The Call of God

The book of Genesis is where we're going to be this morning. We've been out of the book of Genesis for the last uh 12 weeks as we've considered why Jesus matters. Uh we took seven weeks on why Jesus mattered and then we followed up with um why living out the life of Jesus matters in mentorship and that was taught by pastor Kelly. And then we looked at well why sharing the life of Christ in evangelism matters and that was taught by the right Reverend Mr. Gibson. Um and this morning we're going to jump back into the book of Genesis. But before we do, let me spend just 5 minutes reminding you of the basic shape of the book of Genesis because I know if you've been out of something for 3 months, nobody remembers anything I've said after 3 months, myself included. So, uh, a little bit of the shape of the book of Genesis. Remember the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis. Genesis breaks up into two main sections. Chapters 1- 11 and then chapters 12- 15. In the first 11 chapters, it focuses, as you can see there, on four incredibly important moments. Four incredibly important moments. And it starts with the creation. In chapters 1 and two, you have the creation where God by his word speaks and creation comes into existence. He fashions and forms the universe by the power of his word. And then he creates men and women in his own image. And he gives them dominion to rule. And creation it is glorious in its scope. And it focuses the first 11 chapters focuses on the human race. But the first one it's on the creation of of um the world and then Adam and Eve. And again, it's glorious in scope. And then what you see in in chapters 3 through five is the fall where Adam and Eve choose to trust the word of another rather than trusting God's word. And humanity has been doing it ever since. They choose to trust the word of another rather than trusting God's word. And they fall. They it it's the fall. And the fall brought sin and a broken relationship with God into every subsequent life and every part of life has been affected. It's devastating in its consequences. Um because of our first parents' rebellion, because of their first rebellion against God, every subsequent life has inherited a sin nature, a built-in propensity to live independently from God and in defiance of him and to live for ourselves. And again, it's devastating in consequences. And so, humanity starts living for themselves. They start living in sin. And what happens rapidly in chap well what happens rapidly in in chapter 3, chapter 4 and chapter 5 is all of a sudden sin, violence and corruption and death are spreading. It's and is spreading rapidly. The world becomes increasingly corrupt, increasingly violent and increasingly hostile towards God. There was however one ray of hope. We're told in chapter four of the line of Seth who began to call upon the name of the Lord which is a Hebrewism meaning one family now one family that held on to the true knowledge of God. But the rest of the world had become increasingly violent, increasingly corrupt, increasingly hostile towards one another and towards the Lord. So much so that we're told in chapter six these words. 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. So all of humanity except for this one family was becoming increasingly hostile towards God, his word and his ways. And that's what leads to the next incredibly important moment which is the flood. And that comes in chapter 6 through9 where the Lord is grieved by humanity. But again, there's one man from the line of Seth who's walking with God, and that's Noah. And so what the Lord does is he brings wholesale judgment against humanity through the flood, but at the same time, he saves Noah and his family. And so the Lord essentially starts all over again with Noah. And then the last incredibly important moment that we see is in chapters 10 and 11 and that's with the dispersion as you remember this unified humanity tries to cast off the restraint of God and they try to make a name for themselves by building a tower with its tops to the heavens and the Lord sees it and he throws them into great confusion and he scatters them upon the face of the earth. So the first 11 chapters, first 11 chapters of Genesis are pretty bleak. Humanity, the human race has failed at every level and they're scattered. And that brings us to the second half of the book of Genesis where the first half focused on four incredibly important moment and it features the whole of the human race. Now the next important section of the book of Genesis, it's 12-50. It focuses on four incredibly important men and the start of the chosen race, the start of the people of Israel. And as you can see, it starts with Abraham in chapters 12 through 23. And here's the deal. Abraham, when it says incredibly important men, Abraham is incredibly important. He's so gosh darn important. I don't know if you know this, but the three great world religions of monotheism, the three great monotheistic faiths in our world, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, you can drive by a a mosque, a temple, and a church, and they would all say a father in the faith is Abraham. So, we're talking over half of the human population would say that Abraham's a father in the faith, which means, here's what it means. If you're ever going to understand the story of world civilization, you have to understand Abraham's story. There's no way you can make sense of world civilization without understanding the story of Abraham. But on a more personal level, Abraham's story, as Spurgeon notes, he says, "The narrative of this man's life, if rightly considered, is the mirror of the history of all the saints of God." Meaning Abraham's call to faith and his life of faith has much to teach us about our faith in God and how his call, God's call on our life first saves us and then it shapes us. And so for the foreseeable future, what we're going to do is we're going to be looking into the life of Abraham. And we'll see how this man of faith because he is the prototype of faith, this man of faith and what his life of faith has to teach us about our faith with God. So let's get into it. Genesis 12. And once you're there, Genesis 12. Are you guys there? Not hearing many Bible pages rustling. It's one of the best sounds in the world. Let's go. uh Genesis 12. I want you there. Back up to verse 27 of Genesis 11 because that's actually where Abraham's story starts. So, let's read the text together. Genesis 11 beginning in verse 27 and then we'll read through chapter 12 verse 9. Here's what we're told. Now, these are the generations of Tara. Tara fathered Abram, Nahor, and Heron. And Heron fathered Lot. Heron died in the presence of his father Tara in the land of his kindred in era of the Calaldanss. And Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai. And the name of Nahor's wife, Mila, the daughter of Heron, the father of Milka and Iska. Now Sarai was barren. She had no child. Terara took Abram, took Abram, his son, and Lot, the son of Heron, his grandson, and Sarah, his daughter-in-law, his son, Abram's wife. And they went forth from of the Calaldanss to go into the land of Canaan. But when they came to Heron, they settled there. The days of Terara were 205 years, and Terara died in Heron. Now, chapter 12. 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, 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. 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." So Abram went as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Heron. And Abram took Sarah, his wife, and Lot, his brother's son, and all of their possessions that they had gathered. And when the people and the people they had acquired in Heron, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place of to the place at Sheckchham to the oak at Mora. At the time the Canaanites were in the land. 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. From there he moved to the hill country on the east side of Bethl and pitched his tent with Bethl on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on still going toward the NGB. This is God's word. Okay, let's ask a question. What gives Abram, what gives him the courage to leave the comfortable, to leave the familiar, to move out and to stand against the cultural pressure of his day? Because you may not think about it this way. U we take monotheism for granted in our culture, but Abram moves out into a very polytheistic world and he starts representing the Lord there. So what gives him the courage to move out, to leave the familiar, to leave the comfortable, and to stand against the cultural pressure of his day and embrace and represent the one true God? What could possibly enable Abram? And more importantly, more importantly, what could possibly enable you to leave behind an old way of life and represent the one true God in the midst of the cultural pressures of our day? And the answer we're told here is one thing and one thing only. The call of God on Abram's life and the call of God on your life. This passage, what it does is it teaches us three things about the call of God. It teaches us the trans the transformational power of it, the radical nature of it, and what our response should be to it. So, let's go. First, it teaches us about the transformational power of it. the transformational power of the call of God. And this call, the call of God on Abram's life, it was completely necessary. Absolutely necessary. The reason I had you read the the last section of of uh Genesis 11 is because it tells us something incredibly important has taken place. What it tells us is the last hope for humanity has all but extinguished

