Good morning! If you made it to this blog, thanks for reading! I hope to post here regularly (once a week) to let Long Green members and potential visitors know what to expect as far as music and worship. This way, you can be better prepared to join us in worship. I hope to give both logistical and spiritual thoughts to "get you ready for Sunday." I pray that you would benefit from this, and that it would enhance and enrich our times of corporate worship.
This week, we will be talking about the life of Abraham. This sermon is part of the series "Creation to the Cross," where we are traveling through the full narrative of redemption history, looking for God's sovereign handiwork in each episode. As we hear the story of one man's faith, and failures, we must remember to ask what God is doing and saying in this story. In Genesis 17, God proclaims to Abraham: "I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and
you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be
your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an
everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I
will be their God." We begin this week singing of God's faithfulness to His everlasting covenant, realized in Jesus. Because of Christ, we are gathered into this family of descendants as daughters and sons. We begin with a new song, "You Have Saved Us," by Paul Baloche, which proclaims, "We are daughters, we are sons, all because of what You've done!" Check it out here on YouTube:
We will also begin our service with the song "Come, Now is the Time to Worship." God has come to us, and we respond by coming together in His name to worship Him.
Later in the service, we will sing Rich Mullins' song, "O God You Are My God." The phrase "And step by step You lead me, and I will follow You all of my days" reinforces that God is the one who leads us. We don't always know the way or the means, but, like Abraham, we must adopt a habit of continually following in the path of God's will for our lives.
Abraham had to endure one of the more painful moments recorded in Scripture when he took his son Isaac to be sacrificed on Mount Moriah. In Genesis 22:8, we see one of Abraham's greatest declarations of trust in God. When his son Isaac asked where the animal was for the offering, Abraham answers: "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." God did so for Abraham. From this side of history, we can see that God did also ultimately provide the one and only Lamb of God - Jesus Christ. We will celebrate that by singing "You Are My King," which proclaims: "I'm forgiven, because you were forsaken..." We too were rescued from death, like Isaac, when God sent his only Son to be the sacrifice on our behalf.
We finish with a hymn of commitment and invitation: "Wherever He Leads, I'll Go!"
Take a moment to read through
Romans 4. (click to read on Biblegateway.com) We see here that Abraham did not earn righteousness by his acts, but rather his faith in God alone. We too, come by faith to God, through the living Way of Jesus Christ.
See you on Sunday!