Day 9: Abraham and the Scarlet Thread

In day nine of In Light of the Cross, we keep tracing the Old Testament’s “seemingly endless story” of human brokenness and God’s scarlet thread of grace, made clearest in Jesus’ death on the cross. After Babel, we meet Abram and wonder if he’s the one to crush the serpent, since God calls him to leave wealthy Ur and promises to make him a great nation and bless all peoples through him. But Abraham’s story is a mix of faith and failure—passing Sarah off as his sister and going along with Hagar—showing the heart of relationship with God is trust, not heroic works. We sit with Genesis 15:6 (belief credited as righteousness) and connect it to Paul and to trusting God’s promise in Jesus. We close by reflecting on where we’re resisting faithfulness and praying “your will be done” and “deliver us from the evil one.”

00:00 Day Nine Setup

01:19 Pause And Invite

01:50 Abram Called Out

03:06 Faith And Failure

04:05 Trust Is The Point

05:25 Genesis 15 Promise

07:12 Blessing The Nations

07:57 Trust Through The Cross

09:16 Daily Trust Check 1

1:07 Yielding Prayer Close

Welcome back to In Light of the Cross.

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It is day nine and we are continuing our

theme of the seemingly endless story.

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Yesterday we looked at the

story of Lambic and Noah.

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And the Tower of Babel and we began to

dip our toe in the story of Abraham.

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And we've just been tracing this theme

that is really a summation of all of the

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Old Testament that humans are broken.

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Yet in the midst of that brokenness,

there is this scarlet thread of grace and

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really that comes into clarity as we see

the culmination of human brokenness and

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the murder of God and the hanging of Jesus

on the cross, and also God's grace, that

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by that death all of humanity is saved.

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in Light of The Cross is a podcast about

how the cross is like a pair of glasses.

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Though we read the Old Testament,

without this lens, we can

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see kind of what's going on.

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We can see shapes, but really with the

cross, we have this focus that there's

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a, a story that God is writing in

the scriptures and it all comes into

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clarity, into fulfillment in the cross.

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Yeah.

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Good stuff.

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So let's begin here as we

have in the past few days with

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just a moment of pausing and.

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Invite the spirit into this time.

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Pause, whatever you're doing.

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Take some deep breaths and ask

God to meet you here and now.

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So after the story of the Tower of Babel.

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We meet this man, Abram, and all of us

as readers are wondering, is Abram the

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guy who's gonna crush the serpent's head?

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Yeah, it seems like that.

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Say more about that.

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Well, guy calls him to do this, this

crazy thing, to put his trust in

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him and move far away from all that.

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He had known his culture.

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He left the city of er, which we know from

excavations was a wealthy, advanced city.

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And God calls him to leave that he doesn't

really even tell him where he is gonna go.

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Just says, go to the place.

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I will show you.

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So if the idea is, I'll let

you know when you get there

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and he does it, he follows God.

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And very often you see in Abraham's

life, this willingness to trust God.

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So we're waiting on some kind of.

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Savior of humanity, somebody who's

going to begin a new humanity.

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And he's given this promise that he

will be made into a great nation and

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God will bless him and all people on

Earth will be blessed through him.

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Right?

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Incredible promises.

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Surely this is the one, this is

the seed of the woman that got it

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promised back in Genesis three.

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And, there are times it seems like that.

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and yet.

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Yeah, there are times where it sure

doesn't too, right here in Genesis 12, he

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obeys, he does this crazy command of God.

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He shows his trust, but then they get

down into the land of Egypt and he's

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worried that Pharaoh or some powerful

person will kill him to take his wife.

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So he tells Sarah, tell

her when you're my sister.

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And, uh, and so she does, Pharaoh

takes her to be part of his

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harem, to be one of his wives.

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And so basically he throws her

under the bus, sacrifices her

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honor to save his own skin.

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That is not the mark of a man

who has his faith fully in God.

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And of course he does it

again later on in the story.

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So he repeats it So.

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There's this mixture of times of

great faith and trust, and there

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are times of InFaith even cowardice.

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Mm-hmm.

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So Abraham can't be the one.

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But what's instructive on this?

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you see again, what we should have

been seeing from the beginning,

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that the heart of this is trust.

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He didn't want Abraham to do these great

and wonderful things, like Hercules,

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doing all his, his great labors.

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All he wanted was him to trust him.

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Trust me and obey what I tell

you to do, and I will bless you.

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I'll make you, I will

make your name great.

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I'll make you father of many nations.

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And that trust to them

was put to the test.

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The trust was put to the test

when God said, I'll make you

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the father of many nations.

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And yet they're in their old age

and they don't have any kids yet.

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And of course that sets up the great

dynamic and therefore a while again, he

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trusts God even through the many years.

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But then his wife comes along with

this scheme to take one of her

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servants, Hagar, you know, take her

and let's have a child through her

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and then we'll adopt that child.

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so he listens to her instead of

putting his trust in God echoing,

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perhaps Adam who listened to his wife

instead of putting his trust in God.