unless God intervenes. Remember all the way through the first 11 chapters, there's one family, one family, one family that's held on to the true knowledge of God. One family has held on to it. The line, the godly line of Seth. this one family from whom the true knowledge of God has been preserved while the rest of the human race has turned from God and has sought to make a name for themselves. And what happens in verses 27 through31 is that it tells us that Abram and his family has also turned away from God. Which means the true knowledge of God, the last hope for the true knowledge of God to be preserved has been lost. Well, how does it tell us that? You see, in verse 27, we read that Abram's father is Terara and that he settles in of the Calaldanss, of the Calaldanss, and then later settles in Heron. Well, the name Terara, it means moon. And both of the Calaldanss and Heron were known. They were hotbeds for the center of the moon god cult, moon god worship of the calaldanss or southern Iraq or Kuwait and Kuwait. It was excavated in the 1920s and the 1930s by Sir Leonard Woolly. And they and in this city they um excavated a ziggurat. Here's one of the pictures of it. Um, it's been somewhat re reconstructed, but at the top level, it's still original and it was a ziggurat where they worshiped the moon god and it's still there to this day. Now, now think about this. The family, the family from the line of Seth where the true knowledge of God has been preserved. It was passed down. preserved and passed down from Seth to Noah to Shem to Palele which is why there was a division at the Tower of Babel. Uh Moses arranges his material very meticulously to show us this division and it goes through Palele the last family who knew who created the world and who knew what humanity was created for to love God and to worship God. the last family had gone over to idol worship. And if you doubt that, it's actually confirmed in the book of Joshua. Listen to what Joshua says. Joshua, uh, this is generations later. And here he is calling the people of Israel to worship the one true God. And he reminds them of their past. Listen. He says, "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, long ago your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, beyond the river. Terara, the father of Abraham, and and the father of Abraham and Nahor. And they served other gods, which means the last hope for humanity to know God, to love God, to worship God, to spread his name, it's been extinguished.

