from the Saints in Colorado Springs. And I am humbled and thankful, though, to get the invitation to be with you for this weekend. My wife and I were able to be out earlier this year for the Winterlude Youth Conference, and we're very surprised that within a few weeks of that to get the invitation to come back. And I have to tell you, my wife and I, we love Canadians. We love being in Canada. She doesn't go on any speaking engagements with me. And these last two times she's been able to come with us, And this time particularly was because of the friends that she already has in the area. And she just really enjoyed her time earlier this year here. So you've been very hospitable to us. It's been a real blessing to be here. And so we're very thankful to be with you this evening. While I'm getting myself situated up here, why don't you go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 12 this evening. And as you're doing so, I want to give a few sort of overview guiding comments for the way the weekend will unfold. And there's only two main messages during the conference, and then there's Lord's Day morning and evening preaching. And what I tend to do in conferences is I kind of hit you hard and heavy up front. Then I try to track with your fatigue as the conference week goes on and so I deliberately try to shorten the messages Make them not as detailed and hard to listen to so tonight's going to be the slightly longer one and a little bit more intense and detailed of the messages and then hopefully they'll just start gradually getting shorter and shorter till Lord's Day evening, you'll wonder, was that even a sermon? You know, it'll be a little bit shorter that night. So that's the direction we're going to go. The other thing is you've probably seen the overall theme, which is, you know, I entitled it, Humanity, Hope, and the Antiheroes of our Faith, looking at the gospel in Genesis, and particularly really how we see the saints of old living the life of faith. And so tonight we're going to look at really the whole concept of, or the beginnings of, the life of faith, which is believing. Next, tomorrow morning, Lord willing, we'll be looking at repenting. And then, Lord's Day morning and evening, we'll be looking at the theme of walking. What is it to walk in this life, in the Christian life? And so, that's kind of where we're going. If you don't have a pen and an outline, this could be a little tedious. I've tried to give you lots of fill-in-the-blanks to keep you with me as we're going through. Those will also get a little bit less and less as we go on in the messages as well. But let's turn our attention tonight to the Word of God, and I want us to begin, and I'm going to back up and read all of chapter 12 and then right through to verse 1 of chapter 13. Our text proper, begins in verse 10 of chapter 12, but I think it's important to see the whole context of the chapter. We've been having maybe version problems tonight with the singing of the Psalms. I'm going to be reading out of the ESV. I think that the majority of you have NIVs. tonight, but I think I read through them, the passages in the NIV, and there's not a lot of difference. There's one critical thing I'll need to point out to you as we go along tonight, but other than that, the stories track very well together, and the translations aren't very far off of one another. So, that'll explain a little bit of difference in terminology as we go. But let's give our careful attention tonight to the hearing of God's holy and infallible Word. Genesis 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 Haran. And Abram took Sarai, his wife, and Lot, his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran. 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 at Shechem, to the oak of Morah. At that 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 of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negev. Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai, his wife, I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance, and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, This is his wife. Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake." When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. And for her sake, he dealt well with Abram, And he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels. But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife. So Pharaoh called Abram and said, What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, She is my sister, so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go.' And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him. and sent him away with his wife and all that he had. So Pharaoh went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had, and lot with him into the Negev. Let's bow very briefly in prayer. Father, we have read your word. You are the great shepherd And so, as your sheep, we call upon you this evening to please feed us, feed us upon