The Life-Changing Effects of Faith - Genesis - July 12th, 2026 (Sermon Transcript)
Over the years, I've often seen research and polling and surveys that highlight a really disturbing fact about Christianity. It's the same here in America. You may have seen some of this data as well.
It shows that there is almost no difference in behavior between Christians and non-Christians. So whether a person identifies as a Christian or not, it's all the same.
The divorce rates are the same, the use of pornography is the same, the amount given to charity is the same, and on and on and on. So it seems like faith, the Christian faith makes no difference in people's lives.
But this morning, I want to show you the other side of the story. Here's the truth, professing faith in Christ makes no difference in a person's life, but possessing faith in Christ makes all the difference.
In other words, anybody can say that they are a Christian, anybody can say that they have faith, but just saying you have faith, or just going to church, or just calling yourself a Christian makes no difference.
But if you have genuine, God-given faith, real biblical faith, that makes a massive difference in people's lives. Abraham is a great example of this.
We've been studying the life of Abraham these past few weeks, and he was certainly not a perfect man. You can see this very early on in his story, and it continues through the entire saga of Abraham in the book of Genesis. He was not a perfect man.
He made mistakes. He was a sinner, just like you and me. But if there's one thing you can say about Abraham, it's that he was a man of faith.
He was a man of faith. Historically, he has always been viewed as a model of faith, even the epitome of faith, and what we see in our passage this morning is that his faith really did have a huge impact in his life.
We can even see exactly what kind of impact it had, and it proves the point that I'm trying to make, that real faith makes a real difference. And it's not just Abraham.
When it comes to all of that polling and research, the trick is to actually pay attention to the details, to really investigate, to be thorough. It turns out that if a person is serious about their faith, everything changes.
If a person just claims to have faith, but they don't have real faith, if they just go to church once in a while, nothing changes. But if they have genuine real faith, everything changes.
For example, if you read the Bible at least four times per week, or if people in the survey say that their relationship with Jesus is extremely important to them, there's a massive difference in their lives when it comes to generosity and marriage
and everything else. So I want to ask you right now, is your faith making a big difference in your life? Now, let's look at Abraham and how his faith shaped his life.
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Genesis 13 Reading
Please stand for the reading of God's word. I'll read the text for us. Genesis 13, verses 1 through 18.
So Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had, and lot with him into the Negeb.
Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold, and he journeyed on from the Negeb as far as Bethel, to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, to the place where he had made an altar at the first.
And there Abram called upon the name of the Lord. And Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents, so that the land could not support both of them dwelling together.
For their possessions were so great that they could not dwell together. And there was strife between the herdsmen of Abram's livestock and the herdsmen of Lot's livestock. At that time, the Canaanites and the Parasites were dwelling in the land.
Then Abram said to Lot, Let there be no strife between you and me, and between your herdsmen and my herdsmen, for we are kinsmen. Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me.
If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right. Or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left.
And Lot lifted up his eyes and saw that the Jordan Valley was well watered everywhere, like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, and the direction of Zor. This is before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.
So Lot chose for himself all the Jordan Valley, and Lot journeyed east. Thus they separated from each other. Abram settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled among the cities of the valley and moved his tent as far as Sodom.
Now the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord. The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward.
For all the land that you see, I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted.
Arise, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I will give it to you. So Abram moved his tent and came and settled by the oaks of Mamor, which are at Hebron, and there he built an altar to the Lord. This is the word of the Lord.
You may be seated, and please join me as I pray for us. Father, I pray that you would be with us this morning.
Right here, right now, God, I pray that you would illuminate the truth of your word and help us to come to terms with it, help us to believe it, and to live in accordance with the truth of it.
God, I pray that you would help us to be different in light of your word. Would you change us? Would you change us from the inside out?
We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.
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Faith Produces Repentance
Now, what are the fruits of faith that we see in this passage? The claim is that faith made a big difference in Abraham's life. So how exactly did his faith make a big difference in his life?