And then God speaks. We're told, he calls out to Abram. And look at the trans transformative power of God's call. And it's completely necessary because Abram is spiritually dead. Spiritually dead. And Sarah, we're told, is barren. So spiritually dead.

And physically, their hope of prospects, it's evaporating before their eyes. And so if God doesn't take the initiative, if God doesn't act, if God doesn't do something, humanity is lost. But God does. He takes the initiative. He speaks and it transform. It transforms Abram's life going forward. So this call was completely necessary, but also it's completely gracious. Completely gracious. The call comes to Abram not because Abram's faithful. The call comes to Abram. The call of God on Abram's life comes to him not because he's faithful, but because the Lord is gracious. It's the only reason why. And this is how Abram's story, it connects with our story. Because in a lot of ways, we're like Abram. In a lot of ways, we're just like Abram. Before God called us to himself in and through Christ, we were idolatrous. All of us were idolatrous because humanity will worship. It will worship something or someone. And humanity tends rather than searching for the creator to worship. They will tend to look for a created thing and worship that just as Abram did. And we all of humanity does this on one level or another. We lived for and found our identity in some created thing, in some other thing than God. Now, we probably, you probably weren't a moon worshipper. If you were, come and talk to me afterwards. I am fascinated to know how that works. We probably didn't worship the moon, but maybe you lived for and found your identity in your career. Maybe that's where you found satisfaction and ultimate meaning. So maybe you lived for your career or maybe you lived for and found your identity in your family and that's where you found your ultimate satisfaction. Or maybe it was your wealth. You lived for your wealth or some other created thing that you based your life and your identity and your ultimate meaning and satisfaction from. Which means all of us at one level or another are just like Abram. We were idolattors. God's call to Abram is completely gracious. And God's call on your life through Jesus Christ is completely gracious. And notice, just notice how the word how the call comes. What are we told? We're told that God speaks that God the call of God comes through his word. Derek Ker in his commentary on this section, he says this. He says the history of redemption, the history of redemption like that of creation begins with God speaking. It begins with God speaking. Remember in Genesis chapter 1, God speaks into the formlessness into the void of this non-existent world. And he says, "Let there be light." And there was light. He speaks and out of the formlessness comes something with substance. He fashions and forms. And in the same way, God speaks into the formlessness and the void, the chaos of our own hearts, the darkness of our own hearts. And he brings forth the light of his grace. And he does it through his word. Remember the apostle Paul in Romans chapter 10, he says, "Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ." So what do we learn about the call of God? this call of God that completely transforms Abram. First, we see the trans the trans the transformative power of it. And the call of God, here's what it is. The call of God on your life. It has the power to transform your life if you'll let it. We'll talk about that in a second. But you got to let it. It has the power to transform your life. It's completely necessary because like Abram, we're spiritually dead. And it's completely gracious because like Abram, we're prone to worship created things rather than the creator. The call of God on your life right now. Have you thought about it lately? Have you thought about it? Well, maybe God's calling me to step forward, to move out in faith, to trust him. It's completely It's the power of God to transform your life. Here's the second thing about it that we see here. We see the radical nature of it. We see the radical nature of it. Where do we see that? It's in the most famous section of this passage. It's verses 1-3 of Genesis 12. Listen to what God says to Abram. He says, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you, 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. 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. Now notice this about the call of God. There is a vational voluitional aspect to it. There's a volitional aspect to it. Meaning the call of God is a call for you to surrender your will.