your goodness and your grace. May you truly give us tonight the bread of life, our glorious Savior Jesus. It is in his name that we pray. Amen. I think that one of the great proofs of the authenticity and the integrity of the Christian scriptures is that they do not candy coat the lives of believers. They do not candy coat the lives of our forefathers in the faith. Folk tales and myths actually idealize the lives of their heroes and the characters within those stories. But the Bible actually gives us the good, the bad, and the ugly of any of its characters, no matter how honored they are, no matter how high we think we should view them. It doesn't matter who they are. It tells us the truth about their lives. The Scriptures give us truth. And this phenomenon of the Scriptures reporting even the very unflattering facts of various individuals in biblical history, it's demonstrated very clearly for us here in the text that's before us this evening. And I'm going to walk us through a series of points tonight. Each of them start with the letter F. The first thing I want us to see here is Abram's failure. Abram's failure. I read the whole chapter because I wanted us to see that the first part of the chapter actually recorded Abram at his best. Did you see that he was presented for us and he is right there in the passage. He's presented as a beacon and example of a very bold and even brazen face. He listened to the Lord who called him to go out to a land that he knew not where he was going. He believed the promises of God and he went out with his whole family. It's a very impressive introduction to Abram. And it enables us, and I think it makes us get and understand why, in one significant sense, he can be called the father of our faith. Abraham, Father Abraham, the father of all who have faith. But did you notice, as we read, right after that flash of Amazing faith. Immediately next here, Abraham is shown to be a very fickle man who actually, a lot of the time, definitely does not walk by faith, but rather he walks by fear. Indeed, this passage before us tonight shows us that Abraham was a man who was a total failure in the truest sense of the word failure. In fact, the main point, I want to give you that right up front. The main point of this passage is not at all to highlight Abram's life and hold it up as an example for you to follow. The main point of this passage is actually foreshadowing, and it's pointing forward to the gospel of Jesus Christ. You see, we have a tendency as Christians to view the various saints of old wrongly. And while we would not use, I know we wouldn't use these words, we tend to turn them into saviors, whose examples we are to follow so that we might be good Christian people too. But that is not the reason that the Holy Spirit recorded their lives for us. nor how we are to understand them to actually be examples for us. And in this passage, which comes right at the beginning of Abram's walk, and right at the beginning of God giving promises concerning the promised land, what is going on here, I think, is that the Spirit is putting up a guardrail right at the beginning of Abram's life so that we won't fall into the error of looking for salvation in anyone or anything other than in God and His grace. And the first of two ways that the Spirit does this for us, and this brings us to our first fill-in of the blank, if you're using the note-taking guide tonight, is showing us, first of all, and here's the two fill-ins, that the promised land wasn't perfect. The promised land wasn't perfect. Did you see that? No sooner has Abram come into the land, and God has said to him, to your offspring I will give this land, that's verse 7 there, that we read here in verse 10 of our passage, the very first verse of our passage, now there was famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there for the famine was severe in the land. So the promised land, what we're learning by this is that the promised land was not immune from problems. That is, it's not perfect. And this is why we read in, if we fast forward to Hebrews chapter 11, why we read there the Holy Spirit commenting on this, that Abraham and the other patriarchs, that is our fathers in the faith, They acknowledged while they were in the promised land, they acknowledged that they were strangers and they were exiles on earth. And that while they were in the promised land itself, that they desired a better country. That is, they desired a heavenly one. You see, this is telling us, just this observation and record That there was famine in the land is telling us that the earthly promised land wasn't it. It was just a type. It was just a shadow of the greater heavenly inheritance that we are ultimately promised. It's just an imperfect picture of a greater perfect reality. And so, though the land will be, The land will be very important throughout the Old Testament. And though it will serve as a sign of God's favor and His blessing, we have