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Sunday Evening October 25th

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Sunday, October 25, 2026

Continued Old Testament Series | Genesis 25

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Everything Jesus has done for us is to make us one with Him. That’s what the atonement (His sacrifice) was all about, His resurrection, the outpouring of His Spirit, His ascension, everything He’s ever done. Your salvation is to this end – to make us one with Him (Jn.14:20; 17:20-23).

Everything that is in Him, everything that He is, is in you! His glory. “The glory which You gave Me, I give to them.” (Jn.17:22) His life and power are in you. His peace is in you. His love and joy. His wisdom. His righteousness (1Cor.1:30). His very person is in you. You and He are one. Not one and the same, but one.

By Christ Jesus you have been reconciled to God. Your reconciliation is so complete, so perfect, that you are one with Him. We are one, yet distinct. He makes a distinction between the vine and the branch. He’s the vine and we’re the branches. “As He is, so are we in this world.” (1Jn.4:17) Where is He? He is in heaven. And we are seated with Him in heavenly places (Eph.2:6). Our person is on earth, but our position is in heaven. What is He? Is He the Son of God? So are we sons of God (1Jn.1:2; Rm.8:16). He is healthy. He is wealthy. He is wise. He has dominion. He has given us dominion. So are we in this world! Right now. In this world. As He is right now, so are we in this world.

Somewhere and why not here, someone and I’m including myself in this, at some time, is going to get a hold of this, and his or her world, and the whole world, is never going to be the same.

You are like Jesus, because you are connected to Him in a living vital way, as a branch is connected to the trunk of a tree, as a branch is connected to a vine. You have been made one with Christ and the Father by the Spirit. You have been called to a ministry of reconciliation in your little part of the world. Called to share the gospel. To do what Jesus did. Our oneness with Christ is what our salvation is all about. The Bible puts it like this: Christ is in us and we are in Christ. That is our salvation. Our oneness is our salvation. He has identified with us by becoming a Son of Man, in order that we might identify with Him in becoming a son of God.

As any good teacher will do, to show all this, Jesus gives an illustration of our oneness. This is where our oneness with God gets practical. This is where Jesus lets in the light. This oneness is not some mystical thing for monks hidden away in some monastery who devote all their time to prayer, fasting, and reading the Bible. In John 14-16 Jesus is speaking to us, and in cha.17 He is praying for people who would “turn the world upside down” by preaching the gospel to all nations, healing the sick, and casting out demons. This oneness is for you who live in the real world of jobs, children, inflation, costs of living, monthly bills, and gas prices.

All of this brings us to John, chapter fifteen. Any good teacher uses illustrations. Jesus, the master teacher, filled His sermons with illustrations in the form of parables, metaphors, similes, and other word pictures. “Without a parable He did not speak to the people.” (Mk.4:34) When we come to Jn.15 we come to the illustration of what He’s been teaching us in cha.14 and what He will be praying for us in cha.17.

Jesus didn’t just say He was the Light of the world; He opened blind eyes. He didn’t just teach that He was the Bread of life, He fed multitudes with only a couple of biscuits. He didn’t just say, “I am the Resurrection and the Life,” He raised Lazarus from the dead. Examples and illustrations let in the light. The truth is there, but without the light we can’t see it. The Holy Spirit enlightens us. His work is to illumine the word of God to us. Theologians call this illumination. Illustrations illumine the truth so we can see it. Jesus continually illustrated and demonstrated what He taught and preached.

This illustration is so important He uses one of His famous “I Am” statements. There are seven of them in the Gospel of John: “I Am the Light of the world. I am the Good Shepherd.” And so on. Here He speaks of Himself as the Vine. Or as Keith Green sang, “He is d’vine and we are the branches.” This is one of the most powerful illustrations of Jesus, in the rest of the Bible, and in all of literature.

First notice that the purpose of the Vine is to bear fruit. To do that requires branches. Fruit doesn’t grow on the vine; it grows on the branch. That’s you! The purpose of the branch is to bear fruit. But what is the purpose of the fruit? This is critical to understanding this teaching of Jesus. There are two purposes: To glorify God and reach others for Christ. These will be discussed in the next lesson.