Let me tell you. Whoa. Was that was some good music. What was that? Someone's got a good ringtone. Um,

I completely lost my train of thought. I'm going with that song. The call of God, this is the part that we hate because we want to stay in control of our own lives. Thank you very much. But the call of God is a call for you to surrender your will. Well, where do you see that in the text? It's right there in the in the very first verse of the text. Look at it again. God says to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you." He doesn't say, "Go to the land that I have shown you." Or, "Go to the land at one 123 easy strict." He doesn't say that at all. He says, "Go to the land that I will show you."

meaning you have to release your will to me even though you don't know the way forward. You have to trust me. And let's be honest, one of the hang-ups from people coming in in a genuine way to the Lord is they want to stay in control of their lives. They want to stay on the throne of their own life. That's one of the hang-ups of many people coming to the Lord. If you say to God, I'll follow you if then you want to stay on the throne of your life. I'll follow you if I know all the plans you have for my life and I agree with them. I'll follow you if I can keep the reigns to my life. I'll follow you if I can stay materialistic. I'll follow you if I won't have any hardship. We want to attach God to our lives. And God wants to give us a whole new life. He says, "You got to release yourself to me." This is exactly what Jesus said to his disciples. He says, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. He says, "You got to release your life to me completely." And this is one of the hang-ups. God says to Abram, "Go to the land that I will show you." And Abram must be thinking, "Where?" And the Lord says, "Just start walking and I'll show you." Later, the Lord's going to say to Abram, "I'm gonna give you a son."

And Abram will say, "How?" And the Lord will say, "Just trust me. Surrender your life to me. Surrender your will to me. Trust me. Just trust." And here's what that means.

And this bothers people because we live in an age of self-help. But Christianity is not a self-help program to enrich your life. It's a call to surrender your will. And this is why Abraham is the prototype of faith because we're told in Hebrews chapter uh Hebrews 11:8, it was by faith that Abraham obeyed God when he called him to leave his home. And he went without knowing where he was going. Listen, friend, that's the essence of the Christian faith. The essence of the Christian faith is you're embracing and entrusting yourself to the Lord who created you, who knows you better than you know yourself, and who loves you at a greater capacity than you even love yourself. And the essence of the Christian faith is you like Abraham saying, "Lord, I will trust you even if I don't know the way forward. even if the way forward is not clear to me or even known to me. By the way, you want a um a modern-day example of what faith looks like in the midst of uncertainty, you don't have to look any further than Ben Ben Sass. Ben Sass I some of you know he's the former senator from Nebraska and then also the former president of the University of Florida. He's now dying of pancreatic cancer at the age of 54. And I was watching an interview he gave um a couple of weeks ago with New York Times colonist uh Ross uh Duthat and he asked it's a great interview. You should look it up on YouTube. Um not right now after church. Um it's a great it's a fascinating interview. But in the interview, Duth asked Sass this. He said, "Are you angry with God ever?" And I thought to him myself, "If I was him, yes, I'd be angry with God." 54. He's got daughters. Probably wants to walk him down the aisle. I I I thought to myself, "Yeah, I I'd be angry. I'm 48. He's 54. We're in the same ballpark." And I thought, I'd be angry. Listen to what his response. He's he he gets asked this question. Are you angry with God ever? And shockingly, Sass says this. He says, "Not at all. I wouldn't want a sovereign God to defer to all of my prayers with a yes because I'm not omnisient. I don't know what the weaving together of the tapestry of full of full redemption should look like, but I know going through this period of suffering that what I'm going through is a benefit because it's a winnowing. I'm filled with draws. This suffering is not salvific. Salvific, meaning it's not producing salvation. So, it's not salvific, but it is sanctifying. And I'm grace and I'm grateful. Now, listen. You want to talk about the call of God to transform you. You want to talk about the call of God, how it saves you, and then it shapes you moving forward. This is a man who's embracing the call of God on his life to suffer and die. And he says, "Okay, if God is who he is, and he is, he is sovereign, he is good, his character is perfect, his ways are good, then I can trust him even with this amount of pain. I can trust him even with the suffering that I'm enduring." The call of the Christian life is to say to the Lord, Lord, whatever your will is for my life, I will trust you with it and I will move forward. Which means the call of God on your life, there is a vitional aspect to it. It is not you just mentally checking out. This is not just a leap of faith. You this is a surrendering of your will first to the Lord and saving you and you coming to the Lord and saying, "No, I know I'm I'm an idolatrator. I've been worshiping other things. I need to surrender my will to you." But also shapes you moving forward because nobody gets through life unscathed. Every single one of us will suffer at one point or another. And you have to release yourself. You have to release your will to the Lord and said if you're really sovereign and you are. All of history shows that. You wonder why the nation of Israel is still in existence today? It's because of this. Because God is sovereign and he's protects and preserving that people. If you're really sovereign and you are, then I can trust you even with the pain of my life. So there's this volitional aspect to the go to to the call of God. first in saving you but then also in shaping your life going forward and even in the moments of suffering but then also notice second thing here that we see here is there's also a missional component to it the radical nature of the call of God it is there's a volitional aspect to it where you surrender your will but alongside of that there's a missional component to it the Lord says to Abram in verse two I will make you a great nation and I will bless bless you and make your name great. Why? So that you will be a blessing. So that you will be a blessing. Which means this. The call of God on your life isn't a form of escapism, which is what so many Christians believe. The call of God on my life is just an escapism. Means I'm going to get one way ticket out of here and hopefully the sooner the better. But that's that's not what this says. The goal isn't to escape the world. No, the goal is to serve the world. Well, how do you see that? How do you do that? How do you serve the world? Well, what does the Lord called Abram to do? What does he call him to do? He calls them, and this is how again it connects with our life. He calls him to leave the familiar and the comfortable. How do you serve the world? You leave your comfort zone. and you step forward in faith and you seek to represent God. That's how you do it. And some of you right now, the Lord is calling some of you to step out of your comfort zone and to seek to represent Christ at a greater capacity. And he is certainly calling FCBC out of its comfort zone and to represent Christ at a greater capacity. And the question is, are you willing and are we willing to submit our will to his will? Are you willing to leave the comfort zone, to leave security, to leave the familiar? Because let's be honest, it is comfortable blending into society. It's comfortable not speaking forth the name of Christ. It's comfortable not ever telling your neighbors about Jesus. It's very easy. In fact, it's easy to just come to church and live as a Christian on Sunday morning when we're gathered, but then to blend into the the rest of the work week as if nothing in your life has changed. The God calls Abram and he calls us to step out of our comfort zone, to leave behind the familiar. And to the degree that you're willing to leave the secure, you're willing to leave the comfort zone is to the degree that God will bless you in order for you to be a blessing to others in order for you to be a blessing to others. The reason God blesses you is so that you can he can bless others through your life. Now look at the radical nature of the call of God on your life. He calls you to surrender your life to him and then he promises to use use your life to represent him as you move out of your comfort zone and you move forward in faith. And by the way, notice how countercultural Abraham's um his mission is because we're told that there's Canaanites living in the land and he has to he has to be in that world but not of that world. He has to represent Christ in the midst of this cross-cultural polytheistic probably culture and represent the one true God there.