to get it in our minds from right up front, it's just a sign. It's just a sign to point beyond itself to a better country, that is, that heavenly one. But the Spirit's teaching about the promised land here is also accompanied by teaching about the patriarchs themselves. And you can guess what the next one is. The patriarchs weren't perfect. The patriarchs weren't perfect. Probably the clearest and most outstanding thing about this passage is seeing. The most shocking part of it is seeing Abram, after this great flash of faith, now operate according to fear and not faith. We see Abram, who is identified in Romans chapter 4, 16 as the father of all who have faith. We see him afraid for his life as he is about to enter into Egypt. And you have it there in front of you if you have your text open. So, he comes up with this plan to deal with his fears and a plan to solve his perceived problem. In other words, instead of holding fast to the promises that God had made to him, instead of doing that, instead of walking by faith, he fails to trust God, and he ends up putting his wife in harm's way. In fact, and very literally, he has more concern about his own skin than he does about her skin. I'm going to be careful and I'm going to be vague. You see, Abram ends up exposing Sarah to really one of the most awful situations imaginable. And it's because he is here operating in fear and not in faith, that's the reason Sarai is taken into Pharaoh's harem. And though the Scriptures are very careful and they're very guarded, and they don't explicitly come out and tell us what actually happened here, the bulk, And I would argue very strongly the bulk of the exegetical evidence leads to the conclusion that she was actually humiliated and violated by Pharaoh. In that, the text tells us he took her as his wife. Now, I realize that that comes as a blow to us. That's not the way we want to think of Abram and Sarai. That's not what we want to read here. It's not what we want to think about, and especially not concerning a great patriarch like Abraham. I mean, we don't want to have to think about what is really an unthinkable situation, but that is the sin-ruined reality that we live in. We do not live in a Pollyanna world. And the Bible is not a neat, safe, G-rated book. And it's not because God did not send his only begotten Son into the world because people made a few little mistakes. No, He sent His Son into the world to bear our sin in His body on the tree. Christ died for sin because the wages of sin, in other words, what sin deserves is death. Our sin is horrific. Our sin is awful. Our sin is obscene. But God's grace is glorious. God's grace is forgiving. God's grace is purifying. And with this passage, we see clearly the seriousness and the necessity of God's plan of salvation. We are supposed to begin drawing the conclusion that even the best men and women, even our so-called heroes, are in desperate need of mercy and grace. This begins to show us and it begins to teach us how to read the Old Testament. And that is that really our heroes, those ones that we put up as beacons and great examples to follow, they're actually more, what I've used in my title of the address, they're more anti-heroes than they are actual heroes. But is that Is that all that we're to see in the passage? Is it just that we're to say, wow, these guys are sinners like us? I mean, really, where is the Gospel in all of this? Where is the Gospel here in Genesis 12, verse 10 through 13? I mean, where's the gospel in this situation with Abram and Sarai? What's the good news? In fact, a moment ago, I said that the main point of this passage is actually to foreshadow and point forward to the gospel of Jesus Christ. But how does it do that? Well, this is where I think it gets quite interesting. I want us to consider next faithfulness then. Let's move to faithfulness and look again at the passage. Look at verses 17 through 20 with me briefly. But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife. So Pharaoh called Abram and said, What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? say, she is my sister, so that I took her for my wife. Now then, here's your wife. Take her and go.' And Pharaoh gave orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had." Well, what do we see next here? It's interesting because we're shown two more things here that should begin to actually ring a bell in our memories. And the first is, and this is where there's a slight difference of translation from the NIV to the ESV, but the first is the plagues, the plagues upon Pharaoh's house in the land of Egypt. In other words, confirming the likelihood that actual adultery happened between Sarah and Pharaoh. God visits Pharaoh's house with great plagues, or as you have in your passage there, serious disease. But this word, great plagues, is the same used in Exodus concerning the plagues that God brought there. And God visits Pharaoh's house with great plagues because, as