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October 18th, 2026 Sunday Evening Holli Simpson

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Sunday Morning 10/18/2026 "Sarah's Burial and Isaac's Bride" Genesis 23-24

Birth. Bride. Burial. These three things are important to any man. Your birth is very important. Whether you realize it or not, who your parents are and what they have and are like will determine much of what happens to you for the rest of your life. Isaac had great parents: Abraham and Sarah. They were in a covenant relationship with the great God who had blessed them with prosperity and promises of a glorious future that would be passed down only to him. The Bible talks a lot about how a person is buried, and surprisingly where! Abraham was very concerned about where Sarah was buried. All of cha.23 is taken up with Sarah’s burial place. And after the new birth, nothing is more important than a good bride. Careful who you marry because a marriage can mean heaven or hell on earth. Your spouse may become your helpmate or your hellmate! Obtaining the right bride (spouse) should take a lot of prayer and observing and cooperating with the providence of God. It did for Isaac and it should for every one of us. (First comes the sacrifice, then the spouse.)

I. Sarah’s Burial. (Gen.23)

A. The Pain. “So the 127-year-old Sarah died, and Abraham came to mourn and weep for her.”

Death brings a lot of pain to the loved ones; Abraham was no exception. The pain is real. It hurts to lose someone we love and have them “buried out of my sight.” When our spouse dies, we grieve; but not as others who have no hope. Christians are the only ones on earth who have hope.

B. The Place.  I don’t know why the place of burial is so important, but the Bible goes out of its way to talk about where people were buried. Father Abraham teaches us to be sure our loved ones are buried properly.

II. Isaac’s Bride.  (Gen.24)   “Then Isaac took Rebekah and she became his wife, and he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.”

Providence. The providence of God is written all over this story about Abraham obtaining a bride for his son, Isaac. Providence means “Divine guidance and care.” (Webster) America’s Founding Fathers used this as their name for God because they could see the hand of God in everything concerning the forming of our nation.

Providence is not some blind fatalism. It is God working (mostly behind the scenes) to bring about His will. This is shown clearly in the story of Esther where God is not mentioned, but He was certainly working to bring about the preservation of Israel so that Messiah could come. In both Esther’s and Rebekah’s stories we learn that certain things work with the providence of God.

Prayer is one of those things. Throughout this story we see Abraham’s servant praying. And all his prayers were answered. People seriously err when they believe and act like things are just going to happen however God has determined they are going to happen. Nothing could be further from the truth. God does things in answer to prayer that He would not do if we didn’t pray. Providence uses prayer.

Personal Decisions work with providence.  “Her family said, “Will you go with this man?” And she said, “I will go.” (v.58) Decisions are important. They decide destinies. Providence has laid out a plan for our lives, but each of us must choose to follow that plan. Rebekah did and so must we.

III. God’s Picture.  In this ancient story God shows us the Trinity at work in our salvation. Let me explain. We suppose the servant in this story is Eleazer, but the Bible doesn’t tell us that. It simply identifies him with these words: “the oldest servant in Abraham’s house, who ruled over all that he had.” When an honorable, highly esteemed and unnamed servant is spoken of in the Bible it is often a type of the Holy Spirit. It certainly is here. Abraham is of course a type of God the Father, and Isaac a type of Jesus Christ.

In God’s providence in salvation, the Father sets up the plan. Why? Because just like Adam and Eve, the Father wants a bride for His son. Why? He wants many sons, many children. The first command of God to humans is “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” Hebrews 2:10 says this: “For it was fitting for Jesus, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.” You can’t have children without a bride. So the Father sends the Holy Spirit after the bride for His Son. Rebekah is the type of the church, the bride of Christ.

What an awesome picture of our salvation, authored and conducted by the providence of God. The Father sends the Spirit throughout the world, with the preaching of the Good News, to woo and win lost sinners to become the wealthy bride of Christ. But that bride must make a personal decision to be married to Him. He says, “Follow Me,” and we must say as Rebekah did, “I will go.” That decision will change your life.

Notice three things from this study.

1.) Rebeka went with the servant before she ever saw him. (1Pet.1:8-9) This is where faith comes in. You must follow Jesus even though you’ve never seen Him.

2.) She saw all the gifts and riches of the son. The church’s responsibility is to show the prospective bride of Christ the gifts of the Spirit and the riches of His likeness and blessings. We must demonstrate His power, love, joy, peace and grace, before we can expect them to believe what we say about Him and His blessings. This is what happened in Acts chapter two and in Acts 8: 6 where Philip went down to Samaria and preached Christ to them “and the multitudes with one accord heeded the things spoken by Philip, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did. For unclean spirits, crying with a loud voice, came out of many who were possessed; and many who were paralyzed and lame were healed. And there was great joy in that city.” This is New Testament power evangelism. Show them the riches of Christ.

