[01:00:41:19 - 01:00:46:14]
Brenton
 Welcome back to Further. I am Brenton Grimm. Chris Carr, welcome back. How you doing?

[01:00:46:14 - 01:00:54:02]
Chris
 Pretty good. Trying to see if my voice is going to recover here from Sunday. So it's a little rough right now.

[01:00:54:02 - 01:00:55:14]
Brenton
 Yeah, why did something change this weekend?

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Chris
 Maybe a little bit.

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Brenton
 So yeah, I guess probably relevant to talk about. We launched our three services in Burlington this week. How'd it go?

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Chris
 I think it went great. Yeah, it hardly could have gone better, in my opinion. So it's a good start. And we'll see what the Lord wants to do. It was one Sunday, but we had a good representation, so to speak, at all three of the Burlington services. Danville service got off to a good start, new time. And Fort Madison had a great first Sunday of the first ministry year in that new facility. So it was great.

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Brenton
 And you're getting used to preaching three sermons in--

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Chris
 Well, I don't know if I'm getting used to it. But yeah, it was certainly a different experience. It was

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Chris
 honestly pretty exciting. And then there was the afternoon, which was a different story.

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Chris
 Yeah, so I'll leave it at a low. I'm happy to do it. Well, no, I'm just saying, it's just like people were asking, even after the third service. So it's like the height of the day really was that last service, and seeing all the people that were there. And it was great to be in person. So I love that. But then pretty much right after the

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Chris
 service gets over, then I can feel my energy starting to drain. Yeah, I bet. It was just a typical, but it's probably a little bit more this time.

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Brenton
 OK, well, so yeah, also this week we launched our Abraham series. And I guess it's just kind of an intro into this. You started in chapter 11,

[01:02:44:06 - 01:03:20:17]
Brenton
 but there's a lot that happens before this as well. But I appreciated that you gave some context to the Abraham story by going back to 11. But if we go just a little bit back a little bit more, I found it interesting the contrast between the story of Babel, which is the beginning of 11, and then the beginning of 12. So at Babel, the people say, let us make a name for ourselves. And then just a few verses later, when we get into the story of Abram,

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Brenton
 God says, I will make your name great. So what do you think is going on here in this kind of meta-narrative that might not be obvious?

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Chris
 Sure. One thing we have to understand is that Genesis is history, but

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Chris
 it's more than history. So it's not less than history. So historical Abraham is a historical figure. You'd be hard pressed to make a case that he's not.

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Chris
 As far as I know, any extra biblical evidence that Abraham existed. There's no other historical records. And it's unlikely that there would be, given how long ago it was, and just the kind of life that he lived with. It was a very nomadic life.

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Chris
 And not that there wasn't anything written down about his life outside of the Bible. Almost assuredly was.

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Chris
 But just given, again, the distance and the life that he lived, unlikely. But you'd be hard to argue, given what I mentioned, from Judaism and Islam and Christianity, the idea that this guy was just somebody-- he was made up. And it had that much influence that many people look to him. But Genesis is more than history. And what I mean by that is that

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Chris
 as the author wrote it, which

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Chris
 many people would believe to be Moses-- we don't know for sure, but it would seem that that's the most likely answer--

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Chris
 the Holy Spirit is inspiring him to write it in such a way to teach

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Chris
 truth.

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Chris
 And to teach this is what God's revealing about himself, humanity, and salvation, redemption.

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Brenton
 Well, and as an argument against beliefs in those days, right? I mean, that's the whole kind of creation account.

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Chris
 Yeah, I agree. It's a polemic-- It's a polemic-- Right, sure. And so

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Chris
 really, the quick answer to you is there's undoubtedly a direct-- this is intentional, that they want to make a name great for themselves. That's how the author records what the people of Babel are saying. OK, Babylon. Probably Babylon, actually.

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Chris
 Why it was-- the Babel means confusion, but it's probably the original Babylon.

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Chris
 And we'll make a name great. And then God says, I don't think so. And then he comes to somebody and says, I'm going to make your name great. And he's trying to teach about how the only way that people can come great is through God intervening in the story and through-- and ultimately, through faith in Him.

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Chris
 We see that

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Chris
 in the

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Chris
 beginning form of Abraham's faith, so to speak. We're going to see it much more clearly in the days ahead.

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Brenton
 Yeah. OK, yeah. That's good. I think it kind of serves as a nice little primer to this story.

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Chris
 Well, we can either try to make a name for ourselves, or we can

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Chris
 trust God, walk with Him, and allow Him to do it for us. Those are the two choices. There are no other choices. It's one or the other.

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Brenton
 Yeah.

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Brenton
 You described Abraham as a spiritual giant.