Pharaoh himself admits, he has taken another man's wife as his own wife. But doesn't this sound familiar? When will we, I'll ask you, when will we see plagues on the house of Pharaoh in Egypt again? We're in Genesis right now. When will we see it again? That's right, in the Exodus. And then what do we see here after God plagues Pharaoh's house? This brings us to the second point here. Abram is expelled out of Egypt by Pharaoh and sent back to the Promised Land. That is the patriarch's exodus from the land of Egypt. There is an exodus here. Abram is being sent out of Egypt here which is an exodus. The Old Testament scholar, a guy named Gordon Wynnum, he notes that the Hebrew word here for sent away in verse 20, sent him on his way, as your text would read, is the verb that is used most often to describe Israel's exodus from Egypt in Exodus chapters 3 through 11. And so what we're seeing here is that Abram is sent away by Pharaoh to go up from Egypt, and in time Israel will be sent away by Pharaoh to go up out of Egypt. Now, we're going to return in just a moment to this Exodus thing, but I want us to see, before we move into that and look a little bit more at this odd Exodus theme that's coming up here in Genesis, I want us to see the most important detail in the text before we do move on. I titled the first point, Failure, and I titled this point, Faithfulness. Now, obviously, the first was clearly highlighting, and I said so, the failure of Abraham. And this second point, it needs to be seen as highlighting the faithfulness, not of Abraham, but the faithfulness of God. Did you see the beginning words of verse 17? Those beginning words there in verse 17, The Lord. Those are very similar to the words we read in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 4. But God. We are serious sinners. Some of us have horrifically wrecked our own lives. We have hurt our own loved ones. We have sinned grievously against the holiness of the Lord, but God. But God is rich in mercy. God is full of compassion, and He is eager to save us from our sin. You see, God doesn't have grace for you, and God doesn't save you while you're You're good, and you're trying hard to be faithful. Rather, God saves sinners while they are unfaithful and while they are sinking in their sin. While they are in the midst of their sin and rebellion, that's when God's grace shines the most glorious. He is faithful even when we are faithless, for he cannot deny himself. And so he comes and he delivers Abraham. Now let's take a moment to briefly consider a bit more of the Exodus theme here in Genesis, which is mentioned, mind you, 600 years. This is at least somewhere around 600 years before the historic Exodus of Israel out of Egypt. And so let's move to this foreshadowing theme. It's really interesting that in this very section of Genesis, in other words, the whole segment of Genesis that records the life of Abraham for us, have you ever noticed the prophecy in chapter 15? And if you want to turn there, you can. But there's a prophecy right in this section, chapter 15, and God prophesies to Abram about the exodus of Israel out of Egypt. This is in verses 13 and 14. Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for 400 years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out. with great possessions. In fact, if you're turning there, let's go ahead, turn to the very last chapter of the book of Genesis, Genesis chapter 50, and we'll pick up the reading there in verse 22, but notice how the whole book ends. As the book closes, chapter 50, verse 22, we read, So Joseph remained in Egypt. He and his father's house, Joseph lived 110 years, and go ahead and move to verse 24, pick up there. And Joseph said to his brothers, I am about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, God will surely visit you. And you shall carry up my bones from here. So Joseph died being 110 years old. They embalmed him and he was put in a coffin in Egypt. In fact, in the book of Hebrews in chapter 11, verse 22, we read, By faith Joseph at the end of his life made mention of the exodus of the Israelites. Now, returning to think about our passage here, and this is where it might get a little tedious, but I've got lots of little fill-ins for you to hopefully keep you with me. My wife says this is me kind of nerding out right now with some theology and some associations, but I think it's a really interesting thing and an interesting foreshadowing that's going on, and I will bring this back to a point. So, I'll at least tell you, I'm going to bring this down in a minute, but I want us to consider some of the parallels between Abraham's exodus here and Israel's future exodus. The first is famine. Abram goes down to Egypt because there is famine in the land. And Israel, that's Jacob and his twelve sons, they go down to Egypt because there's famine in the land. It's the same reason why both end up in Egypt. Secondly, if you're filling in, there is lying and