I'm going to show you four of them. The first one we see is repentance. Repentance makes me think of the very first Christian sermon ever preached.
Anybody know what the first Christian sermon was?
It was the Book of Acts, the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit shows up and starts doing miraculous things, and Peter preaches to the crowds, preaches the first ever sermon, and by God's grace, they believe, they have faith.
And then we read this in Acts chapter 2, verses 37 and 38. Now, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, this preaching of Peter about Jesus and how they had crucified the author of life.
It says, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do?
Now, they have come to this point where they realize who Jesus is, and they believe, they believe in Jesus as the son of God, the Messiah, the Savior, and they're asking what shall they do as a result of their faith?
And look what Peter says, verse 38. Peter said to them, repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
You see, the first fruit of faith is repentance. It's a call to stop sinning and start obeying, to stop living one way and start living another way. The idea of repentance in the Bible is like a 180 degree change in direction.
Like before Jesus, you were going this way, and you meet Jesus, and you stop, and you turn around, and you go the other way.
As in before Jesus, you are running head first down the path of sin and destruction, and you meet Jesus, and you stop, and you turn around, and you go back, and you start following him.
That's repentance, and in many ways, that's what we see here with Abraham. Look at verse one. It says that Abram or Abraham left Egypt and went back to the Negeb.
He left Egypt and went back where he had come from. You have to remember back in Genesis 12 and 13, we see this whole thing play out. Genesis 12, God calls Abraham and promises to give him this land and a whole nation of descendants to fill the land.
That's the promise in Genesis 12, while Abraham is in the land of Canaan. And immediately, right after he receives the promise, Abraham leaves the land, and then he loses the wife that he is supposed to have descendants with.
So we see, right away, he meets God. God comes into his life and does these amazing things, makes these amazing promises, and right away, he blows it. There's a famine, and he gets scared, and he goes down to Egypt.
And when he gets to Egypt, he gets scared, and he lies, and says that Sarah is his sister, and as a result, Pharaoh takes his wife into his harem, and everything has fallen apart.
Eventually, things get sorted out, but that doesn't change the fact that Abraham sinned and made decisions based on fear and not on faith. But now, Genesis 13, he's back.
He journeys back from Egypt to the promised land, and that journey is like literally he turned around and he came back. It's a journey of repentance. Look at how Moses describes it in verses three and four.
It says, he journeyed on from the Negeb as far as Bethel to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, to the place where he had made an altar at the first. And there, Abram called upon the name of the Lord.
That's repentance in action. He's going back to the places where he had met with the Lord. He's calling upon the name of the Lord.
In verse 18, we see him building another altar to the Lord. You see, when a person has genuine faith, that doesn't mean that they never sin. That doesn't mean that they never sin.
Such a huge misconception about Christianity, right? People start coming to church, and they realize that church is filled with a bunch of sinners, and they're shocked. But as the saying goes, the church is not a museum for saints.
It's a hospital for sinners. Because when you come to faith, when you have genuine faith, that doesn't mean that you never sin, but it does mean that when you do sin, you fight it. By God's grace, you fight it.
You turn away from your sin, and you turn back to the Lord. That's the difference that faith makes in a person's life. We see a great example of this in Psalm 51.
Psalm 51 is the repentance passage in the Bible. Capital T, capital H, capital E. It is the repentance passage in the Bible.
King David wrote this psalm after he had committed adultery with Bathsheba, and gotten her pregnant, and had her husband murdered. Let me say that again if you didn't already know this.
He wrote this psalm, the great King David, a man after God's own heart, a model of righteousness, wrote this psalm after he committed adultery with a woman and got her pregnant and had her husband murdered in order to cover it up.
That is serious sin. And yet this applies to all sin, whether it's adultery or murder or gossip or greed. This applies to all sin.
Look at what he says in verses 10 through 12. He says, create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. Notice the words that he chooses. He asks God to renew, to restore.