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Brenton
 And you said that if God can make a spiritual giant out of him, He can make one out of us, too. And that was kind of your thesis of the sermon.

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Brenton
 When you use that phrase, though, what are you hoping we hear? What are you hoping we understand by it? Are you thinking mainly of his influence, or how much faith he had, or his obedience? What aspect of

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Brenton
 his life are you hoping that we would grab onto?

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Chris
 Yeah. I think it's, first and foremost, the depth of his faith, which bore about, brought about his obedience. We really can't separate those two things. We saw in verse 4, Abraham went, as God had told him. And he had to have faith and trust in God's promise in order to-- he had to believe that God was going to carry through. And that really is his story. Later on, we're going to get to chapter 15.

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Chris
 In some ways, the height of the story, Abraham believed God, and he credited it to him, or counted it to him as righteousness. He believed, he believed, he believed. And Hebrews 11, the great

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Chris
 chapter of faith, heroes of the faith, what's at the center there, it's faith. And so it's faith that led to obedience. And Abraham--

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Chris
 I could have come at it this way. Abraham is the only person in the scripture that's called friend of God.

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Chris
 Three different times, he's called friend of God. And so that's his relationship with God. And so this is really about spiritual giants, another way of saying how we can find ourselves to be a friend of God. And that doesn't mean that we're necessarily going to have much influence at all.

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Chris
 Certainly, all of us are going to comparative to Abraham's influence. He's like, none of us are going to come close. That doesn't mean that we can't have the depth of faith and the life of obedience and a deep, deep relationship with God. And that's really what makes a spiritual giant. And

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Chris
 if you want to ask who the spiritual giants are at Harmony Bible Church,

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Chris
 we would-- or I would probably begin by saying they're probably the people that we may notice many times the least.

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Chris
 Probably it's off the list. Some of our older widows, ladies who've been faithful, and they just pray and pray and pray. And sometimes that's all that at this point in their life because of their circumstances that they can contribute. And I say that's all. But that's more than maybe any of the rest of us, because they're just in faith, trusting the Lord. And all of this fruit that God is bearing through our church, it's easy to look at

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Chris
 our leaders and the staff and all that kind of stuff and say, God is using us.

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Chris
 But it probably could be argued that he's using-- he's working even more through the faith of people who are very much behind the scenes. So we don't have to be visible or have a ton of human-- we would count as human influence to be a spiritual giant. That's why I say everybody-- anybody can be a spiritual giant.

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Brenton
 Yeah. No, I think that's a very helpful clarification. Because I think when I think of-- and probably wrongly, but when I think of that term, I think of Abraham or, I don't know, Billy Graham, modern era. And so yeah, I just think it's so important to realize that. And I love your example of the widow, that they

[01:10:38:03 - 01:10:40:10]
Brenton
 could be the most faithful among us.

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Chris
 Yeah. And I say widow, and I'm really doing a disservice to our widowers, because we have quite a few men in similar situations who are very godly and serve the church so well, and by prayer, and by other means as well. So I think sometimes we should give recognition to widows, but I think the widowers sometimes get left out too. And I don't want to do that.

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Brenton
 There does seem to be two kind of ditches or dangers that we could run into here.

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Brenton
 There is the side of being too content to do too little for the kingdom, right? Or on the other side of that, believing that faithfulness should always result in greater influence or recognition. How should we think about

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Brenton
 godly ambition without confusing

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Brenton
 the significance of visibility or recognition? How should we think about that?

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Chris
 Yeah.

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Chris
 It's tough, because

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Chris
 faithfulness does not necessarily equate into influence or impact. And there's many missionaries who've been faithful to serve, and they've gone decades, if not nearly their entire ministry seemingly, without bearing any visible fruit.

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Chris
 Almost always there is fruit born, even a lot of times after they're gone or that they didn't see. But really what we're called-- we can't actually put fruit on our own.

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Chris
 So what we're called to is faithfulness. God's responsible for the

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Chris
 influence or impact.

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Chris
 And I do think there's a difference between influence, impact, and recognition. Yeah, that's fair. If we're doing it for recognition, that's always wrong. But if I want

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Chris
 and I desire God to use me for his kingdom purposes and for my life to matter, like for the kingdom, I don't think that that's a bad thing. As long as it's not about my life mattering, it's more about I want to see it being used to further his kingdom.

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Chris
 Because I do think

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Chris
 it's very problematic if we have no ambition at all.

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Chris
 And Paul actually talks about my ambition. He uses that term. I have an ambition.

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Chris
 I want to have influence. He even uses that terminology. And so we should want to have influence. We should have an ambition for our lives to be used and for the Lord. It's just, again, for me-- and I have to battle with this all the time. But for me, it's like

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Chris
 good--

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Chris
 God's given me that really fire and passion. But I got to be careful that it's not about

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Chris
 that. It's about-- and again, I regularly check myself.