Boy, that sounds a lot like your life, doesn't it? He calls you to step out of your comfort zone to go into the world but not be a part of the world and represent his grace and truth right there. That's exactly the call on Abraham's life. So, we we see the transformative power of the call of God. We see the radical nature of the call of God. And then lastly, we see what our response should be to the call of God. Um, our response to the call of God. Well, what should our response be to the Lord's call in our life? Well, what is what do we what does Abram show us in this account? And by the way, let me say this because Abram doesn't always get it right. Right. Like next week, we're going to see where he and Sarah, they blow it in pretty fantastic ways. Um, so they don't always get it right. And that I find that strangely encouraging because I hardly ever get it right. It feels like it's always three steps forward and then two steps back. Um, and the same was true for Abram. But in this account, what did Abram do when the call of God came to him? And what should we do when the call of God comes to us? We should embrace it. We should embrace it. He embraced it. And and by embrace it, I mean he responded in obedience. He responded in obedience. You see it in verse four as the text says, "So Abram went as the Lord had told him." God said, "Go." And Abram obeyed. He stepped out. That's the obedience of faith. And you look at the verbs in the text. I know this sounds nerdy, but this is what I do during the week. Um, so look at the verbs in the text. He went out as the Lord had told him. That's verse four. He departed from Herod. That's also verse four. He took Sarai and Lot and set out to go to the land of Canaan. That's verse five. He came to the land. He passed through the land. That's verse six. He built an altar. That's verse seven. Verse eight. He moved and he pitched his tent. He called on the name of the Lord. He journeyied on. Still going towards the neg. All of those verbs in every single one of those actions, that's Abram responding to the Lord. He's responding in obedience. He's responding in faith. And again, that's the obedience of faith. And so you and I when the when God's call comes on our life first in salvation, but then in through the shaping of our lives to reach more and more people, we're to respond with obedience. We're to surrender our will to him and move forward in obedience. But then second, we're to bear witness to it. And we see that all over this text. In verse 8, we're told that Abram built an altar to the Lord. And we'll we'll talk about that in a second. But then we're told he called on the name of the Lord. And again, calling on the name of the Lord, it carries with it the idea of proclamation. So he's not only invoking God's name, but he's also proclaiming God's name. He's proclaiming God's name. He's witnessing to the Lord. And the call of God comes through the people of God as they share the word of God. This is how witnessing actually takes place. And so, he's witnessing to God's call on his life. He's sharing with others how there's one true God and you can come to know him. And and what else is interesting, look at I can't pass this up. I got time. So, I'm going to tell it to you. In verse five, notice this. Look at verse 5. In verse 5, it says that Abram went on this journey. He went on this journey along with all of his possessions and the people they had acquired. Now, you might read that and think, "Oh, he's talking about slaves."