deception in both circumstances. Both involve close family members lying. In both events, Abram lies about Sarai, and the sons of Israel lie about their brother Joseph. They tell their father he was killed. That's how they get into Egypt. Thirdly, they both have a bad experience with Pharaoh. So, they both have a bad experience with Pharaoh. Abram here, and later Israel with the Pharaoh in their day. Fourthly, the plagues. Fourthly, plagues. The Lord plagues this Pharaoh's house and in the time of the Exodus, the Lord plagues the Pharaoh's house then. Fifth, Pharaoh expels them. After the plagues, Pharaoh expels Abram out of his land and during the Exodus, after the plagues, Pharaoh expels Israel out of the land. Sixthly, Abram is sent off with wealth. Did you see that? The wealth he acquired in Egypt, and the Israelites are sent off with wealth that they acquired in Egypt. Seventh, and we're almost there, seventh returned, they both returned to the land. Abram returns to the promised land, and Israel returns to the promised land. But here's the eighth, and this is the one, if you miss all the others, I think this is the key. Abram himself was as sinful as the Egyptians, just as Israel was as sinful as the Egyptians in their day. In other words, both exoduses were entirely because of God's grace to his people, not because his people deserved it. So, a lot of obvious and deliberate parallels to the Exodus, along with two explicit prophecies of the Exodus. But the nagging question, I think, at this point is, why? Why did the Spirit so clearly foreshadow the Exodus and Genesis, and particularly here in this passage, and listen to it, here in this passage in the midst of Abram's sin in Egypt. Why did the Spirit make such obvious and deliberate parallels to the future Exodus? Well, to begin with, and maybe to begin to answer that question, we need to be clear as to what the Exodus was. What was the Exodus In the history of God's redemption, in the history of his working with his people, what was the exodus? Well, here's another fill-in you have. The exodus was, we can think of it this way, the exodus was the great salvation event of the Old Testament. The Exodus was the great salvation event of the Old Testament. It is, and if you read the Old Testament Scriptures, there's this crescendo at Exodus. It's beautiful. It's always looked back to. It's the highlight in Old Testament history of God redeeming His people, conquering His enemies, and bringing deliverance to His church. But here we need to then pull back to what we were talking about at the very beginning. Just like we have seen from our passage here in Genesis that the promised land was not perfect and that the patriarch Abraham was not perfect, Neither was the Exodus salvation perfect, nor was Moses, nor was Israel. In other words, just like the promised land or the patriarchs, the Exodus and Israel, they also pointed forward to a greater, more perfect fulfillment. They, too, were only just types, and they were shadows of the real spiritual salvation from slavery to sin and death that God would bring through his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. The Exodus was only pointing forward, ultimately, to the real salvation, that eternal salvation that God would bring through his Son, Jesus Christ. In fact, I got one more connection thing and then we're going to begin to draw this to a close. In fact, in the Gospels, Jesus himself is very clearly portrayed to us as the son or seed of Abraham. He is portrayed to us as the true and the faithful Israel. that brings salvation and blessing to the world, and here's the interesting thing, through his own exodus. Jesus is portrayed as bringing salvation by way of his own exodus. And let's then move to that point, fulfillment there, and let me give you a few more things to fill in, and then we'll begin again to tie this together. So, let me try to show this very briefly. The very first verse of the entire New Testament Matthew 1 1 Says the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David the son of Abraham the son of Abraham so Jesus is Identified first verse as the true fulfillment of the son of Abraham prophecy He is the one this is the seed ultimately of He's the true Israel. He's the true offspring of Abraham. He's the true Son of God. Second chapter of Matthew, right after Jesus' birth, there's a deadly situation in the land. Do you remember what it was? Herod was killing all of the infant Israelite boys, and so Joseph and Mary flee where? Where do they go? They flee to Egypt. So, Matthew tells us in Matthew 2, verses 13 through 15, that this was to fulfill the passage, Out of Egypt I have called my Son. That is a passage from the book of Hosea, which was originally speaking about the nation of Israel coming up out of Egypt in the Exodus. Chapter 3, the very next chapter in Matthew, Matthew records Jesus going through the waters of baptism just as Israel came through the baptismal waters