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Chris
 It's even for our church. Do-- and I talk about this all the time. Probably some people think almost every week. But it's like, hey, the Lord's blessing, we want to keep moving forward. We want to keep reaching people. And we want to keep

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Chris
 celebrating all that God is doing. Yes, it's just-- you've got to be so careful that it's really for Him and for people's sake. It's not so the church

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Chris
 gets a greater name or even worse. I get a greater name or people know me or whatever, or think highly of me.

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Chris
 So it's something we just got to-- it's not either or. Yeah. Right?

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Chris
 And we just got to-- I think humility is just the important part is don't-- and as I go back to this all the time, you've heard me say it so many times, as Romans 12, don't think yourself more highly than you have to think, but think with sober judgment. And that's in the context of gifts. So God's given us gifts. He's given us gifts. So we should use them and say, OK, I am gifted, but by God, for God.

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Brenton
 Yeah. Now, what you brought up earlier is really interesting. I think that we can become really pragmatic in the way that we serve. And just the example of a faithful missionary that hasn't seen a lot of fruit. Is that being just as faithful? Is that having as much faith as someone that is producing a lot of fruit? Like,

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Brenton
 I don't know. I think that it could be easy to be in that position and kind of look out and be like, well, maybe I should move on to something else. Yeah. I don't know.

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Chris
 What's also-- if I can complicate things for a minute. There is also this thing is

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Chris
 part of being faithful is

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Chris
 working hard and doing a good job. And

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Chris
 it's not just simply showing up. Sometimes people think faithfulness is like we've-- and showing up and being present or whatever. It's also like, is that the best way to do ministry? For example, being faithful for me is not simply about getting up on Sunday and preaching every Sunday. Actually, the faithfulness is more involved than what happens

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Chris
 Wednesday, Thursday, and sometimes Friday, Saturday, in preparation.

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Chris
 And so that's where a lot of churches

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Chris
 and pastors are-- yeah, they've been at it and they've been doing it, but they're not actually doing it well. And we should seek to give our best and to do things well. That's part of faithfulness, too.

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Brenton
 The other side of this question, what you had said is that

[01:17:07:19 - 01:17:24:06]
Brenton
 if God can use Abram, he can use us. Right. So what are the things that you see in our own backgrounds that we tend to assume disqualify us from being used significantly by God?

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Chris
 Well, the most obvious answer here is just sin

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Chris
 and

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Chris
 decisions, choices that we've made.

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Chris
 And I think that's at the very top of the list. I think also disqualifies us is we don't oftentimes see ourselves-- we do the comparison game. And so you take a Billy Graham, well, I'm not Billy Graham. Or I'm not talented. I'm not gifted. Or I should have gone to college. Or I should have handled my money better. Or we think that

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Chris
 decisions that we've made that haven't necessarily been sin, but just poor choices. Or sometimes we think it's our spouse, this person that we're married to, that maybe disqualifies us because

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Chris
 they're not supportive or our marriage isn't good.

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Chris
 Just a whole host of things. I'm not very smart.

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Chris
 I

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Chris
 don't have a lot of energy.

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Chris
 Just a whole host of things.

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Brenton
 Yeah. So I mean, it's obviously a hard question answer without knowing what that is. But generally, is that a

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Brenton
 ignore it and just do something?

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Chris
 Yeah, I don't think ignore is probably the wrong answer. But I think what happens a lot of times is we get focused on us.

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Chris
 Like we're too focused on what we have done or haven't done or what we have or don't have or what instead of on God and his ability to use--

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Chris
 again, Abraham-- and you keep saying Abraham, which I probably should be saying at this point in the story because that's true. But I don't want to continually go back and forth. He just wasn't--

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Chris
 he was not a candidate for this, for what we in our modern day think would be a guy that-- You wouldn't hire him as a pastor. Right. A, he wouldn't have hired him as a pastor. And then B, he repeatedly does things that would have gotten fired as a pastor. And again, I'm not trying-- it's not that those things are OK or yeah, we minimize that because that's an error too. It's just that

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Chris
 we

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Chris
 have, I think, a really wrong view of what qualifies us. God qualifies us. We don't qualify ourselves.

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Brenton
 Yeah.

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Brenton
 Yep. OK. We'll move on. Paul says in Galatians 3-- and you brought this up on Sunday-- that when God told Abraham, in you shall all the nations be blessed. He was preaching the gospel beforehand to Abraham.

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Brenton
 And this is, I think, a topic that probably came up when we went through Romans. But what does Paul mean by that? Like how much of what we call the gospel today would Abraham have actually understood?

