Title: Start the genealogy of faith
Contents
Today I would like to talk about the genealogy of faith. I am a third generation Christian. My grandmother believed in Jesus first, and my father at first started dropping out of the church in terms of filial piety, but he served as an elder in a church for more than 30 years, and now I am the third generation. Our children are, by faith, four generations old. However, not all believers grew up in a family that believed in Jesus for the second or third generation.
It is a family we believed in when we were grandparents, but there are cases where the lineage of faith is shaken when we come to our parents' generation. Anyway, what we earnestly desire, and what God desires of us, is that descendants of faith and children of faith pour out through our homes and our lives. In today's worship service, I believe this, wish for this, and yearn for this, so that I can live as the father of faith.
The reason we say that we should have this wish is because of the promise God made to Abram in today's text. Abram had no ancestors of faith. My father is an idolater. He was a man who made a living by making and selling new images. One of Abram's ancestors was Shem. Shem was the son of Noah who served God the most, so God blessed Shem. However, the genealogy of faith did not go smoothly.
But today, in Genesis 15, God makes a covenant with Abram. This is a milestone in Abram's life. Hear from God's promise to make him the father of faith, and God's plan that a great number of God's children will come out of his family. When we say covenant, we use an abbreviation when we say word or promise. It means a promise made in the word. When we say the New Testament and the Old Testament, we mean the old covenant and the new covenant.
Among God's dispositions, when we say what we are so grateful for and thankful for, it is the disposition that fulfills what He said. God doesn't say this or that based on the circumstances. God does not change his words according to his own interests. This is God's faithfulness. God is not ignorant. Your words are kept even after a thousand years pass. Four thousand years have passed between Abram and us, but God's time calculation is different from ours.
Let's look at what promises God makes to Abram. In verse 1, God comes to Abram and appears in a vision. ‘In the dream’ is not a dream, it is a reality, but it shows the realm of God. But since God told him not to be afraid when he saw Abram, Abram was afraid of something and something.