Alright, if you can turn your Bibles with me to Hebrews chapter 11, we're going to be looking at verse 8 and 10. I had a two-point message thinking that I'm going to be able to get it through, but I did not the first service. So we're going to stick with the first one today.

I know I'm going at a slow pace through chapter 11, but I think it's important enough for us to really be grounded in this chapter, just knowing the importance of what he's trying to say here, because this is kind of a transition chapter from chapter 1 through 10 to chapter 12 and on.

So he's trying to connect right theology with right living. And so if you miss either side, then it's not either saving faith or it's the wrong faith and wrong gospel. So we want to make sure that the point that he's trying to get in chapter 11 is that right belief is what leads to right life.

And so he's really going through person by person to do that. So we want to make sure that we do that. So even though if we go a little bit slower, I think it'll be beneficial for us either way. Hebrews chapter 11, verse 8 through 10, reading out of the NISV, "By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance, and he went out not knowing where he was going.

By faith he lived as an alien in the land of the promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in its tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise. For he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God." Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray for your blessing.

I pray that you will protect this pulpit, that only your word would go forth, and that your children will hear the voice of Christ and follow him and him alone. So we ask, Lord God, that you would hide us in your glory and that we may see Christ's glory and love him and worship him and follow him.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So again, the importance of each one of these characters that we're studying, we studied about Enoch, about Noah, and then now about the life of Abraham. Abraham, if you have read through the New Testament, know that he's a very, very significant figure in redemptive history.

In fact, we said that the life of Noah, there's about five chapters in the book of Genesis that covers his life, but for Abraham in his life, there's about 14 chapters in Genesis dedicated to him. Not only that, the text that we're looking at, starting from verse 8 all the way up to verse 19, really has Abraham involved in some way or form or other.

In fact, they said that 308 separate times Abraham's name is mentioned in the Bible. And sometimes when you say something like that, you can say, "Well, he's mentioned in three books 400 times or 300 times," but his name is actually mentioned in 27 separate books in the Bible, 16 in the Old Testament and 11 in the New Testament.

All of this to say that Abraham in redemptive history is a central figure. He's outside of Christ. His name and his life story is mentioned and is highlighted to help us to better understand what it means to be righteous. And so he is called the father of righteousness for two reasons.

One, God begins the nation of Israel through him and his descendants. And so God is making it very clear how the salvation is going to happen by faith through this nation. And how the descendant that's going to come from this line is going to be the one who's going to come and crush the head of the serpent and bring us salvation.

So he is the initiator. God makes a covenant with him that by blessing him, he's going to bless all the other nations, meaning that salvation is going to come to the world through him. So in that sense, he is the father of faith. He is also the father of faith because there's no greater example that we find in the Bible of what it means to be righteous by faith.

And so here's a man that's called and lived all of his life simply because God told him to. And we'll see that at the end, Abraham and his life in every part of his life, his descendants, how he lived, what he pursued, all of it is an example of what it means to be a follower of Christ.

And so this morning, I had two points from this text, but I'm just going to just give my main focus on verse one or on the first part, and then we'll get to the second part next week. So the first thing that we see about his life of faith is that God calls him out of his comfort zone.

And that's the first step. When we meet God, the first thing that he does is that God has not added to their life, that he had a good life and then said, well, you want to make it even better, you follow me. First thing that God does is calls him out.

Second thing that we see about his life, and again, these are all very simple points, but when we look at it into his life, it's very profound. Like, what does it mean to be a follower of Jesus Christ? And why was he credited as the father of faith? And what is it about his life that we are to emulate?

So the second point is he lived all of his life by faith and not by sight. He was pursuing the promise that God made to him. And so whether he saw signs or not, his whole life, everything that he had, he went all in in following God's command and his promise.

So he didn't dabble in it, he didn't simply, you know, spend a part of his life or his youth. Everything that he had was poured into the promise that God has made with him, that if you follow me, that I will fulfill this covenant that I'm making with you in Genesis chapter 12, 1-2-3.