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Chris
 This is a little bit of conjecture. I don't think we can fully say. It would appear that

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Chris
 probably it's a progressive understanding.

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Chris
 The

[01:21:08:14 - 01:21:16:00]
Chris
 story of Abraham doesn't end with taking Isaac up the mountain, and there's the God providing the ram, and his son, and all of that. But I

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Chris
 don't think it's a conjecture to say that Abraham understood the gospel a lot more by the time we get to that than he did here in Genesis chapter 12.

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Chris
 I really think it mostly comes down to this offspring thing,

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Chris
 is that in order for Abraham to--

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Chris
 God makes a lot of different promises, but

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Chris
 at the bottom of it all is Abraham had to believe God that he was going to provide an offspring to him. Without an offspring,

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Chris
 none of this stuff ultimately is going to come true.

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Chris
 And

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Chris
 so we know from the New Testament that the offspring is-- it's not offsprings, it's offspring. And it was initially going to be Isaac, but ultimately it's pointing to Christ. And so he has some limited understanding. He doesn't--

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Chris
 the cross, the resurrection, I don't think there's any way that he really had any inkling of exactly what's going to happen there. Certainly

[01:22:24:22 - 01:22:27:06]
Chris
 not in Genesis 12. Again, by the time we get to

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Chris
 taking Isaac up to the mountain, Hebrews 11 actually tells us he believed that God could raise him from the dead. That's what we're told. He believed that.

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Chris
 And figuratively he did get Isaac back from the dead. So

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Chris
 God made some inroads. He's got some understanding. Again, he was believing that God was going to provide

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Chris
 what he needed. Yeah. Trying to come through on his promise.

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Brenton
 I think

[01:23:03:10 - 01:23:18:08]
Brenton
 it's hard to report where we're at now in the New Covenant back into the Old Covenant. But as we talk about the object of our faith now is Jesus, right? That is what justifies us.

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Brenton
 Would you say that for him the object of his faith was the promise of looking forward? Like how-- yeah. Does that make sense?

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Chris
 Yeah.

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Chris
 Again, we're getting ahead of ourselves. But Genesis 15, God makes a promise. You know,

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Chris
 takes it out outside and says, look at the sky. You see the stars. And so saw your offspring be. And then it says, verse 6, chapter 15, Abraham believed God and he counted him as righteousness. And that's Paul Paul's argument in Romans in terms of justification by faith, is that when we believe in faith in God's promise,

[01:24:05:17 - 01:24:12:20]
Chris
 that we are made righteous with God. Now for us, we can look back at the cross and the resurrection. And we can

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Chris
 see. We can look back at Christ. Abraham and people in the Old Testament had to look forward to Christ. They had a much less clear picture of that, of the Messiah.

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Chris
 But they did have to trust that God was going to provide, like he did again. I could keep going back to a lamb. He was going to provide a sacrifice. He was going to provide a substitute.

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Chris
 And somewhere along the line, Abraham

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Chris
 had a much, probably greater understanding of that than we might think at the

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Chris
 initial basis.

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Brenton
 In verses 2 and 3,

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Brenton
 God promises to bless Abraham.

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Brenton
 Sorry, Abraham. Make him a great nation. Make his name great. And bless all the families of the earth through him. In your sermon, you discussed the more positive view of what this is actually meaning. You brought us to Galatians 3. But you left out some of the controversy that surrounds this. And I would love to bring it in.

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Chris
 Okay.

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Brenton
 These verses are often discussed, and more recently in connection with physical descendants of Abraham. So that would mean the people of Israel.

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Brenton
 And sometimes like a modern claim of Zionism today. How should we understand who these promises are actually for? Was there a fulfillment then and a fulfillment now? How would you kind of parse these out?

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Chris
 So originally God's promising, don't...

[01:25:56:09 - 01:26:06:09]
Chris
 Well, actually here, initially he just says, "Go to the land I will show you." Then he shows him the land of Canaan. So like initially he's promising

[01:26:07:22 - 01:26:16:11]
Chris
 to his descendants. Actually Abraham wasn't actually promised that. He never actually got it. He never received it. But his descendants actually do.

[01:26:20:18 - 01:26:29:03]
Chris
 That's the story of Joshua and into the promised land. So there's an initial fulfillment, but there's also

[01:26:30:23 - 01:26:35:19]
Chris
 that the land when Christ comes then includes the world.

[01:26:37:12 - 01:26:45:00]
Chris
 Right? So it's no longer in terms of the land and it's the world because the Gentiles are

[01:26:46:13 - 01:26:53:05]
Chris
 brought into it. And it moves from a physical location

[01:26:54:07 - 01:26:56:01]
Chris
 to really more of

[01:26:57:05 - 01:27:09:18]
Chris
 a spiritual or all the nations are blessed. That verse three, all the nations are blessed. And we know then eventually that there'd actually be a further fulfillment in where the whole world is

[01:27:11:07 - 01:27:20:21]
Chris
 renewed. So there's really kind of different context there depending upon what period of redemptive history we are talking about.