He's asking God to take him back to the faith, to the experience that he had with God before his sin, just like Abraham is going back to the experiences that he had with God before his sin, back to the places where he had met with God, to the places
where he had built altars and called upon the name of the Lord. That's repentance. And let me make this very practical for you. This is something that you can put into practice in your life starting this week.
This is something that you can do for the rest of your life. If you want your faith to have a real impact in your life, you must be practicing repentance.
That means that when somebody calls you out on your sin, don't get angry, don't get defensive, don't shift the blame, admit your sin, and stop doing it. Stop sinning and start obeying God again. Let me say that again.
When somebody calls you out on your sin, don't get angry. That is the natural human response. We are all wired that way.
When people call us out, point out our sin, our wrongdoing, our mistakes, our selfishness, whatever it might be, it makes us angry. But Christians who are walking in faith and not in the flesh don't respond with anger, they respond with repentance.
When people call us out, our natural disposition is to get defensive. But Christians who are walking in faith and not in the flesh do not get defensive, they get repentance.
So when people call us out, don't get angry, don't get defensive, don't shift the blame, don't make excuses, admit your sin, and repent.
And as soon as you can, and this is the very practical recommendation, as soon as you can find a quiet place by yourself and pray through Psalm 51. Read David's words of repentance and make them your own, because real faith produces real repentance.
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Faith Produces Peace
Real faith also produces real peace. It produces inner peace and peace with others. Look at the peace that Abraham experienced with Lot.
Starting in verse six, we can see that there's a lack of peace coming into the picture. There's trouble brewing.
In verse seven, the workers are starting to fight, because, well, they're living in the same place, and they both have tons of livestock, and it causes problems.
Abraham's workers want his livestock to feed here on this day, and Lot's workers also wanted his livestock to feed there on that day, and then these ones go down to water, and those ones are trying to water at the same time.
You can imagine how having tons of livestock in one place could lead to conflicts and it was leading to problems. They're starting to fight, but in verse 8, Abraham proposes a solution, and peace is restored. That's not an accident.
That's not a coincidence. Abraham is a man of faith, and people of faith are people of peace. Jesus said in the Beatitudes, Matthew 5, 9, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
The Apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 5, verses 19 through 23, he wrote this, Now the works of the flesh are evident.
When the Apostle Paul says the works of the flesh, what he means is like the works or the behaviors or the heart attitudes, of our old sinful nature that dominated our lives before Jesus.
According to the Bible, everybody is born in sin, everybody is born with a sinful nature. And that sinful nature dominates us and controls us, and we don't know any better, we don't know otherwise.
But when you become a Christian, God gives you a new heart and a new mind, and slowly over time, you learn to live in accordance with that new heart and new mind.
Slowly over time, you learn to live in accordance with the Holy Spirit who dwells inside of you, and not in accordance with your old nature, which the Apostle Paul calls the flesh.
And he says here, the works of the flesh are evident, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery. Now listen to this, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions.
He's talking about every imaginable kind of conflict or disturbance of peace. That's how our old nature is wired. That's what the flesh does.
The flesh does anything and everything to destroy peace through strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions. But verse 22, the fruit of the spirit is love, which produces peace, joy, which goes along with the state of peace.
It's peace, it's patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things, there is no law. You see what he's describing there?
He's essentially saying that when you become a person of faith, you leave behind all those things that disturb peace, and you start walking in all these things that are peace, that cultivate peace.
If you want real peace, you need to start with real faith. So again, back to the main message here. If you are following Jesus, your life should look different.
Your faith should have real effects in your life, and one of the real effects is peace. So when everybody else is fighting and gossiping, you should be a person of peace.
When the whole family is caught up in drama, I know some of you out there have families like that.