But probably not. Um there's several Old Testament scholars, one by the name of uh Ombberto Casada who he was this Old Testament scholar particularly in the fields of Genesis and Exodus who says this would be better understood as referring to those people whom Abram had won. The people he had won, the people he had won to the Lord, people who began to share in the blessing given to Abram by worshiping the one true God. And that's exactly what we're called to do. We're to witness so that other people could be one to the one to the Lord. In second Peter chapter or in 1 Peter chapter 2, we read these words. He says, talking to us, he says, "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light." which means we're called to proclaim through witness, through testimony, through evangelism. We're to proclaim our faith to others, to point others to the one true God who's been revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. So our response, our response to the call of God is that first of all, we should embrace it. Second, we should bear witness to it. And then lastly, we should worship the Lord for it. We should worship the Lord for his work in our lives. That he's called us to himself while we were idolattors. While we were worshiping some other created created thing, he's called us to himself so that we can enjoy a relationship with God himself. We're told in both verses seven and 8 that Abram builds an altar to the Lord. Two times we're told he builds an altar to the Lord. and and the text doesn't say that he offered sacrifices, but I think it's pretty safe to assume that that's what altars were built for, by the way. Um, so it seems he had some sort of an some sort of an understanding of this new form of worship into which God had called him. The worship that required an atonement where a sacrificial animal would be offered up and by the sacrifice a may a way would be made open that would grant access to God. And of course, that's all a foreshadowing of the great sacrifice that will be offered by Christ at Calvary so that you and I could come to know God, to know the God who calls us to himself in and through Christ. And our response, our response to Christ's great sacrifice should be to live a life of worship, honoring him with our lives. And that's actually what we're going to do right now by coming to the Lord's table. One of the ways that Christians worship the Lord is by remembering the Lord's sacrifice on our behalf. And in 1 Corinthians chap 11, the Apostle Paul says this. He says, "For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you. The Lord Jesus on the night that he was betrayed took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way, after supper, he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me. For whenever you eat this bread and you drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." So, what we do at Faith Community is if you're a Christian, even if you're here from another church, then we invite you to come and participate in the Lord's table. And if you're not a Christian, here's what I would say to you. First of all, we're grateful that you're here. We're really thankful that you've come to join us this morning. And we respect your honesty that you have not surrendered your will to the Lord. and we ask that you would respect this meal as it's a covenant meal for those who have responded to God's call in their life in and through Christ Jesus. So, I'm going to pray and when I'm done praying, the table will be open and we ask that you would leave through the left side of your row and then come back on the right side and re uh take your seat again and then when everybody has the elements, we'll partake of both the bread and the cup together. Okay? Let me pray. Father,

first of all, we thank you, Lord,

that through Christ Jesus, you have called us to yourself,

that the call of God has come to us in and through Christ, and that we have responded to you in the obedience of faith, which means at one at first, we've repented of our sins. We've acknowledged that we're sinful before you. We We've repented of those things. We believed Jesus's sacrifice has cleansed us of our sins. And by his resurrection, he's given us new life in your name. And so, Father, we thank you for the work of Jesus Christ. And we pray as your people that all the days of our lives that our lives would be lived in worship to you. that we would communicate your love and your grace and your truth well

and that through our lives through the proclamation of your word that you would continually save more and more people so they can come to know and experience your truth and your grace and your love.

And as we come to your table, Father, we are reminded that the table is a place in in the first century of um utmost significance. It was a place that uh pictured complete identification, complete friendship. And we're thankful that we who were once your enemies have been made friends through Christ. We love you Lord in Jesus name. Amen.