[01:27:20:21 - 01:27:26:20]
Brenton
 Okay. So I guess when you get down to the meat of it, usually verse three...

[01:27:26:20 - 01:27:32:21]
Chris
 Let me say this. What I just said, not everybody, this is where we get in. There's a lot of different views, a lot of different

[01:27:34:05 - 01:27:37:10]
Chris
 opinions or interpretations, I guess I should say. But

[01:27:38:18 - 01:27:46:11]
Chris
 I actually think fairly strongly what I've just laid out is actually what the scripture teaches.

[01:27:46:11 - 01:28:12:07]
Brenton
 Yeah. So yeah, I guess to get down to like, what is like the practical implications of this, one way that that's used is to say that when we bless the descendants of Israel, right? We bless the Jewish community, then we'll be blessed. Do you see that as an accurate reading of that scripture?

[01:28:12:07 - 01:28:15:06]
Chris
 Well, okay. So

[01:28:18:08 - 01:28:18:20]
Chris
 again,

[01:28:20:06 - 01:28:29:21]
Chris
 this can be very controversial, as you've already mentioned. I think it is an important thing for us to understand.

[01:28:31:10 - 01:28:35:11]
Chris
 God's promises to the nation of Israel are...

[01:28:37:04 - 01:28:39:20]
Chris
 There's promises to Abraham and

[01:28:41:13 - 01:28:58:03]
Chris
 we gotta make sure that we understand that not all the promises to Abraham are the promises to Israel and certainly not to the modern day Israel. Because God's promises when they are to Israel are to believing Israel, like the ones who are going to

[01:29:00:04 - 01:29:06:09]
Chris
 trust in him, follow him. And ultimately they're fulfilled in Christ. And here's the way we knew that because in Galatians chapter three,

[01:29:07:10 - 01:29:13:23]
Chris
 Paul actually says when in Genesis 12, seven, when it says offspring, it's actually not...

[01:29:15:03 - 01:29:34:15]
Chris
 It literally says this, not offspring, offsprings, but offspring, which who is Christ? Like the promises are ultimately find their fulfillment in Christ and Paul says then in 1 Corinthians, all God's promises are yes in him. Paul says in Romans

[01:29:38:03 - 01:29:47:01]
Chris
 that a Jew is not simply one outwardly, but is one of the heart. It's a matter, like circumcision is a matter of the heart. And so

[01:29:48:04 - 01:29:49:04]
Chris
 to equate

[01:29:50:15 - 01:29:53:02]
Chris
 modern day Israel a secular state,

[01:29:54:04 - 01:29:55:08]
Chris
 which almost

[01:29:56:23 - 01:30:03:06]
Chris
 completely has rejected the Messiah Christ and to say that the promises are in effect for them,

[01:30:04:06 - 01:30:10:08]
Chris
 I think we have a really hard time showing that to be the case in scripture.

[01:30:11:13 - 01:30:13:08]
Chris
 So that doesn't mean

[01:30:14:15 - 01:30:20:02]
Chris
 that we shouldn't understand that God does,

[01:30:21:05 - 01:30:27:04]
Chris
 there is a special place for Israel in redemptive history and in history.

[01:30:28:08 - 01:30:29:10]
Chris
 And that

[01:30:30:17 - 01:30:35:02]
Chris
 God has had in some ways his special hand of blessing on them.

[01:30:36:21 - 01:30:44:07]
Chris
 And I think we can even in some ways see that today. Yet we can also see if we're honest that God also has a special hand of judgment on them.

[01:30:45:14 - 01:30:55:17]
Chris
 You go back to AD 70, we talk about the various things that have happened between that. And I wanna be really careful there, but

[01:30:58:05 - 01:31:03:04]
Chris
 too much is given, much is required and these things here. Now

[01:31:04:08 - 01:31:06:08]
Chris
 in the end though, I do wanna say that,

[01:31:07:08 - 01:31:07:14]
Chris
 like

[01:31:08:16 - 01:31:10:23]
Chris
 I personally believe that

[01:31:12:10 - 01:31:37:08]
Chris
 because of what Paul says in Romans 11 that God still has plans for the nation of Israel that are yet to be unfolded. And that at some point in history, there is going to be a significant harvest of Jewish people who are gonna come to faith in Jesus Christ. But at the end of the day,

[01:31:41:18 - 01:31:49:10]
Chris
 a Jewish person will only be in heaven

[01:31:51:00 - 01:32:02:14]
Chris
 through faith in Christ, not through their national heritage, just like the Gentiles are. And we have to read our Bibles really, really carefully and be careful

[01:32:04:00 - 01:32:05:10]
Chris
 that we don't allow

[01:32:08:09 - 01:32:20:16]
Chris
 sometimes incorrect interpretations and other maybe influences to lead us to think things or believe things that the Bible really doesn't teach. So,

[01:32:22:00 - 01:32:23:13]
Chris
 yeah, go ahead.