So we're going to look at the first part of it. When he encounters God, the first thing God tells him to do is to come out. Hebrews chapter 11 verse 8. By faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out. In Genesis chapter 12, 1, it tells us, "Now the Lord said to Abram, 'Go forth.'" Abram is the name that he had before God changed it to Abraham.

He said to Abram, "Go forth from your country and from your relatives and from your father's house to the land which I will show you." If you read chapter 11, right, before you came or read some part of chapter 12, you'll know that Abraham was not a poor man.

He didn't leave everything because he had nothing to lose, right? Well, you know, nothing else that I did work, so let me follow Christ and maybe my life will get a little bit better. In fact, we know that Abraham was already a very wealthy man. And he didn't leave empty-handed.

He left with his family and God called him out from where he was. Now, first question we need to ask is why did he have to leave? Couldn't God keep him where he was and blessed him and let his nation, let this nation multiply? He already had land. Why did he have to put that aside and walk out into the desert?

It wasn't like God showed him that if you sacrifice this, here's a greater city waiting for you, so if you're willing to go, trust me, and I'll take you out of all of this and I'm going to give you this great land. He said he didn't know where he was going.

Why did God call him out? Well, it's consistent with everything else that we see in Scripture. When we first encounter God, what does it mean to repent? Our sins were not justified because we did righteous things or you basically acknowledged some facts about God. We repented. And that's why the message, the very first message that Jesus gives is repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Repent basically means you acknowledge that whatever it was that you are pursuing, whatever that you value, that you're saying that all of that was wrong. So when we repent, we're not just simply saying, you know, I lied when I was three years old and I cheated and I took a candy from the store when I shouldn't and remembering all these little sins and so I'm not going to do that, so I repent because I've done some bad things.

Justification isn't simply acknowledging there are some things that I did that was wrong. Repentance that leads to justification is recognizing that my being was corrupted by sin. So every thought that I had, everything that I considered to be good, everything that I hoped for, everything that I pursued was wrong because it was outside of the will of God.

I was pursuing my comfort, my safety, my glory, my family, and all of that I surrendered to God. That's what repentance is. So whether it is in the old covenant or new covenant, the very first thing that God calls us is to call us out, but here's the problem that you and I have in our generation.

So many people have only just added Christ to their life. They've never genuinely repented of whatever it was that they were pursuing. They say, you know what, I'm going to do this and I'm going to work hard and I'm going to get to the next level, but I'm going to do it in Jesus' name.

So a good Christian goes to church, they serve, they may give, but their life, nothing in their life ever changed. They never left behind the world until all they did was just add Christ and pray to Him that He may help us pursue what we desire. The very first step in meeting Christ is to recognize that all of this is under judgment of God and to repent of that and to follow Him.

Galatians 1.4 says, "He who gave Himself for our sins so that He might rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father." According to the evil age. The age that he's referring to is the culture, what this world values. You know, as soon as we are born, right, we're in this competition, this rat race, right?

You don't know it, but your parents were competing with you when you were a kid. Who spoke first? Who learned to brush their teeth first? Who walked first? Who ate first? Who started going to the bathroom first? So when you have young children, young parents get together and they compare.

They don't tell you they're comparing, but they're comparing. So if you walked before the other kids, like, "Oh, my kid walked 10 months." Oh, your kid still doesn't walk? It's okay. You know, eventually they'll get there. So from the moment that we're born, there's this competition, seen and unseen.

You get a little bit older, like, "What kind of grades did you get? What college did they go to?" And then you go to college, like, "What kind of job did you get?" And you get a job, it's like, "Well, who did you marry?" And after you get that, then you have your own kids.

So when did your kids start walking? When did you retire? And then you retire, and it's like, "What are your kids doing for you?" It doesn't end. This rat race, from the moment that we are born until the day that we die, we're in this trap constantly comparing with each other.

