Genesis 25 | Matthew 24 | Esther 1 | Acts 24

Genesis 25 is a chapter of extreme transition in the unfolding story of God’s salvation in and through his people. In this chapter, we see God’s purposes in election across three generations.

First, we read in Genesis 25 about the death of Abraham at the age of 175. Abraham outlived his wife Sarah, even taking another wife named Keturah who bore him many children. Nevertheless, we read that “Abraham gave all he had to Isaac” (Gen. 25:5) because Abraham never forgot that God had named Isaac as the one through whom his covenantal promises would be fulfilled.

Second, we learn more about Isaac’s story, and specifically about his relationship with Rebekah. Just as Isaac’s mother, Sarah, had been barren, so also Rebekah is barren (Gen. 25:21), and Isaac had to pray that God would open Rebekah’s womb. We discussed the ongoing theme throughout the Scriptures of barren women in our meditation for Genesis 16—Rebekah was not the first infertile woman in the Bible, and she would not be the last. God delights in demonstrating his great love toward—and power through—helpless people.

Third, Genesis 25 stretches us into the third generation, telling the story of how Rebekah did eventually conceive. In fact, Rebekah conceived twins who struggled fiercely in her womb. But from the very beginning Yahweh had chosen that the “older [Esau] shall serve the younger [Jacob]” (Gen. 25:23).

Jacob and Esau share many similarities to the children of the previous generation, Ishmael and Isaac. Both sets of brothers find themselves in fierce opposition even from birth, and in both sets of brothers Yahweh singles out one son through whom his covenant promises will run. Earlier Yahweh had told Abraham that “through Isaac shall your offspring be named” (Gen. 21:12), and now Yahweh tells Rebekah that Esau shall serve Jacob (Gen. 25:23).

The Apostle Paul points to those two verses (Gen. 21:12, 25:23) in Romans 9:6–13 to explain God’s purposes in election. It wasn’t that Ishmael or Esau had done something wrong, or that Isaac and Jacob had done something right—in fact, Paul insists that God’s purposes of election were accomplished specifically before these children were born, and before any of them had done anything good or bad.

Instead, God’s purposes were to bring forth the offspring that he had promised who would crush the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15), and so God chose specific people with whom he established his covenant, and through whom he would raise up that offspring. As Paul writes, “So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy” (Rom. 9:16).

Does your theology place a greater emphasis on what you do to receive God’s salvation or on what the God who has mercy has done before you were even born, before you had done anything good or bad?

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Genesis 24 | Matthew 23 | Nehemiah 13 | Acts 23

Yesterday, in Genesis 23, we read about the death of Sarah, Abraham’s wife. Today, in Genesis 24, we see Abraham himself approaching death. He too will not live to see God’s promises fulfilled. So, Abraham makes plans to help his son Isaac continue to serve Yahweh faithfully after he dies.

First, Abraham refuses to allow his son Isaac to marry one of the daughters of the Canaanites (Gen. 24:3). Instead, he asks his servant to go back to his old country to find Isaac a wife from there. It isn’t that Abraham’s old country is filled with devout worshipers of Yahweh—we know from Joshua 24:2 that Abraham and his family were idol worshipers before Yahweh specifically called Abraham to follow him.

But at the same time, we also know that the Canaanites were particularly wicked. In Genesis 15, when Yahweh cut a covenant with Abraham, he explained the reason that Abraham and his offspring would not immediately inherit the land of Canaan: “the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Gen. 15:16). The Amorites (Canaanites) were so wicked that Yahweh would eventually expel them from the land; however, Yahweh was also mercifully delaying their judgment until their iniquity was so heinous that justice demanded their annihilation. Abraham refuses to let his son marry such a woman.

Second, Abraham insists that his son not be allowed to return to Abraham’s old country (Gen. 24:6). Abraham had disobeyed God by leaving the Promised Land and going to Egypt in Genesis 12, and the consequences had been disastrous. As Isaac continues to wait for the fulfillment of Yahweh’s promises, Abraham insists that his son remain in the land of Canaan.

And so, Abraham’s servant meets Isaac’s wife, Rebekah, at a well. This is the first time in the Bible that one of God’s servants finds their wife at a well, but it is not the last. Later, Isaac’s son Jacob would meet his future wife Rachel at a well (Gen. 29:1–12), and Moses would meet his wife, Zipporah, at a well (Ex. 2:16–22).

It is of no small significance, then, that Jesus ultimately met and spoke with a Samaritan woman at a well in John 4, asking her about her husband. Jesus had come as the great bridegroom to take for himself a people as his bride, and he demonstrated his deep love by singling out a woman to meet at a well, just as Isaac, Jacob, and Moses had done before him. It wasn’t that Jesus was only seeking that one woman, but he sought out this one undeserving woman to show us that he is seeking other miserable sinners like you and me along with her.