3.) She went to live with the son. She didn’t say to the servant, “I want to be married to this wealthy man, but you don’t expect me to leave my home and go to live in his house do you. I can’t do that.” Matthew 8:21-22 says, “Then another of His disciples said to Him, ‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father.’ But Jesus said to him, ‘Follow Me and let the dead bury their own dead.” I am skeptical of a salvation that claims to take you to heaven but won’t take you to church. The church is the house of God that Jesus is building for His bride. Jesus said these words, “Whoever of you who does not forsake all that he has cannot be my disciple.” (Lk.14:33) A bride who does not want to live in the home of her husband? Never happens. 

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Wednesday, October 14, 2026 Continued Study of John. 

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Do not lose the lesson in all this that Paul gives in Galatians 4:21-31. These two mothers (Sarah and Hagar) and sons (Isaac and Ishmael) represent two covenants: law and grace. Law cannot live with grace; therefore, “Get rid of the slave and her son, for the son of the slave woman will not share the inheritance with the free woman’s son. We (Christians) are not children of the slave woman; we are children of the free woman.”

As if time was not enough of a test of Abraham’s faith, when the son was old enough (Most scholars believe he was 18 or so years old.) God told Abe to sacrifice his son as a burnt offering. The Scripture simply says, “God tested Abraham.” This was not a temptation to get Abraham to sin. This was a test to prove he was the right man, and he could now be trusted to fulfill the divine covenant. Gold is tested to see if it is gold. We are tested to see what is in us.

In the beginning Abraham was tested to see if he loved God more than his family. He failed. Here toward the end, he is tested to see if he loved God more than his son. He passed with flying colors.

Thus, Abraham was tested. God did not tell him to sacrifice his servant or his other son. He commanded him to sacrifice the only son of his beloved Sarah, the promised son. It was a test to see if he trusted the God who gave the promise of a son or the son who had been promised. That is a significant test for us all. Are we going to trust and love what God gave us more than the God who gave to us our most prized possession? With Abraham it was his son. 

By this time, Abraham’s faith was strong. When this most difficult command came to Abraham, there was no arguing or complaining. “The next morning Abraham got up early, saddled his donkey, took two servants and his son, and set out for the place God had told him about.” He didn’t hesitate. His faith was complete. When Isaac asked, “Dad, where is the animal for sacrifice?” his dad said, “God will provide.” And God did provide and He was given the name “God Will Provide” or Jehovah-Jireh (22:14). Abraham was so full of faith he had told his servants, “The boy and I will travel a little farther. We will worship there and then we will come back.”

Look at the picture of Jesus painted here: Both Isaac and Jesus were promised sons; each was born through a miraculous conception; each carried the wood of his sacrifice; each was offered by his father on what was possibly the exact same mountain. One was saved by a lamb and one was the Lamb God provided, and each had a bride selected by his father. That is why the last section of this chapter brings in Rebecca. She will be the bride of Isaac through whom the covenant would be realized. Jesus has a bride and it is the church (Eph.5:22-32).

Isaac didn’t die; God provided a substitute. But Jesus did die; then He was raised from the dead that we might be married to Him. Romans 7:4 tells us, “You have become dead to the law through the body of Christ (that was crucified), that you may be married to another – to Him who was raised from the dead.”

The obtaining of Rebekah for a bride is told in great detail in Genesis chapter 24. It closes with these words, “Isaac took Rebekah and she became his wife, and he loved her.”

So, the Old Testament is full of types and stories foretelling the coming of Jesus and the obtaining of His bride, the church. He came for the church and purchased the church with His own blood (Acts 20:28). I love Jesus who died for the church and I love the church for whom He died. Do you? More than anything in life I want to be a part of His bride. What a sacrifice He paid to have a bride, and that includes everyone in Christ!

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 It’s hard to imagine accusing the Patriarch of our faith, the standard bearer of our walk of faith, of lying. But that’s exactly what King Abimelech did, and Abraham admitted it, with a caveat. “She is truly my sister, and she became my wife.” And the holy couple had planned the whole thing! Abraham reasoned, “Sarah is so beautiful, wherever we go they will kill me to have my wife.” Having thoroughly rebuked Abraham and Sarah, Abraham prayed for God to heal Abimelech and his family. God answered that prayer.