And so that's the pattern of this world. See, the cultural Christianity has never abandoned that. Cultural Christianity embraces that, and then want the security and the fellowship and the hope that we have in Christ while we're still pursuing. Nothing about the pursuit of this world has ever changed. But the primary thing that God says He is saving us from, and the reason why the world is under this condemnation, is because everything that the world is doing is in rebellion against God.

In Colossians 1, verse 13, it says, "He rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son." Everything that we knew from the previous kingdom, He said, He delivered us from it. And that's why He says in James chapter 4, "You adulterous, you do not know, do you not know that the friendship with the world is hostility toward God?" Do you notice here, He doesn't say an outright pursuit, a covenant that you made with the world, He says no.

Simply a friendship, a friendly term with the world is hostility toward God. He goes even further, He says, "Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God." He just wishes, a man who just desires, desires to be friendly with the world. Why can't I be cool in the eyes of the world and still love Jesus?

Why can't I have these nice things? Why? You know, oftentimes the excuses that we make is, "Well, God didn't call everybody to mission, God didn't call everybody to ministry, God didn't call everybody to do this, God doesn't want Christians to be poor, God doesn't want people to be this way." And so we rationalize in our head, all the while compromised, chasing after the same thing before we met Christ, and we never left behind the world.

And we're trying so hard to reconcile living in the world and having the world and pursuing the world and yet adding Christ. Because in the pursuit of the world, there are holes. No matter how much you pursue it, you still feel lonely. No matter how much you pursue the world, there's still fear, like, "After I die, what's going to happen?" No matter how much I pursue the world, you don't have the kind of friendship that you have among Christians.

You don't get the morality that you pass on to your children. And so there's a lot of secular, worldly benefits of being a cultural Christian. But we've never left behind our old world. And that's why he says, "He who wants to be friends with the world, he who desires to be near to the world, makes himself an enemy of God." If you take that literally, which we ought to, it basically means that there's a lot of people in the church who are living friendly with God, and God considers you hostile to him.

The Bible tells us that you are an adulterer, John 15, 19. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world because of this, the world hates you. Part of the reason why in our world, where you and I live, why the persecution doesn't seem to be, at least for the moment, in our face, is because we probably don't look like Jesus.

When persecution comes, and when I say persecution, I'm not talking about just not fitting in. I'm not talking about not going where they go. We're talking about possibly losing your jobs. The Bible says that they hate me, so they will hate you. So the more we look like Christ, the more the world is going to remind us that they don't want us.

We don't want you here. You don't belong here. You don't think like we do. You don't value the things that we value, so therefore we're no longer going to tolerate it. Here's the thing. Up to this point, because we lived in this free country with religious freedom, the world always hated genuine Christianity, but they tolerated it up to this point.

They never embraced it. They never loved it, but they tolerated it because of the law, because it was acceptable. But we are entering into a phase in at least United States history that the rest of the world is already in, that it's no longer going to be tolerated. They say they're going to be hostile toward Christian faith.

So those of us who have been trying so hard, holding on to the world, yet holding on to God, the world is no longer going to allow that. Either you embrace Christ or you embrace the world. But the thing is, that's exactly what God has been telling us from the beginning.

The world kingdom and God's kingdom has always been in conflict. And it is to our own deception that we fooled ourselves that somehow we're going to be Switzerland and be in the middle and hold on to both. That's exactly the problem that the author of Hebrews is writing to.

These guys are persevering for a while and they started drifting back into the old world. If you notice, if you've been with us for 10 chapters of study, the author does not mention any specific idolatry. He doesn't say that there's a question to Jesus' identity. The primary problem was they were just simply drifting back so that they can have some of the world and take some of the pressure off of the consequence of following Christ and still have Christ.

And basically, he's shutting the door on them. You may fool yourself to think that you're saved. He said he's shutting the door. He said, no, either you're a follower of Christ or you're still in the world. There's nothing in between. And this is nothing new. Jesus said that very clearly, if you want to follow me, you must what?

