

But as long as they kind of honored the local gods, everything would be fine. What God had for us, for humanity is so much more than we ever could have understood. So with my mention for us today, I feel like you guys kind of understand that to some degree. But I want to tell you what God has. People who come to church every week, people who visit once in a while, people maybe just say, you know what?

I read the Bible and I watch these Christian videos and I do these things, whatever it might be that your Christian experience is, we kind of get settled into that so often when God is saying, I have so much more for you than what you ever understood. After a massage, the scriptures talk about. We got a couple verses. One is in John 14:12 is kind of saying like, hey, what you're going to do after I'm gone and the Holy Spirit fills me is more than what I've even done here, more than you can imagine. And as God continues filling us with his spirit, 2 Timothy 3:17 says that he equips us for every good work.

I think it's easy to just kind of read that and say, okay, no, every good work. Can you imagine what you're dead would be like if at every moment God was doing something good through you by the power of His Holy Spirit? That if everywhere you went, people just recognized or understood that this Person must be filled with the Spirit of God. Can you imagine that? And you might be standing on this side just thinking, I don't know if I want that.

I don't like being like the spotlight. I don't like being at the forefront of things. Don't worry about it. You see, the Holy Spirit, what he always does is he reflects the glory and praise back to the Father in heaven. So it won't be the focus on you when the Spirit of God fills you.

It won't put a spotlight on you. It will reflect the glory that is due to our Father in heaven. See, when you're filled with the Spirit of God and he doesn't just give you power for, you know, maybe we are in a time of trouble or a tough spot or a bad spot in life. He gives you the ability to help others along the journey of life, to lead them to God, to show them the way of salvation. The best way you can give anyone is to connect them with their Father in heaven through the death of his Son, Jesus Christ, who they have filled with the power and presence of the Holy Spirit of God.

So often we essentially choose not to do that. So often we're content with our decision, okay, God, I'm saved. Thank you so much for that. I can worship you in church. I can go about my week and listen to Christian music or whatever it might be and say, okay, God, thank you for that.

This is good. This is a good time, and say, I'm going to heaven when I die. Praise God for that. And we miss out on so much that God has for us. What he wants to do is fill it.

And again, as Karen and I were talking earlier before service, I think it's so relevant. Part of the problem with why we don't experience that is on this side of the equation. Too many people that have stood in too many pulpits, taught in too many Sunday school classrooms, whatever it might be, we've sold the store a little bit. We've been content to just scratch the surface of the Scriptures, tickle your ears just a little bit, tell you something that sounds good that you want to hear, and say, okay, now go and have a great week. Then we stand at the back door and people say, good message this morning, Pastor.

Good message this morning. Preacher John Wesley, when he would preach and people would say that to them, he would look them in the eye and he would say, so then how did you fare under the word today? Like, what did it do to intersect your life in such a way that it confronted who you are and changed who you are? What happened when you heard that message? Did you invite the Torac sermon?

Did you invite the spirit of God to convict you of anything that needed convicting to shore up any weak areas in your spiritual life, to equip you and show you what you need to live out that message? Or did you just say, okay, I'm going to sit there. I'm going to get through it. It's going to be about 30, 40 minutes, and then I can go see? How did you fare under the word?

Did you remember from earlier a promise that God has made to something that he said that he would do in your life or through you, something he would do for a relative who wasn't walking with Christ? Do you have that moment in your life where you can look back and say, God promised me this thing? My grandfather talked a lot about this. And I'll close with this. He had a story.

He actually wrote a whole book of their stories. And it's kind of neat. I appreciated him doing that. So we have a collection of them. When he talked about how before World War II, he had a promise that while he was going off the war, a man had promised him a job if he made it back.

If he made it back, Elias would have a job. He'd gotten married before he shipped out, and so he knew he had a wife and he would have a promise of a job. And he was looking forward to that. But God promised him he would make it home. God promised my grandfather, because I've got.

You're going to make it through this and you're going to come home. Now, when he did get home, a doctor told him they wouldn't have any children. But the four kids, they had proved that doctor wrong. And so I'm the grandchild of that blessing of God, you know. But my grandfather found himself in Papua New guinea as what they called, you know, not on the book, but what the men called these places.

200 people at a time would go to the front line to replace those with a defeat. And he died and been injured. And so he was waiting and waiting and hearing 200 more of those. And eventually he waited and he said, God, getting closer, getting closer to my number, what are you doing? He promised me God.

Then one day his number did get called. And about six or seven other guys that could get the exact number said, okay, God, I don't know what's going on, but these don't look good for me. And they load them up in the back of his truck and they don't Tell them where they're going, and they just head off and they drive for a way, however far they went, and they let him out and he's wondering, come on, what's going on? Why did. They did call seven of us, you know, a couple hundred, what's going on?

They all start talking about, like, well, what have you been doing? What have you been doing? They're trying to figure out if they have some kind of specialty or some kind of training or something that's in common. And finally they get told what they're going to do. They're going to work in supply first.

Like, if you ever watch Matthew, like, cleaner but without regret, you know, like, if you didn't watch math, you don't get it. Cleaner was crazy. You're trying to get a discharge, you know. Anyway, now that might be a lot more common in our military than it once was, but that's a different story. I'm the only one that watches anyways.

Okay, sorry. So anyway, my grandfather, according to the promise of God, he made it out, he made it home. We never had to see that combat because God had promised him that this would happen. The way my grandfather and my grandmother lived their lives after that, they would start out their morning in prayer. They would start out in the mornings in the scriptures.

They would use the Sunday school curriculum that had a daily reader that went with it. And they would go through that. They would spend time in prayer for their families as their kids grew up and moved out and got married and had grandkids for them. They would pray for each of us, sometimes by name, sometimes just for the whole family, whatever it might be. They would spend their days in that.

They would go off to work, and once they were retired, they would go off to work around the house and everything to be short of the project there. And they knew that whatever they had belonged to God. However, they could live to be a blessing for others, that as many days as they had on this earth that God was going to use that you too have that opportunity. You might not have had a big promise like Abraham and Sarah had. You might not have had a promise like my grandfather had about he would make it back from this seemingly hopeless war scenario.

But you might have had your own promise from God. And whatever that promise is, whatever that thing is, don't falter in your faith. God is bringing it to fruition. He's offering you more than you could ever imagine. I encourage you to show up the next few weeks.

Most of you do anyway. Don't miss a week when we look at what God is doing in our midst, I encourage you to ask, asking how he might bless you, how he might bless people through you. Pastor Kendall is going to come up.