Redemption Hill Church

Our study brings us to a devastating moment that the rest of Scripture points back to – the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. We will face big questions of God’s righteous judgment, human responsibility, divine intervention and salvation, the power of prayer, and the fickleness of the human heart. Sodom and Gomorrah’s wickedness was well known at the time of Abraham, and the names of those cities became euphemisms for depravity.

Pastor Eric preached from Acts 16 on Sunday. This chapter tells the story of how the Philippian church was born, and it all starts with God saying ’NO’. As the story unfolds, take note of all the good that comes from God saying no. We will take this scripture in sections, pausing long enough in each section to see God at work & let it stir us to worship.

It is so easy to feel like God doesn’t hear us when we pray. There are times that we wonder if our prayer even means anything, whether what we do, say, pray, or pursue don’t matter. If God is the sovereign Creator of all things, why would we matter anyway? This Sunday we are going to dig into Genesis 18 where we will see Abraham and Sarah both interact directly with God. We’ll see Sarah in a quiet moment, thinking she is unseen, unimportant, and unheard, and we’ll even see Abraham… negotiate? … argue with God? Over and over our time with Abraham in this Journey of Faith helps us to see who God is, through every hill and valley along our path.

This is another critical moment in Abraham’s life and in the storyline of Scripture. God came to Abram again, and this time changed his name to Abraham. Every time God has come to Abraham so far, the promise was clarified and made more specific. Chapter 17 is no exception. We will see a name change, a call to circumcision as a mark of the covenant (!?!?), and a man who laughed at God – we will look together and see the Absurdity of Grace.

Decisions are part of the human experience. Making plans & deciding the path we want to take is all part of what it means to be alive. It can be fun, but it can also be debilitating depending on where you’re at in life. Sometimes it feels like we’re always being presented with big, life-altering decisions. And with those decisions come questions like: What do I do? What’s God’s will for my life? We don’t want to get it wrong and then be set on the wrong path forever… we just want to know, how can I make good decisions?

In this sermon, Pastor Eric will walk us through Proverbs 16 as we pursue Jesus. There we find a clear theme of wisdom for our plans & ways (our decisions) that is woven throughout.

We have already seen ups and downs in Abram and Sarai’s journey. We have seen Abram follow God’s calling and promises with bold faith and obedience. We have also seen him run in fearful faithlessness. We have seen Abram at his peak as he led a campaign to rescue his nephew and the people of the cities of the Jordan River Valley, and as he refused to leverage his victories for political gain but received a blessing from Melchizedek. Last week we saw Abram receive God’s promises again, but this time as a covenant – in a mysterious passage that shows that God’s promises to Abram are not contingent in the least on Abram, but only on God to come through. 
Just when everything looked like it was headed in the right direction, chaos descended. Abram, who had “believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness,” turned back again to his own solutions and plans. He and Sarai took God’s promises into their own hands, with the best of their ideas for how to bring them to fulfillment. The best of their efforts, though, were not what God had called them to. In truth, they showed a lack of faith, a lack of trust in God’s ability to do the seemingly impossible. Genesis 16 is a dramatic, made-for-Netflix story that reveals impatient hearts that reflect our own more closely than we would like to admit. And still there is hope in the midst of chaos.

Back in chapter 12 God called Abram with the promise that He would make Abram a great nation and bless all people on Earth through him. We’ve traced some ups and downs that bring us to this point. While God made some promises to Abram along the way, this chapter formalizes a covenant between God and Abram. What may seem a little bizarre to us – cutting some animals in half and laying them out on the ground – follows the pattern of covenant ceremonies in the Ancient Near East. 
Genesis 15 is a key point in the entire storyline of the Bible, God’s plan of redemption for all people. We will explore exactly what a covenant is, and why the specifics of this chapter are important to help us understand God’s character. We will also see our place in the story, and the importance this covenant has for all who follow Christ. 

This Sunday we continue our series, Abraham: Journey of Faith, with Genesis 14. This chapter shows Abram at his best. It’s a dramatic chapter that would make for a great movie or miniseries - a riveting plot, villains, a crisis and a hero, strategy, battles, a surprise twist, and character development. We see the man of faith act in great faith both in the risks he took and in the opportunities he passed up. By the end we are also introduced to one of the most mysterious figures in all of Scripture: Melchizedek, the King of Salem. This Sunday we will see a profound example of the ways that the whole Bible holds together with strong threads of a narrative tapestry.

This Sunday we were in Genesis 2-3 looking at vocation and how we view each other. My hope, as we walk together through Scripture today, is that God will soften every one of our wills to reimagine why we do what we do for work, and open our eyes to see ourselves & others as individuals who possess an inherent dignity & value not because of what we DO but because of who we are as people made in the image of God.

When we started last week, his name was Abram. God came to Abram and called him to go to a place that God would show him, promising to make his name great and to bless all the families of the earth through Abram. In an incredible step of faith, Abram followed God’s call! Sadly, he also was overcome by fear in short order as a famine hit the land. And so we saw the factors that lead us to stretches when our faith fails. Praise God that His promises aren’t reliant on us!