Lots of people have families like that, where it's all drama all the time, and this person says this, and then she texted him that, and this person's mad at them, and they're mad at them, and when the whole family is caught up in drama, you should be
the one willing to set aside your pride and passions and be a person of peace, because people of faith are people of peace. And I think it's so important for us to recognize and appreciate how this outer peace came from a place of inner peace.
God always works from the inside out. To be a Christian is not to get a new list of rules and start acting differently. To be a Christian is to be transformed from the inside out.
Look at Abraham. You can see this starting in verse 8. In verse 8, Abraham does something pretty incredible.
He tells his nephew to pick whatever land he wants. He, by God's grace, through his faith in God, has acquired wisdom that is guiding him in this situation. And he's realizing, like, we're all fighting here.
We've got these conflicts over the land. So why don't we just pick our own spots and go there? And you know what?
In order to make sure all this goes smoothly, in order to make sure that this turns out to a peaceful resolution, Lot, you pick first. You pick whatever land you want. If you go that way, all go that way.
And yet, that was not how things worked in their worlds. Remember, the Bible tells us that Lot was his nephew. And in their culture, that meant everything.
That meant Abraham was older, Abraham was the elder, and therefore he was the one with the status in the family. Abraham picks first. But something had happened to Abraham.
Faith happened. He put his trust in God, and it had changed him. It had changed him such that he did not need to insist on the benefits of his status.
That was a situation where Abraham very easily could have said, well, I'm the older one, so I pick first. I'll take that land. But he didn't do that.
He didn't feel this need to selfishly fight for what appeared to be the best land. He's not operating out of a place of fear or pride or selfishness. He is operating out of a place of faith, which produces a place of inner peace.
Look again at verse 8. He tells a lot, if you take the left hand, then I will go to the right. Or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left.
And let us remember that this is a huge decision. This is a huge decision. This is where Abraham is going to build his home and raise his family.
This is where his crops are going to graze or they're going to starve. This is where he's going to have fresh water or where he's going to experience droughts. And he leaves it entirely in God's hands.
He trusts that God is in control even over lot's decision making. Proverbs 16 33 says, the lot, by coincidence, it's not the same kind of lot in Proverbs. It's a dice that people would roll.
But it says the lot is cast into the lap, but it's every decision is from the Lord. What it's saying is that the things that we think are random like a roll of the dice, they're not random. God is in control of even the roll of the dice.
He's in control of everything including other people's decisions. So if you trust God, that allows you to rest because you know that no matter what happens, God is in control. Abraham had that kind of faith and it led to inner peace.
That's what faith does. It produces oceans of peace inside of a person, especially when you put your faith in Jesus as your one and only hope for salvation. Abraham put his faith in God and the Bible says that God counted it to him as righteousness.
And we can see that his faith and his limited understanding of God had massive effects in his life.
So how much more should we expect from a person who doesn't have a merely limited understanding of God like Abraham did, but has full knowledge of God's Messiah, God's Son, Jesus coming into the world to save sinners?
How much more peace can we expect from putting our faith in Jesus and being saved? A lot more peace. If you want to talk about peace, listen to Jesus in Matthew 11 verses 28 through 30.
He said, come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Real faith.
The kind of faith that trusts in Jesus as your one and only hope for salvation, the kind of faith that casts all your cares on Jesus, the kind of faith that trusts that Jesus has restored the right relationship with God and is preparing a place in
heaven for you, that kind of faith produces real peace. heaven for you, that kind of faith produces real peace.
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Faith Produces Obedience
And it also produces obedience. It produces obedience. We've seen this from the very beginning of Abraham's story.
At the beginning of Genesis 12, when we first encounter Abraham, God appears to him and tells him to leave his house, to leave his family, to leave his homeland, to leave everything that he had ever known, all of his security, all of his prosperity,
all of his family, his friends, leave everything. And Abraham, as an act of faith, obeys. His faith immediately produced obedience. And we see it here again throughout this passage, especially in verse 18.