Deny yourself and pick up your cross. Somehow, in our generation, for whatever the reason, we have sanitized that, cut off the edges and made the cross a bearable cross. That he didn't actually mean what he said to the disciples. When he said he's going to the cross, he actually went to the cross.

He wasn't talking symbolically. He wasn't talking theoretically. He actually physically went and he told his disciples, where I'm going, you're going to come too if you want to follow me. Show me where in the Bible did that ever change. Show me where in the Bible that after saying that, a generation passed, 100 years, 200, 1,000 years passed, that we have a new revelation and saying, now that's not required.

That God's calling for his church has changed. Clearly he doesn't mean that for Christians in this generation living in America. Possibly the reason why the American church is so impotent is because we are trying to hold on to both and we are miserably failing. From the get-go, an encounter with God demands that we leave behind our comfort.

He called Abraham out in his reaches, out in the desert. He didn't come from one place and took him to another place of safety. He didn't abandon his riches and then gave him even more wealth. No, simply by promise. Trust me and leave it behind and come. A wealthy man who already had his family and walked out into the desert, not knowing, not knowing the enemies he was going to face, not knowing if he was going to be able to survive, simply because he believed.

That's it. There was nothing that he could tangibly see that if he followed God that this was going to happen. It's simply because he believed. And that's why he's the father of faith. That his whole life trajectory was he believed. And so he packed up his bag and he went.

See in the scriptures, the second in the book of Leviticus, it says, if something is unclean, that you have to take it outside the camp. And to be taken outside the camp basically means that you're forsaken from the community. So if they have to have capital punishment or somebody had certain kind of disease, they have to be cast out outside the camp.

But here's the strange thing. By the time Christ came, in order for John the Baptist to do his ministry, he went outside the camp. And that's why they didn't know what to do with him. Because when he should clearly, it seems like God's anointing is upon this man. He's speaking with authority.

He wasn't like any other man. He was the new prophet that everybody acknowledged, but it didn't fit their paradigm because he went outside the camp. He didn't go into Jerusalem and pick up Pharisees. He didn't go to the Sanhedrin and influential people. He went outside the camp and he had the poor people, he had the prostitute tax collectors coming to him and they were baptizing him.

So even the Pharisees would come just curious, what's going on? Clearly something is going on, but why are you doing it out here? Why aren't you coming to the temple? I mean, if he was bad, Jesus came and he took it even further out. And he made absolutely no sense.

If John the Baptist clearly had God's anointing, Jesus literally had the doves fall on him and God say, this is my son in whom I am well pleased. But the very first thing that he says is repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Because whatever system that you built, whatever righteousness that you are holding on to as a security blanket, he says you must repent of that.

Put that beyond and then come outside the camp. In the time of Christ, in order to meet Christ, instead of saying inside the camp, you actually have to go outside the camp. Hebrews chapter 13, 11 through 14, for the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest as an offering for sin are burned outside the camp.

Therefore, Jesus also that he might sanctify the people through his own blood suffered outside the camp. So let us go out to him outside the camp bearing his reproach. For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come. In order to follow Christ, the very first thing that he commands us, he was crucified outside the camp.

And so therefore, if we want to meet him, we are called to go outside the camp. Outside the camp at that time basically means whatever religious system that they set up, God already abandoned it. God already walked away from it. They were no longer worshiping God. So when Jesus came to the temple and he was angry, he was looking not only because here these people were taking advantage of the outer court and wouldn't allow the women and the Gentiles to come in and worship, that represented their whole attitude toward worship.

And that's why Jesus got angry. And he wasn't simply turning the tables over of the merchants. He was condemning the whole religious system. Their worship had nothing to do with God. They were just going through religious motions. People were using the temple for profit. And they could care less whether genuine worship was happening or not.