of the Red Sea. Now you might think, whoa, that's a fanciful interpretation. No, that's actually the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the children of Israel coming through the Red Sea in the Exodus. Listen to 1 Corinthians 10. For I don't want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud. and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Oh, speaking of wilderness, what's Matthew chapter 4? Right after Jesus' baptism, it's no coincidence that after he goes through the waters of baptism, he's declared to be the true Son of God, the true Israel. We read in the very next chapter, Matthew chapter 4, that he is led into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil for 40 days. That would have rung a bell with Jews, would have rung a bell with the Israelites, like an echo of Israel being led through the wilderness, being tempted for 40 years. It's these kinds of things that by the time we get to the transfiguration of Jesus on the mount, it shouldn't be a surprise that we see Jesus Who is he talking to? He's talking to Moses. At least one of the men was Moses. And Luke tells us, and Luke uses the actual word, they were talking about his soon to come exodus, his departure. In other words, the New Testament presents Jesus as the true and the faithful Israel. He is the real seed of Abraham. He is the ultimate Israel. He's the ultimate Son of God who He called out of Egypt, whose crucifixion was to be the true exodus. It would be the true exodus that would bring eternal salvation and blessing to the whole world. In fact, listen to one quote for you tonight from the Puritan commentator Robert Hocker. In every individual instance of a soul brought out of darkness in the shadow of death, when any soul is brought through the Red Sea of Christ's blood, the typological representation that Egypt's history furnished, in other words, the exodus, is truly realized and the design of God the Holy Spirit In that shadowy dispensation, through grace is seen." In other words, he's saying every time a soul comes to faith, passing through Christ, the Red Sea of Christ's blood, the real exodus has come to fulfillment. So why is all of this here in Genesis 12? Why is there a foreshadowing of the Exodus? Well, this brings us to the final point that we want to look at this evening, and that is faith. The point this evening, and I warned you up front this would be the most technical, the longest, but the point of dragging you through all of that is to bring home the fact that the Spirit is seeking through this passage to bring you to faith. The Spirit is seeking to bring you to faith. The Spirit is foreshadowing the exodus here to teach us that we should be looking for salvation in this passage, not imitation. In other words, if we will actually pay attention to what God is saying to us here, In other words, if we let the passage speak to us, even though what it says is extremely uncomfortable for us, it's not the way we want to think about the patriarchs. But if we allow it to speak to us, again, even with those uncomfortable and unflattering words about our hero, We will then see very clearly that salvation is not to be found in the persons of the patriarchs, nor is it to be found in temporary earthly blessings like the land, but only and entirely in God and in his grace alone. As the plan of salvation continued to unfold, the point of this passage was to become clearer and clearer to the people of God. And the point of the passages is that God saves sinners by grace, which is the same message as the message of the Exodus. God saves sinners by grace, which is the same message as the message of the Gospel. which is God saves sinners by grace. The Jews of old had their version. And now I want you to grapple with this tonight. The Jews of old had their version of not coming to Christ for salvation. They claimed that they didn't need Him. And they claim they didn't need him, they wouldn't come to him because Abraham was their father. The Jews of old had their own reasons for not coming to Christ, and we have ours as well. We have our versions of not coming to Jesus. And so we need to ask, what are the lives of the patriarchs to teach us? The lives of the patriarchs are to teach us really, I think, ultimately one amazing and astounding lesson. And that is that God is unfathomably gracious. And he is unfailingly faithful to his promises. Thus, as we learn in the book of Hebrews, after this glorious walk through the hall of faith, this beautiful compendium of the lives of the faithful putting their faith in God, after all of it, the very first words of chapter 12, after that chapter, tell us Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us." And here it is. Looking where? Looking unto Jesus, the author, and finisher, or the founder and perfecter of our faith. In other words, why did the Spirit record the lives, the high points, the very low points, the sin, the debauchery of the lives of the