[01:32:23:13 - 01:32:27:16]
Brenton
 Yeah, I guess just one kind of follow-up clarification because you,

[01:32:30:03 - 01:32:49:16]
Brenton
 there would be accusations of a position that you laid out of kind of this pejorative term of replacement theology, where the church has now replaced Israel. Israel has faded away and now it's the church. How would you address that?

[01:32:49:16 - 01:33:10:18]
Chris
 Yeah, I think it's a strong man argument that people throw around the terminology that they do with other things to say that kind of what I laid out is saying that the church has replaced Israel. I don't believe that that's true, but I do believe that there's only ever been one people of God.

[01:33:12:12 - 01:33:18:22]
Chris
 And we could go into a long discussion about why that has been, but I think Abraham's story is actually going to help

[01:33:20:11 - 01:33:24:09]
Chris
 to prove it. And we take about what Paul says in Galatians 3 that,

[01:33:26:00 - 01:33:31:14]
Chris
 and I actually quoted this verse, that those of us who have faith are sons of Abraham.

[01:33:33:05 - 01:33:38:23]
Chris
 Who are the true sons of Abraham? The true sons of Abraham are those who have faith in Jesus Christ. That's right,

[01:33:40:06 - 01:33:57:14]
Chris
 the scripture preached the gospel to Abraham in you shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And Paul says there, that's Christ, that's Christ. All the families were blessed. And so there's only ever been one people of God. The Jewish people,

[01:33:58:16 - 01:34:25:23]
Chris
 Abraham's physical descendants have a unique role in that, unique place in that. There's no doubt about that. They were trusted with the oracles. Right, right, Paul talks about this in Romans. And I believe that there will be a day where there'll be a great, I'm gonna say this again, just because I wanna make sure people don't mishear me, there will be a great end gathering of physical descendants of Abraham who are,

[01:34:28:00 - 01:34:44:18]
Chris
 they are grafted back in as Paul talks about in Romans chapter 11, okay? Like they've been broke, at least they've been broken off. Some of them are gonna be grafted back in, but not all of them. So just being Jewish does not make you a son of Abraham.

[01:34:45:19 - 01:35:06:07]
Chris
 A son of Abraham is someone who has faith in Jesus Christ. And that's really the whole point in some ways of Genesis chapter 12 and much of Abraham's story. Yeah, great. So should we have concern for the state of Israel? Absolutely, because they have, you know, God,

[01:35:07:08 - 01:35:16:07]
Chris
 they do have a special place in the heart of God. I think that that's clear. They have a special place in the future of what God's gonna do in the world. They are the ones through whom the Messiah

[01:35:17:08 - 01:35:25:06]
Chris
 came, all of those things. But I don't think we can look at the state of Israel now, which is a secular state in rebellion against God, and just

[01:35:26:08 - 01:35:29:15]
Chris
 unreservedly support everything that they do because they

[01:35:31:09 - 01:35:32:18]
Chris
 are called the state of Israel.

[01:35:34:08 - 01:35:34:22]
Brenton
 All right,

[01:35:35:22 - 01:35:56:09]
Brenton
 we'll wrap up on this one, but it could take a little time still. So God tells Abram to go to the land that I will show you, which means Abram obeys without a complete picture of where obedience will lead. That is very different from the way that most of us prefer to make decisions.

[01:35:57:15 - 01:35:58:12]
Brenton
 And, you know,

[01:35:59:19 - 01:36:08:21]
Brenton
 how much clarity should Christians expect before obeying a call from God or what they perceive as a call from God?

[01:36:10:06 - 01:36:10:21]
Chris
 Well,

[01:36:12:07 - 01:36:13:04]
Chris
 yeah, I mean,

[01:36:16:07 - 01:36:17:17]
Chris
 we gotta start with,

[01:36:20:08 - 01:36:26:03]
Chris
 God's call is first and foremost, a call into a relationship with Himself. Sure.