And that's why these disciples remembered that the love for his house, love for his father's house would consume him. It wasn't just important to him. He said it would consume him. And that same God is no different today. When he says that there's going to come a time that he is looking for people who will worship him in spirit and in truth, and that desire and his looking is going to consume him, meaning this religious system, this jumping through the hoops, becoming a member, finding the right church, having a good family, raising godly children, none of this in and of itself is wrong.

But so much of all that we do within the religious system is to maintain the cultural Christianity that you and I committed to. And he's calling us outside the camp to abandon our comfort zone and to literally start over with life, to repent of whatever it is that we were pursuing.

In Psalm 118 verse 22, it says, "The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone." In other words, they looked at Jesus and clearly there was something, there was something about him and people were amazed that he was speaking with authority. He was speaking as if God was speaking because God himself was speaking through him.

So they couldn't just dismiss him. But he wasn't inside the camp. So they ended up rejecting him, crucifying him, and trying to discard him. But he says, "The very stone the builders rejected became the chief cornerstone." Meaning without that cornerstone, you couldn't build anything. You couldn't build anything. That whatever that you and I have built outside of Christ, in time it's going to crumble.

Not realizing it is this rat race, keeping up with the Joneses or the Lees or the Chains, whoever it is that we're trying to keep up with. I grieve when I see young couples who are perfectly fine and living a great life and all of a sudden they visit somebody's house and it's like, "Oh shoot, we're behind." The children are happy, they're doing fine, and all of a sudden, "Oh, my kids have kids but we don't." Or their kids are doing this but we don't have it.

Or their kids are able to send their kids to do this and learn this and learn that but we're not having it. And then we get slowly sucked up into that and we live the rest of our lives just like anybody else. With this carrot dangling in front of us, not realizing it's that carrot, it's what's ruining us.

That's what's causing the contentions in marriage oftentimes. It causes contention with your children. It causes contention that even when God blesses you, you're not thankful because it's not as great as the next guy. And so the whole worldly system is based upon us wanting to elevate ourselves. So we try hard and then we, you know, when we fail, we're upset and then we don't make it, then we pour our hopes into our children so that they may have it.

You and I know how to recognize the health and wealth gospel. Automatically we reject it, right? I mean, if you are a health and wealth gospel person and you happen to be at Bering Community Church, I'm guessing you're frustrated, right? I'm guessing you're frustrated, right? My guess is most of you are very keen, no matter how long you've been here, that you can recognize health and wealth gospel because if it comes off of this pulpit, you're going to say, "Oh my God, that's not biblical." And you can point to verses that Jesus speaks.

But here's the problem. The health and wealth gospel is so deeply embedded in all of us that we may automatically say, "Oh, that's wrong theologically." But in life, in every part of our life, we practice. Look at the content of our prayer. How much of our prayer is safety?

How much of our prayer when we get sick is to be healthy? How much of our prayer is about security? So automatically, even though we reject it theologically, but in life we practice it without giving it a second thought. First and foremost, God calls us out, recognizing, to leave behind the temptations of this world and to look at Christ, that if He is not better than whatever is tempting you, it's just a matter of time you're going to fall.

If He's not better, if you didn't gaze upon the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ and then you said, "Jesus is better than whatever it is that I'm tempted, whatever it is that I'm comparing my life to, He's better than anything else that is around me," then at some point, you're going to give in to that.

God calls us out, first and foremost, to recognize that all that we pursue in this world, even if your wildest dreams come true, all it does is lead to greater judgment. If you want to find life, lose your life. Lose your life first. And He's not simply telling us this to come out because He wants us to live a hard life.

He wants us to have bad relationships. It is the only way that He can lead us to the promised land if we leave our old house. Only way for us to follow Him and to experience this life that He promises, we have to let go. Living in between, thinking like, "I'm going to somehow have a little bit of this, a little bit of that," and then being frustrated the rest of your Christian life wondering why I don't experience what they experience.

And so we have a generation filled with people who can recite quotes from other godly men and women who have gone before us. Missionary books that we've read, testimonies that we've heard, sermons that we've heard, and we have quotes. "Wow, this is great." And we give a thumbs up.