So, Abraham preserves his son’s faithfulness to Yahweh in Canaan by bringing him a bride. In the same way, Jesus preserves our faithfulness by seeking us out to become his bride.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Genesis 23 | Matthew 22 | Nehemiah 12 | Acts 22

Abraham and his wife, Sarah, lived their lives as pilgrims in the land God had promised to them. Theirs was a hard life, characterized by unfulfilled longings, constant danger, and disappointment. Still, they obeyed Yahweh, following him to the land of Canaan, out of their love for him and their faith in the covenant promises he made to them.

But in Genesis 23, Sarah dies, never fully receiving the promises that Yahweh had made to her and to her husband. She received her son Isaac, but she never saw her son become a great nation or come into possession of the land of Canaan.

This is a theme that occurs repeatedly through the Bible, as well as in our own experience. We live for a brief time, waiting for God to do all that he has promised, and yet generation after generation is laid to rest in the grave before seeing the culmination of what God has spoken. And yet, with every succeeding generation, God continues his mission to expand his kingdom in this world until the day when Jesus Christ returns to judge the living and the dead.1

So how should we conduct our lives in the meantime while we await the fulfillment of God’s promises? Abraham gives us a magnificent example of living by faith in this chapter, even in a passage that appears on the surface to be nothing more than a business negotiation.

First, Abraham insists that his wife be buried in the Promised Land. There is not even a thought of returning to the land of Sarah’s birth to bury her because Abraham believes God’s promise that Canaan is their home—even if they are still only sojourners and aliens there (Gen. 23:4).

Second, Abraham seeks to purchase a piece of land as his possession, refusing to receive any kind of special discount on the property for his wife’s burial place (Gen. 23:5–16). Abraham’s attitude here matches his response in Genesis 14:22–23, when he refused to keep for himself any of the spoils of war, lest the king of Sodom should say, “I have made Abram rich.” Abraham understood that God, not the Hittites, would give him the land. Even when it meant a financial burden to himself, he refused to purchase the land at less than full price lest the Hittites should say, “We have made Abraham rich.”2

To those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, God has promised something even greater than the land of Canaan—in fact, God has promised us that we stand to inherit all things in Christ (Luke 12:32; Rom. 8:17). While you wait for the fulfillment of God’s promises, are you grasping for whatever possessions you can find, no matter how you acquire them? Or are you waiting for God to give you the kingdom as your inheritance, just as he has promised?

1 Allen P. Ross, Creation and Blessing: A Guide to the Study and Exposition of Genesis (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1996), 407–13.

2 John H. Sailhamer, The Pentateuch as Narrative: A Biblical-Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 180.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Genesis 22 | Matthew 21 | Nehemiah 11 | Acts 21

In spite of all the long waiting and the extraordinary faith Abraham had to exercise while waiting for Isaac to come, God tests Abraham’s faith in an even greater way in Genesis 22 by asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on a mountain in Moriah. Shockingly, we read Abraham bound his son Isaac on top of the altar, but just as Abraham took his knife to slaughter his son, God stopped Abraham from harming Isaac. The test was over. Abraham was willing to do anything for God—not even sparing his own, beloved son.

Why would God ask Abraham to do this? To answer this question, listen to God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 22:16–18: “By myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you….And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.” Everything about this story points us back to the promised offspring—the offspring of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15), redeeming creation from the curse of sin and death.

Ultimately, we see in this passage a shadow of the what God would do for us in Jesus Christ. Unlike the way in which God spared Abraham’s son, God did not spare his own Son. Jesus Christ was offered up as a sacrifice, and God did not send an angel to stop the hands of the Roman soldiers who beat him, nailed his hands and his feet to the cross, and let him hang there until he died. Where God did not forsake Isaac, God did forsake his own Son at the cross, abandoning him to wrath and the powers of hell.

And although God gave a substitute sacrifice so that Isaac would not have to die, God provided no such substitute to save his own Son. In fact, Jesus was the substitute, dying on the cross in our place for our sins.

But where Isaac was restored to life by being spared from death, something greater happened with God’s Son. Jesus did go to the grave for three days, but on the third day, God raised up his Son Jesus from the dead, resurrecting him to life and giving him everlasting victory over sin and death. In other words, Jesus gained possession of the gate of his enemy Satan, just as had been foretold in Genesis 22:17.

And because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, all the nations of the earth are blessed (Gen. 22:18). You and I share in the blessings of Abraham because Jesus Christ, the ultimate Isaac and the true offspring of Abraham, died and rose again.