[01:36:27:04 - 01:36:28:09]
Chris
 And so,

[01:36:29:17 - 01:36:29:17]
Chris
 you

[01:36:31:01 - 01:36:34:09]
Chris
 know, sometimes people will say, do I have to

[01:36:36:04 - 01:36:50:06]
Chris
 stop doing this or start doing this? In order to become a Christian, like do I have to stop dating my boyfriend or girlfriend or stop living with them? Do I have to stop having sex? Do I have to stop smoking or drinking or

[01:36:52:12 - 01:36:57:11]
Chris
 quit my job or quit doing this or whatever? And the answer to that is,

[01:36:58:14 - 01:37:00:00]
Chris
 in some ways is no.

[01:37:01:01 - 01:37:19:23]
Chris
 Okay, because we're not saved by what we do. But on another hand, if we're like, I'm only going to respond to God's call if I have a guarantee of like, I will if I don't have to do this or I don't have to do that. Okay, then that's not,

[01:37:21:07 - 01:37:27:07]
Chris
 that's just not responding to the call. Abraham's story proves that it's like, God says, you know,

[01:37:28:20 - 01:37:38:18]
Chris
 go to the land, I'll show you. And that's kind of the whole repeated thing over and over again. He's like, just go, you know, go, go. I'll show you, I'll show you, I'll show you. I'll show you later, I'll show you later, I'll show you later.

[01:37:40:05 - 01:37:51:11]
Chris
 And Abraham never even in the end, he never even arrives physically at any of those places, but he arrived spiritually. And that's what's the important point is. And so

[01:37:52:23 - 01:37:53:14]
Chris
 I think,

[01:37:55:12 - 01:37:56:16]
Chris
 yeah, I mean, I don't,

[01:37:57:19 - 01:38:18:13]
Chris
 I don't think we need a ton of clarity on all of the right steps and what's going to happen next. If we demand that, then we're not really responding to it. We're not really trusting because you only, you can only trust, you know, in a promise that's not yet fulfilled. You don't have to, if I already have a promise that's fulfilled, I don't have to trust, I already got it.

[01:38:18:13 - 01:38:20:08]
Brenton
 Yeah, yeah.

[01:38:21:23 - 01:38:28:09]
Brenton
 I guess just on the topic of calling, there's a ton of unhelpful teaching on this issue

[01:38:29:16 - 01:38:42:00]
Brenton
 about, you know, how to discern a call from God. Could you just give us an overview of, you know, what you think is a biblical view on the calling for our lives, what God wants us to do in our lives?

[01:38:43:06 - 01:38:43:21]
Chris
 Sure.

[01:38:47:04 - 01:38:52:07]
Chris
 You're talking about what, like, job or direction?

[01:38:52:07 - 01:39:15:01]
Brenton
 Yeah, I mean, it could be, I mean, when we look in the story of Abraham, right? Like he had a choice whether he was going to obey that or not, but he also had direct revelation from God. We don't have that direct revelation from God today. And so how should we kind of think about when God is calling us into something?

[01:39:15:01 - 01:39:15:18]
Chris
 Yeah.

[01:39:18:00 - 01:39:18:15]
Chris
 Well,

[01:39:20:22 - 01:39:24:05]
Chris
 Proverbs says, "Delight yourself in the Lord "and he will give you the desires of your heart."

[01:39:25:12 - 01:39:28:05]
Chris
 And I think the right interpretation of that passage means

[01:39:29:18 - 01:39:33:18]
Chris
 I don't know if it was Augustine or Luther who said, "Love God and do as you please."

[01:39:34:22 - 01:39:36:15]
Chris
 And now, okay,

[01:39:37:17 - 01:39:49:17]
Chris
 further clarification, which means is like if your desire is, "I wanna love God and I wanna please God," then you can trust that what you desire to do is going to be

[01:39:50:18 - 01:40:14:18]
Chris
 what God wants you to do. Now, can we ever be 100% sure of that? No, because our hearts can deceive us and all those kind of things. But the thing is like sometimes we so focused on what it was God calling me to do that we're not focused on. I just want to please him. Like I wanna please him and my heart is seeking to love him and to pursue him.

[01:40:16:01 - 01:41:04:12]
Chris
 So I think this is where we need wisdom. This is why Proverbs is so important. Like it's a very overlooked part of the Bible. It's like there's a lot of wisdom in there about how do we make decisions. Ecclesiastes is another wisdom literature, super, super important. And we need wisdom and we need a sermon. And James tells us if we lack wisdom to pray for it and God will give it to us, we need to have people in our lives who can help to speak to us truthfully and graciously and give us counsels to that. And we need to spend time in prayer. But we also need to recognize that a lot of times God's will is more of a, like there's a circle. Like there's a lot of things that we can do and not exactly just one, like one direct thing

[01:41:05:18 - 01:41:06:02]
Chris
 there.