forefathers? Well, they all ultimately teach us to look to Christ by faith. So, you see, our heroes, as we've seen here with Abraham, our heroes were all prone to sin and unbelief, and they were all in dire need of salvation themselves. In other words, we could say it this way, they were not heroes. At best, they were antiheroes. And what this primarily shows us is how and what the example that they're setting for us is that we need to, like they did, look outside of ourselves. They looked outside of themselves. by faith to the true Son of God, the promised Savior Jesus. They show us that there is real, there is actual gospel grace, there's real salvation for real sinners like you and me. They teach us to look to God alone for the grace we need. You see, as we close this evening with just a few more things to fill in, Really, there's only one hero. There's one true hero in the scene before us here tonight. The only hero that's in this passage, Genesis 12, 10-13, 1, the only hero here is God Himself. He remained faithful to His promise to Abraham, even though Abraham didn't remain faithful to Him. As Paul confesses in 2 Timothy 2.13, if we are faithless, if we are faithless, He remains faithful because He cannot deny Himself. Here's your fill-ins. God remained faithful and committed to Abraham. God remained faithful and committed to Abraham. Though Abram almost immediately, after God invades his life, begins to work with him, calls him, Abram drops the ball immediately. God remained faithful to and committed to Abram. God rescued and saved Abram out of the mess that he had gotten himself into. God returned him back to the land, restored him, and set him on the right path again. God started or I should say restarted, God restarted everything moving forward so that Abram would be blessed, so that Abram would become a great nation, so that Abram would be a blessing and benefit to the whole world. In fact, the final one, it was God who remembered his covenant. God remembered his covenant so that the true future son of Abram, the Lord Jesus Christ, would come and take away the sins of the world. In other words, against all odds and in spite of our sin, God still saves his people. Maybe you're sitting here tonight and you have horrifically blown it in your Christian walk. Did you start out well only to trip hard and fall flat on your face? Has your sin seriously hurt others? Has your sin caused unbelievers to mock the faith? Has your sin jeopardized the salvation of others? At the end of this ordeal, and I want you to see this in verse 1 of chapter 13 as we close now, Abram seems humbled by what has happened. In verse one, we see the outcome of this event, and what we see there is that he, interestingly, he says nothing. There's nothing recorded that he says. He just gets up and he takes his wife and he goes back to the place that God has called him to. And in that, I'm wanting you to notice that Abram doesn't just wallow in the mire of his sin there in Egypt. I mean, this is a man who very likely exposed his wife to relations with another man. But when God comes to him in grace and God calls him to or comes to him in grace and delivers him, He gets up, he goes back. He doesn't just stay in his sin, lamenting the fact that he blew it, thinking there is no future. I dropped the one chance I had. Rather, he gets up and he goes back. And maybe that's speaking to you tonight. Maybe you've walked away. Maybe you've blown it. Maybe you've backslidden. Maybe you're sitting here tonight and you are backslidden very badly. You've fallen into sin. Well, the message is then, get up and go back. Be encouraged by God's grace and the faithfulness that he is showing to Abram here, who is a great sinner like you and me. Be encouraged by the clear message of this passage. How do you read this and not see that it is not about us and our performance, but about God and His promise, the unfailing faithfulness of God, the unfathomable grace of God to sinners? Tomorrow, Lord willing, we're going to consider Jacob and what true repentance actually looks like. Tonight, let's close in prayer. Our Father in heaven, we do marvel at the grace that you have, we struggle Because this is beyond what we tend to think your grace covers. And so, Lord, tonight, I pray that you would minister your grace into the heart of those who are in sin. That the greatness of your grace might eclipse the guilt and greatness of their own sin. Father, draw us to Christ afresh. May we see in him that you spared nothing to bring us back to you. That you gave us your only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him, would not perish but have everlasting life. That is your promise. You make it and it will never be broken. Lord, we are here tonight because you have remained faithful to your promise to us. Not because we are powerful and strong and we acknowledge your grace tonight. And we gladly lift up this acknowledgement and prayer in Jesus' name. Amen.