This is the good news of the gospel of Jesus, declared thousands of years in advance, through Isaac.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Genesis 21 | Matthew 20 | Nehemiah 10 | Acts 20

At last, God fulfills his promise to Abraham and to Sarah. Finally, here in Genesis 21, Yahweh visits Sarah, enabling her to conceive, just as he had promised. Despite their old age (Abraham was one hundred years old at this point), God gives Abraham and Sarah a son. As God had instructed them in Genesis 17:19, they name their son Isaac, which means “laughter.” This name serves in part as a reminder that Sarah herself laughed at the idea of bearing a son in her old age (Gen. 18:12), but it also speaks to their overflowing joy at receiving their promised son.

Importantly, we also read in Genesis 21:4 that Abraham circumcised his son on the eighth day, just as God had commanded him to do. The sign of God’s covenant was cut into the flesh of the promised offspring according to the word God had spoken in Genesis 17:19: “Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him.”

But surprisingly, even though Sarah now has her own son, she still feels great animosity toward Hagar—and it doesn’t help that Hagar seems to have been mocking Sarah in some way (Gen. 21:9). So, Sarah insists that Hagar and Ishmael be cast out of Abraham’s household, and God authorizes Abraham to do so, in spite of Abraham’s misgivings: “Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for through Isaac shall your offspring be named” (Gen. 21:12).

The main question raised in Genesis 21 is this: If Abraham has two sons, which son is considered his “offspring”? This is not a question about biological paternity but about God’s promise. Again, the promise God makes to Abraham to give him an “offspring” is not merely to say that God would give Abraham a son but rather that God would give Abraham the promised offspring from Genesis 3:15—the offspring who would crush the head of the serpent and destroy the curse of sin and death in God’s creation.

So, God makes it very clear that while Ishmael is Abraham’s biological son, Ishmael is not the promised offspring. God promises to protect Ishmael, and God even makes special promises that he would make Ishmael into a great nation (Gen. 21:18), but Ishmael is not the promised offspring.

And in fact, not even Isaac is the promised offspring. Listen again to what God says in Genesis 21:12: “through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” Isaac is not the offspring, although the offspring would come through Isaac, and not through Ishmael.

Meditate on Galatians 3:16: “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’; referring to many, but referring to one, ‘And to your offspring,’ who is Christ.”

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Genesis 20 | Matthew 19 | Nehemiah 9 | Acts 19

Genesis 20 is the second time we see Abraham lying about his wife to protect his own safety. A nearly identical story takes place in Genesis 12:10–20, when Abram lied to the pharaoh of Egypt, saying that his wife was merely his sister. In that story, God sent plagues against Egypt until Pharaoh let God’s people go by restoring Sarai to Abram. That was a foreshadowing of what God would eventually do to rescue Israel out of Egypt under Moses in the book of Exodus, but the story of Genesis 12 wasn’t Pharaoh’s fault—Abram had lied to Pharaoh out of fear that someone would kill him to take Sarai for himself.

Perhaps we can understand Abram’s fear in Genesis 12, since he had just left his home country to go to a strange land that Yahweh had called him to. And keep in mind that Yahweh was a new God for Abraham—we are told in Joshua 24:2 that Abraham had previously served other gods. In many ways, Genesis 12 represents a young believer making an immature mistake, failing to trust God through a famine (the reason he had left Canaan in the first place) and failing to trust God for his safety in Egypt.

But why on earth does Abraham repeat the same mistake at this point that he had all the way back in Genesis 12? In Genesis 20, we see Abraham lying to a different king, but with the same self-protecting lie, telling Abimelech that Sarah was merely his sister (Gen. 20:2). And once again, Abraham lied because he was worried that someone might kill him to steal Sarah away for himself.

First, we should be reminded from this story that our salvation is all of grace. We tend to forget that, especially when we are thinking about the lives of the great patriarchs like Abraham, whom we tend to idealize. Stories like this remind us that we deserve nothing from God—even if we have been serving him for decades, as Abraham had at this point. Everything we have, we receive freely, by God’s grace through Jesus Christ—just as Abraham did.

Second, we should see in this story a warning not to think too highly of ourselves. If our salvation is indeed all of grace, then we shouldn’t be deceived into thinking that we are above falling into sin—even major sins from earlier in our lives that we have “overcome.” If even Abraham was not above major failures of faith, then why should we think that we are?

Instead, we need to fight to keep the gospel in plain view. We are great sinners in need of a great Savior. That was true when we first believed on Christ, it is still true today, and it will remain true for as long as God gives us breath.