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So again, he fails.

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So you have this idea that the

heart of this is trusting God.

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That is the heart of our relationship

with him and what God desires of us.

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And there's even this,

this is the second point.

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There's this beautiful passage in.

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chapter 15,

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do you have Genesis 15 pulled up?

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You wanna read versus, one through six?

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. In chapter 15 it says this, that the word

of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.

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Do not be afraid.

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Abram.

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I am Your shield, your very great reward.

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But Abram said, sovereign Lord, what can

you give me since I remain childless?

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And the one who will inherit my

estate is Eliezer of Damascus.

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And Abram said, you have given

me no children, so a servant in

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my household will be my heir.

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Then the word of the Lord came to him.

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This man will not be your heir.

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But a son who is your own flesh

and blood will be your heir.

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He took him outside and said, look

up at the sky and count the stars

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if indeed you can't count them.

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Then he said to him, so

shall your offspring be.

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Abram believed the Lord and and God

Credited it, to him as righteousness.

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Yeah.

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And if you know your Bible, you know

that Paul takes that last phrase, that

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Abraham believed God or trusted God, and

God counted that as his righteousness.

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Paul lays that as a very foundation,

that we respond to faith, that we

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respond to God and trust the same way.

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So that's the second part,

that the story of Abraham.

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brings out, yes, he is a man called

by God with all these great promises,

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and there are times he chooses

trust and there are times he fails.

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But in the midst of that, God

stays faithful to his promise.

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God doesn't give up on his coveted.

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God does bring this child

even after his hair.

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Brain schemed with Hagar, God promises

and he delivers In the midst of that.

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I think there's one other thing

that really stands out to me about

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this story and that is the scope

of what God is doing in God's plan.

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I mean, you really see it come

to fruition there in that first

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promise in chapter 12, all people

on the earth will be blessed, right?

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God is creating through Abraham a family.

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And through this family,

the entire world is blessed.

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The intention is to undo the curse.

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Mm-hmm.

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That is brought about by the

evil decision of Adam and Eve.

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Right.

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So there's, there's the beauty of God's

work, both in what he is doing and the

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scope and how he's accomplishing that.

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Yeah, exactly.

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And so that helps to see

something in light of the cross.

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Our response, what does God require of us?

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Does he require for us

to live a perfect life?

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No.

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Does he require for us to get it right,

to have more good deeds than bad, to

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have more good deeds than the average

person or the person we used to be,

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or the person that our parents are?

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No.

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God has done all the work.

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All he desires for us

is that we trust him.

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Now for Abraham, that trust took the form

of believing God's promise about his son.

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Even though for years and decades he

did not see that fulfilled for us.

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The form of that trust is believing

his word about Jesus and the cross.

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That's why it says in Romans,

if we believe in our heart and

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confess with our mouth that

Jesus is Lord, we will be saved.

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God makes it easy for us, but

he also gives us a choice.

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This is what I'm doing.

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What do we do?

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We believe or we place our trust in what

he is doing and what his promises are.

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So we see through Abraham a little bit

more clearly about what it means to place

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our trust in the cross, basically as

trust in God and what he's doing for us.

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I think that there are various

levels to how we trust in God.

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I think in one level we trust God

for the salvation of our soul, right?

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But then there's this daily trust,

and we go throughout our days.

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Making decisions.

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And sometimes those come from a place of

trust in God, and sometimes those come

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from a place of a lack of trust in God.

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Mm-hmm.

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And so it's good for us to take time

now to ask the Spirit to search us.

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Where am I not putting my trust in you?

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Right.

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And maybe that's for a first time decision

to say, okay, I really believe that what

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Jesus did on the cross handles my problem

of sin, and that by my faith in him I can

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be saved and live with God and eternity.

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Mm-hmm.

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Be part of what he's doing in

the world to bless all people

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through the blood of Jesus.

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Or maybe.

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There's something that you know,

God is inviting you into, and yet

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because of fear or because of the

pride of thinking you know better,

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you are resisting faithfulness to him.

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So what is the area of your

life that you're resisting?

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Faithfulness.

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let's spend a few minutes just

reflecting on that question.

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Ask the spirit to search you.

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Knowing that there may be something that

God wants to bring to your attention now

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so that you can respond in faithfulness.

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Okay,

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We're going to end our time

today yielding once again to

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God as an act of faithfulness.

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Two lines in this prayer

standing out to me today.

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One is your will be done on

earth as it is in heaven.

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When we pray that God's will be done

on earth, that's a prayer that he

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would harmonize our will with his.

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That we would be part of the way

that he accomplishes his will

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on earth as it is in heaven.

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And the other line that's standing

out to me is that last line,

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lead us not into temptation, but

deliver us from the evil one.

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When we are given an opportunity

to respond in faithfulness.

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There is always a temptation to

resist it because of comfort or

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because of fear, or because of pride,

or because of some other reason.

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So as we pray, lead us

not into temptation, but

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deliver us from the evil one.