I like that. Corrie Tamboon, I like her. William Carey, I like him. And so we have a generation filled with people who have all these great sayings in our head, Bible verses memorized, text that we've studied, and the application of that is, "I like it. That's good." And we admire it from a distance.

But it's never our testimony. It's never our testimony. I can tell you who loves Jesus. I can tell you books that I've read. I can tell you godly men that I admire from a distance, but it's never my testimony. I'm just feeding off of the crumbs falling off the table.

And we always wonder why I don't experience this intimacy with God. If you're going to a banquet and you know that the best food is waiting for you, you don't go there and pick up cup ramen right before you go. You ready yourself. You might even skip breakfast because you don't want to spoil the meal.

You want to make sure that you're going to enjoy and you're going to be able to taste every part of this meal because you're anticipating and preparing yourself. How much of the dissatisfaction do we have in our relationship with God because we have nibbled on the crumbs of this world and we've lost our appetite for God?

And we come to worship God and we say, I don't feel anything. It doesn't feel the same. Thinking that somehow God is hiding from us. That he somehow, if we got to figure it out, if we adjust this and do this, that somehow we can figure this out, that maybe we're already full.

Maybe we've given our hearts and our lives to the things that don't matter and then now we come to Christ and there's no room for him. You know what's interesting? If you read the Old Testament history, if you remember Jonah, Jonah refused to go to Nineveh. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria and you have to understand, Assyria, these guys were brutal people.

You know, they would be equivalent to the modern terrorists. In order to bring fear, they would behead people and they went even further than that because the terrorists targeted certain people. I mean, they would conquer nations and anybody that they would consider a threat, they would literally behead them, crucify them and then hang them up so that their children and their wives can walk by and see that.

That's how brutal they were. They would skin people alive to bring fear upon Israel. But you know what's interesting? Assyria, after they do their damage, is not mentioned. They come in, they brutalize Israel and then the Babylonians come. And then Babylonians kind of take them into captivity. They take in the best of Israel and then they've actually gave them opportunity to grow.

They assimilated. In fact, many of the Jews who got captive and was taken into Babylonia ended up becoming high officials. Right? You read the book of Daniel. So they went there and they assimilated, learned their language, their culture. They started to adopt their idols into their life and so we have stories of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and Daniel was refusing.

But for the most part, nation of Israel just assimilated. But God's plan was always to bring them back. After the judgment of 70 years, God was going to raise up Cyrus and then the Persians were going to let them come back. And Cyrus was so generous, he actually did a fundraiser to support them.

You guys can go back and reestablish the nation of Israel, reestablish the temple, but by the time he lets them go, nobody wanted to go. A very few remnant volunteered and went back. Why would they go back? Because Israel's already destroyed. The temple is gone. They're surrounded by hostile nations.

Why would they go back to that when they're comfortable where they are? And so the way that nation of Israel scattered was not because of Assyria. It was because of Babylon, because they were tempted and they assimilated and they wanted to stay where they were comfortable. That's why if you look at the book of Revelation, when the kingdom of Satan is described, it is described as Babylon.

Babylon. Most people who know anything about Babylon, they weren't brutal. They were very cultured. They gave opportunity for the Jews to assimilate and even take high positions. Our greatest temptation in our generation is not the Assyrians. You know, we're afraid that persecution is going to come and it's going to make it impossible for us to function in this world.

You know what the genuine response of a genuine Christian should be? Great! Because that's going to help us. Persecution is going to help us. Because what we are not, we weren't willing to let go. We're having a hard time letting go. The force, the earth is going to, the world is going to force us to let go.

Because they're not going to tolerate nominal Christianity. The danger is not the Assyrians. It's the Babylonians. It's where the world has saturated into our thinking, our being, our affection, where we voluntarily are drifting away from Christ. We're not drifting away from Christ kicking and screaming. We're not drifting away from Christ yelling out and crying out in prayer meetings.