Finally the promised child was born. They named him Isaac (the name means Laughter) and had him circumcised in keeping with the covenant. Abraham was 100 and Sarah was 90. Sarah said, “God has made me laugh, and all who hear will laugh with me.” On the day they celebrated his weaning with a feast, Sarah saw Ishmael “scoffing” and so she sent him and his mother away with this word to Abraham, “Cast out the bondwoman and her son; for her son shall not be heir with my son.” (Gal.3:18; 4:30) God approved of this to prove a great New Covenant truth that Christians are free from bondage to the flesh. While Hagar was crying God heard her cry and gave her and her son hope of becoming a great nation, without Abraham. Abraham dug a well, but King Abimelech’s servants seized the well. The king gave it back and cut a covenant. Abraham named the place Beersheba. There Abraham called on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God.

I. Lying. 

Laughing and lying are not two tracks upon which the train of our faith should run. They do not go together. Liars should not be laughing. And yet strangely enough, in the life of faith exhibited by Father Abraham in this story we see these two things running parallel to each other.

God condemns lying. It is number eight of the big Ten Commandments. Lying is not acceptable to God. Laughing is. Lying is the most self-centered thing you can do. You lie to protect yourself, which is what Abraham did, or to make yourself look favorable to others. Hypocrites are liars. Say one thing and do another. Even unbelievers know it’s wrong. King Abimelech did. Liars should be rebuked.

II. Laughing. 

Laughing is condoned by God. Even God laughs (Ps.2:4). And He makes people laugh. He made Sarah laugh. “Happy are the people whose God is the Lord” (Ps.144:15). What do happy people do? Laugh. What do people who have “joy unspeakable” do? Laugh. “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord.” What is a more joyful noise than laughing? “God will yet fill your mouth with laughing.” (Job 8:21) “There is a time to laugh.” (Ecc.3:4) When is that?

“When the Lord brought the captivity of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with singing. Then they said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’ The Lord has done great things for us and we are glad.” (Ps.126:1-3) Laugh when you’re up. Laugh when you’re down. “A merry heart does good like medicine.” (Prov.17:22) When you are feeling down, laugh your way out of it. A stage four cancer patient was given six months to live. He went home and watched Three Stooges movies and tv programs and just laughed and laughed. Within a year he was cancer free. His merry heart was better than chemo.

Consider what the Lord has done for you. He has loved you enough to send His Son to die for your sorry sins, so you could believe in Him, be forgiven and have eternal life. He not only put His Son on the cross for you, He also put His Spirit within you to give you wisdom and power to live the life that pleases God. He has provided a home for you in heaven.

I know a preacher who started passing blood… profusely. Day after day, week after week. He wouldn’t go to the doctor because he believed and constantly quoted the Scripture verses on healing. And he wouldn’t tell anyone but his wife because he didn’t want all the unbelief and pity that his church members, family, and friends would pour out on him. He just kept “filling up commodes with blood” and still preaching and going about his business.

Then one evening he was scheduled to preach as a visiting evangelist at another church and as he walked through the door “the Holy Ghost fell on me.” Others were coming in and the first thing they saw was this stranger running and dancing up and down the aisles shouting, “I’m healed! I’m healed! I’m healed!” All the while he was loudly laughing. People coming in didn’t know who he was because they had never met him. “Who’s that guy?” He’s the visiting evangelist. But he didn’t care. He just kept laughing and shouting. He had what he called a “laughing fit.” Well… that’s what you do when the Lord does something great in your life.

For about 50 years I substitute taught in public schools. I have many great stories to tell. One of my favorites is a lady who called me one day and told me about her sixteen-year-old cheerleader daughter who had always been a happy girl, until recently. She was a “life of the party” cheerleader. But she had become depressed and nobody knew why. Her parents wanted to take her to a psychologist and she said, “No, I want to go see Mister Simpson.” They asked her who that was and she said, “One of my substitute teachers.” The parents were shocked. “Why?”  She told them I was a pastor or something and the happiest guy she’d ever met. Said she loved it when he subs for us. So her mom called and asked if she could bring her to see me.

They walked into my office and this girl looked miserable. Her mom left her with me for an hour and we talked. She was severely depressed. I simply share the gospel with her. Told her the Good News. She received Christ as her Savior. Her mom came back and mom was in a hurry. No time to talk. About three weeks later the mom called me. “I want to thank you. My daughter is so happy now. And by the way, she now has the whole family going to church every Sunday.” 

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