Today, repent and believe the gospel again.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Genesis 19 | Matthew 18 | Nehemiah 8 | Acts 18

Lot is a fascinating example of someone who does not love God’s righteousness but who also does not approve of the world’s wickedness. There is a strange irony in the fact that Lot has become captivated with Sodom—captivated enough that he selfishly chose the region when Abram gave him the choice of where to move his family, his servants, and his flocks (Gen. 13:8–13)—but that Lot is absolutely horrified by the sinfulness of the city. He begs the two angels to stay with him for the night, and when the men of Sodom come to rape the angels, Lot pleads with them not to harm his guests, even offering up his own daughters to ensure the safety of the angels.

But strangely, when it comes time to leave, Lot struggles to perceive the gravity of the situation. Genesis 19:16 vividly portrays his hesitation—immediately after the angels urged Lot and his family to flee Sodom before God’s judgment is poured out on the city, we read this: “But he lingered. So the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the LORD being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city.” Lot cannot bring himself to leave, so the angels must forcibly (but mercifully) bring him out of the path of Yahweh’s wrath.

Lot sounds like a fool, doesn’t he? Even worse, Lot’s wife is so mournful for the fate of the city that she cannot help but look back (against the commandment of the angels), and so she turns into a pillar of salt. Why would Lot linger in the city? Why would Lot’s wife look back?

The answer is simple: they loved Sodom. As believers they were kept from fully participating in the wickedness of the city, but as time had passed, they had grown comfortable with its wickedness. After a while, they came to desire Sodom more than they desired God and God’s righteousness. Only through severe, forceful mercy could God bring them out of the judgment he had ordained for Sodom.

This story should cause us to evaluate how much we love the world. Have we grown comfortable with the wickedness of the world because we love its entertainment, wealth, power, and pleasure?

The only cure for loving the world is by learning to love God more than we love what the world has to offer. We cannot simply stop loving the world cold turkey, but we need to cultivate a love for God and his righteousness strong enough to eclipse our love for the world, just as the blazing daylight of the sun drowns out the pale light of the moon.

Today, what would it look like for you to cultivate love for God’s righteousness? What would it mean to satisfy your hunger through feasting on Jesus instead of with the rotten food that the world offers?

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Genesis 18 | Matthew 17 | Nehemiah 7 | Acts 17

Genesis 18 contains a promise of extraordinary hope and of devastating judgment. This passage in some ways marks both the beginning of Abraham’s redemptive, covenant offspring as well as the end of the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Here Yahweh appears to Abraham in the form of three men. There is some debate about whether these three men are Yahweh or whether they are angels accompanying Yahweh, which I do not have enough space in this meditation to explore. Suffice it to say, Yahweh and the three men are discussed interchangeably in this passage. Genesis 18 is not a proof of the Trinity in the Old Testament, but we should nevertheless see a strong hint here that Yahweh exists as three persons.

As they eat together, the men declare that Yahweh’s promise would at last be coming true: by that time next year, Sarah would have a son. We could look down at Sarah for her lack of faith, laughing at the promise of gaining a son, but it is unlikely we would have responded any better. We do not know when Abraham and Sarah moved to Canaan, but we know that at this point Ishmael is thirteen years old (Gen. 17:25), and Ishmael had been born only after Abraham and Sarah had been in Canaan long enough to be desperate enough to give Hagar to Abraham to produce a surrogate son for Sarah, so the promised birth has already been a long time coming.

Even Abraham had prayed that Ishmael might serve as the promised son (Gen. 17:18), but God had insisted the promised offspring would come through Sarah (Gen. 17:19). Both Abraham and Sarah have been stretched to the limit for probably at least two decades, and it is unsurprising that they would have trouble believing they were to receive everything they had hoped for over the coming year.

But while Yahweh brings his promised offspring into the picture, this is also the passage where Yahweh announces his judgment against Sodom and Gomorrah because of their great sin (Gen. 18:20). Interestingly, even though Abraham struggles to believe he and Sarah would conceive a son, he does not hesitate to believe this message of judgment, stepping immediately into the role of mediator to plead on behalf of Sodom—even negotiating to reduce the threshold for the city’s salvation to a mere ten righteous people (Gen. 18:23–33).

This is a beautiful picture of genuine faith. Abraham, with all of his own personal doubts and misgivings, nevertheless pleads with Yahweh, arguing, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” (Gen. 18:25). Faith isn’t the absence of doubt but the willingness to trust—and especially to pray—in the midst of doubt.

What doubt are you facing? Is your response to laugh at God’s promises, or does your doubt drive you closer to God in prayer, like Abraham?