[01:41:07:19 - 01:41:19:22]
Chris
 And I think we also, if I could just help people to take the pressure off is like God's also gracious. And like a lot of times he uses our poor

[01:41:22:06 - 01:41:38:19]
Chris
 choices or maybe even sometimes we make a decision for the wrong reasons or kind of like, okay, looking back, was that the best idea? Like a whole story I've shared this before, like how I got into this pastoral ministry came about because

[01:41:40:18 - 01:41:47:12]
Chris
 even I made a move that I thought was what the Lord wanted us to do. She didn't wanna do it.

[01:41:48:17 - 01:41:51:15]
Chris
 I didn't really know that she didn't wanna do it, but

[01:41:53:09 - 01:42:37:09]
Chris
 I was thinking the Lord was leading this this way and this is where I was gonna go with my life. It very clearly wasn't like, I never thought that I would be a pastor or certainly never thought I'd be here doing what I'm doing here. But the Lord used that like, he changed our direction and he used a, what I would look like as a, maybe a the wrong decision at seemingly the wrong decision at a time to get us where he wanted us to go. And I mean, just to use everybody to encourage him in there. And so sometimes I think we overthink it, we stress this too much, but it is more like, okay, am I seeking out under the Lord? Am I listening to wise counsel? Am I following all the clear Bible, the biblical direction here in all of this?

[01:42:38:13 - 01:42:43:01]
Chris
 And then we gotta trust in the Lord's grace.

[01:42:44:11 - 01:42:47:23]
Brenton
 Okay, there was a submitted question that I'd like to get to.

[01:42:49:19 - 01:43:00:15]
Brenton
 There's two different questions in here. One, you can probably answer quickly. She said, would Genesis 12 be considered the first biblical call to missions?

[01:43:01:15 - 01:43:10:22]
Brenton
 Yes. Okay. If so, what significance does that calling have within the larger story of Scripture and how does it apply to the church?

[01:43:10:22 - 01:43:17:03]
Chris
 How about I answer that question this Sunday in the sermon, so I plan to do that.

[01:43:17:03 - 01:43:36:12]
Brenton
 Okay, and I wanna just put kind of some practical bones on what you were just talking about with calling. So she said, and how does someone discern their personal calling from God when they feel drawn toward two very different ministries that are on opposite sides of the scale? So, you know, she goes on to explain that maybe she's being affirmed in both, she's been

[01:43:38:06 - 01:43:43:22]
Brenton
 gifted in both. How should someone in that situation tend to think about that?

[01:43:44:23 - 01:43:45:15]
Chris
 Well,

[01:43:47:01 - 01:43:53:19]
Chris
 this is a little unfair, I guess, because I know the young lady who submitted this question. So,

[01:43:55:17 - 01:43:57:05]
Chris
 but I do think

[01:43:58:08 - 01:44:00:23]
Chris
 a lot of times it's like what doors does the Lord open?

[01:44:04:07 - 01:44:06:15]
Chris
 It's, you know, and

[01:44:07:17 - 01:44:24:18]
Chris
 what, like, is he gonna give me the opportunity here? Is he gonna give me the opportunity here? Or maybe neither, maybe it's wait, like, and sometimes this is like we're in waiting period, it's like we think we're like, we're going nowhere, but God's doing a work in our hearts there. And so,

[01:44:26:01 - 01:44:45:02]
Chris
 and the great thing is, is this is a perfect example, is you could go the one way and it could be redirected at some moment. It's like it's not the one decision, like this is a lifetime and this is what it's gonna be forever, and in some ways, like this is what I'd like to tell people, what's the next

[01:44:46:05 - 01:44:52:16]
Chris
 step in front of you? Sometimes we try to think like two or three steps down the road or what about five years or 10 years or whatever now,

[01:44:54:01 - 01:45:07:00]
Chris
 hey, what's God put place in front of you? What's your opportunities? What's your passions and what's your counsel? What are people directing you to? And then, okay, what's the next

[01:45:08:05 - 01:45:14:10]
Chris
 step? Because as we're gonna see with Abraham, God doesn't reveal two steps down the road to him.

[01:45:15:23 - 01:45:24:05]
Chris
 He's just like, go to the slayer. And then there'll be the next thing that God leads him to, so.

[01:45:24:05 - 01:45:26:01]
Brenton
 Yeah, all right.

[01:45:26:01 - 01:45:43:15]
Chris
 Because we wanna, this is a real, we wanna have it all, we wanna know it all, right? Like we would just want, we want to know what this is gonna be. Well, God doesn't oftentimes, hardly ever, I think, tell us what's gonna happen two years from now. It's like, here's what I want you to do next.

[01:45:44:17 - 01:45:51:04]
Brenton
 Okay, all right, thanks Chris. If you have any questions, ask at furtherpodcast.com and we'll talk to you next week.

[01:45:52:06 - 01:45:54:04]
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