We're volunteering joyfully, drifting from Christ, knowing that that's where we're going because we have been tempted by Babylon. First thing that God calls us to do if we're going to be a man and woman of faith, a church of faith, that we need to repent of all that has seeped into us from this world and to get out of this rat race.

It is the rat race that causes the contention between husband and wife. It is the rat race that the children that we are raising, that we didn't do it on purpose, that we've kind of brought them through, now they're struggling with it. And everything that we think, oh, we want to make an easier life, we want to make it easy, we want to take care of our children, in the name of being good parents, we've made Babylon attractive.

First and foremost, as I've been warning and encouraging, that period of tolerating biblical Christianity is slowly starting to fade. And I think it's going to come pretty quickly. And I don't say this to scare you. I don't say this to get you to be uncomfortable. It's just what I see.

And I think most pastors will agree that that's where we're headed into. And to be honest, I'm not worried about my generation. We're looking at retirement at some point. Not anytime soon, but it's closer than the beginning. I'm worried about our kids. I'm worried about your children who are in Sunday school.

That in the next five to ten years, when they're in junior high school and high school and college, what will Christianity look like for them? The Catholic Church drifted so far away from God that by the time biblical Christians began to quote scripture, they were beheaded and burned at the stake.

That's how far that they drifted. You and I come from a tradition of protestors. That's why we're called Protestants. Because men and women who had the courage to open up the Bible and say, "What you're doing doesn't make any sense. What you're doing doesn't fit the Christianity that I know.

The Jesus that you're worshiping is not the Jesus that I'm reading in scripture." So they protested. And it is the protest that led us to where we're at. Five hundred years have passed now. Now the Christianity that you and I participate in oftentimes doesn't look anything like what we see in scripture.

And so we can easily just go along or we can open up the scriptures for ourselves. And this is why we're trying to get you into the Bible because you can dismiss me and say, "You know, Pastor Peter's just too extreme. That's his personality." But I want you to look at the scripture yourself with your own eyes and see if what you see in our culture looks anything like the Bible that you and I are reading.

And if it is different, we need another reformation. We need to come before God and repent that we have drifted. Not just individually, but as a generation. That when we pray to God, that we're not just praying for God to give us a job, make our families better, that if I'm sick so that I can be healthy, so that my children could be raised in a comfortable place, so that my work would not persecute me.

We're not simply praying for these small things. And again, I'm not saying that these things are not important. But I believe what you and I need to pray for is much bigger than that. We've drifted so far from God as our generation that what's happening in the Middle East looks strange to us.

What's happening in India is like, "Oh my gosh, it must be so hard for these Christians because people don't like them. And they're risking their lives and their well-being to share the gospel. Wow, it must be so hard for them." Not realizing what you and I experience here is weird.

What you and I have accepted to be normal is inconsistent with Scripture. What we see over there is exactly what we see here. So as we continue to study Abraham and these men and women of faith, I pray that it would not simply be an academic study, a theological study and say, "I don't believe in health and wealth, doctor.

I believe in biblical Christianity. I believe in the right gospel. I like it." That that's not where it leads us. That we would as individuals look at the life of Abraham as the example of saving faith and repent. Genuinely repent. Genuinely repent. It is a miserable place to be, to be religious without Christ.

Because religiousness without Christ is sacrifice without reward. It's sacrifice without reward. Life is hard enough as it is living in this fallen world. Relationships are hard enough as it is. Raising children in this fallen world is hard enough as it is. Resisting temptation is hard enough as it is.

And then to not have the joy in Christ, and then to not have the hope in Christ, and the intimacy of Christ, and then the love of Christ. The most miserable people are religious people who do not know Christ. The only way that you and I would be willfully, joyfully leaving these things behind is if we genuinely see that in comparison to surpassing knowledge of knowing Jesus Christ, it looks like rubbish.

I don't want to nibble at this world. I'm saving myself for the banquet that He promised. So I pray that that would be our passion, that would be our pursuit. break.