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Genesis 17 | Matthew 16 | Nehemiah 6 | Acts 16

In Genesis 15, Yahweh had cut a covenant with Abram by passing twice through the pieces of the animals who had been torn in two. In this, Yahweh was promising that his body would be broken like the animals if either he broke the terms of the covenant or if Abram (or Abram’s offspring) broke the terms of Yahweh’s covenant. In Genesis 17, God does not make a different covenant with Abram (whom God here renames as Abraham), but Yahweh adds circumcision as an assurance of what he had promised in Genesis 15.

So, God commands that Abraham and his offspring after him be circumcised as a sign of this covenant between God and them (Gen. 17:11). Every male who is at least eight days old shall be circumcised, whether that male is born to Abraham or bought from a foreigner to serve in Abraham’s household should be circumcised, so that every male in Abraham’s household would bear the mark of God’s covenant in their flesh (Gen. 17:12–13).

But why circumcision? This seems like one of the strangest possible covenant signs God could have chosen, and yet circumcision is a preoccupation of the whole Bible. There are many reasons why God chose this particular sign for his covenant, but we will talk about two here.

First, physical circumcision always pointed to the necessity of heart circumcision. God gave circumcision to be a picture of what he really wanted: that his people would cut away the sinfulness of their flesh by the power of the Holy Spirit (Deut. 10:16, 30:6; Rom. 3:29).

Second, circumcision pointed forward to Jesus in several ways. Remember that the promise of this covenant is that God would give Abraham offspring—and not just any offspring, but the offspring God had promised who would crush the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15). So, the sign of circumcision was placed on the male reproductive organ as a reference to the reproductive promises of God’s covenant. Ultimately, Jesus would be born by cutting away the male’s involvement completely, so that he would be conceived by a virgin, without a human father.

But also, the bloody nature of circumcision pointed forward to the way in which Jesus (the promised offspring) would crush the head of the serpent Satan. Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil by shedding his own blood on the cross, and every bloody circumcision throughout the generations of Abraham anticipated what Jesus would do to purchase our salvation.

Circumcision was given to announce the gospel of Jesus in a symbol. We no longer need physical circumcision, but we still need what circumcision pointed toward: Jesus Christ and him crucified. We need our hearts to be circumcised, we need Yahweh to be God to us and to our children after us, and we need the covenant promises that were secured for us in Christ.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Genesis 16 | Matthew 15 | Nehemiah 5 | Acts 15

Back in Genesis 12, we read that Abram had distrusted and disobeyed Yahweh by going to Egypt because of a famine in the land of Canaan. On top of the sin of leaving the place where Yahweh had told Abram to remain, Abram also lied to the pharaoh of Egypt, telling him that his wife was merely his sister out of fear for his life. Before the truth came out, Pharaoh dealt well with Abram for Sarai’s sake, giving Abram much wealth, including “female servants” (Gen. 12:16). The plot of Genesis 16 turns on Hagar, one of the female servants Abram received in Egypt.

The focus of Genesis 16, however, is not on Hagar but on Abram’s wife, Sarai. Sarai is the first among a long line of women in the Bible who face infertility, including Rachel, the wife of Jacob (Gen. 29:31); the unnamed mother of Samson (Judg. 13:2); and Hannah, the mother of Samuel (1 Sam. 1). Why do you think God uses infertile women in his story so frequently?

Part of the answer, I think, lies in the fact that infertility is an utterly helpless condition, especially in the days before any level of effective medical treatments were available. As such, infertility is a perfect illustration of the helplessness of the world in sin—we are totally dependent upon the promised offspring of the woman coming to crush the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15), but we cannot cure fertility problems that prevent offspring from coming at all.

Also, we recognize in these stories God’s great love for these women who were the subject of ridicule and shame because of their condition. God continually draws barren women to the center of his story because he loves them and because he gains a special kind of glory by bringing life out of their barrenness. Accordingly, it is no accident that God’s own Son was born to a woman who was infertile by virtue of having never known a man sexually—Jesus was born of a virgin so that God would be glorified even in the conception and birth of Jesus.

But Sarai does not understand this—nor would we have, if we had been in her place. Out of desperation, she attempted something that made sense according to the customs of the day by giving her Egyptian female servant to Abram to be a surrogate mother. Of course, Hagar’s pregnancy only compounds Sarai’s shame and misery rather than offering any kind of comfort.

The story of Hagar, Ishmael, Sarai, and Abram is far from over, but today, meditate on this question: Are there places in your life where you are applying human solutions to overcome weaknesses that God may be giving you for his own glory? Is it possible that you may not be solving your problem but only creating additional problems by acting out of impatience and desperation?

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.