In verse 18, God had just reiterated his covenant promises to Abraham. He promised to give him this land. And so, verse 18, Abram moved his tent and came and settled by the oaks of Mamor, which are at Hebron, and there he built an altar to the Lord.
And when you look at the original Hebrew text, you can get a real sense of just how quickly and completely Abraham obeyed. In Hebrew, it's all rapid fire, quick succession. He pitched his tent, he entered, he settled.
In other words, it's communicating to us that Abraham was totally compliant and completely trusting, just like he was back in Genesis 12 at the beginning. He did the radical things that God was calling him to do, and then he blew it.
Then he backslid and he went down to Egypt and he lost his wife, but now he's repented and he's obeying. Again, that's what faith does to a person. And if faith does not produce obedience, then it is not real faith.
James makes this point in great detail in his epistle in James, chapter two. James 2.20 sums it up. It says, faith without works is dead.
James in his epistle throughout chapter two uses Abraham as the example. And it's really interesting when you start digging into all the details of it.
And it's important to recognize that as you, as you read James chapter two, it might seem like he's saying, it might seem like he's saying that faith is sort of, or obedience is necessary for salvation.
That's the mistake that people always make with James chapter two. They read it and they think, okay, yeah, I've got to do all this stuff so that I can be saved.
But when you pay attention, when you read it carefully and closely and accurately, you can see that James is not saying, oh yes, you've got to obey in order to be saved. He's saying that if you are saved, you will inevitably obey.
And he uses Abraham's life as an example. And again, James 2.20 sums it up. Faith without works is dead.
And I feel like I've said this 200 times, but I'll say it again. If you really trust in Jesus, if you really trust Jesus, and that's what faith is, it's trust. If you really trust him, you'll do whatever he tells you to do.
That's what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. I think of like a kid with a karate instructor, where it's like, he's the master, and the kid is the student, and the instructor says, do this. Do 100 sit-ups a day, 100 push-ups a day.
Go here, do this. Practice like this. Drink this, eat that.
He'll do whatever he tells him to do, because he trusts him, because he's the master, and the kid is the student. Well, that's the way that we're supposed to be with Jesus.
We're supposed to trust him absolutely and completely to the point where we do whatever he tells us to do. That's obedience in the Christian life, and faith or trust produces that kind of obedience.
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Faith Produces Blessing
And obedience produces blessing. Moses is hinting at this for us throughout the passage. It seems like Lot is the one who's going to be blessed.
As you read along through the passage, and you see the conflict develop, and then you see what Abraham says. And if you go to the right, I'll go to the left. You go to the left, I'll go to the right.
And then Lot looks up, and he sees the prime real estate, verse 10. He saw that the Jordan Valley was well watered, and everywhere like the Garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt.
And like the Garden of the Lord, that's a reference back to the Garden of Eden. So he's looking at the land, and he can clearly see, there's a section of land here that looks like divine paradise.
That looks like the kind of land that has made the Egyptians rich and powerful. And Lot is about to pick that land. And Abraham is about to get the leftovers.
So you get to verse 10, and it's like, well, Abraham's put his faith in God, and now Lot is the one who gets the premium property. He gets the best real estate for his flocks and his family. But not so fast.
Moses reminds us at the end of verse 10, this was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. In other words, the land that Lot was about to choose, it looked really nice, but in a few years, God was going to turn it into a wasteland.
And in the meantime, Lot is going to have to deal with the wicked people in the land that he's choosing. As it says in verse 13, now the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord.
And as we'll see in the book of Genesis, Lot immediately experiences problems in that land. Abraham has to come and rescue him, and then later Abraham has to come and rescue him again. And then finally, God destroys a huge chunk of that land.
So in the end, Abraham is going to be the one who is blessed with the best land, the best land and the most land and the most descendants, which is really all the ways that they define blessing in their culture. Look at verses 15 and 16.
For all the land that you see, I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted.
Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you. God had promised these blessings, these same blessings to Abraham at the beginning of chapter 12. And he's repeating those same promises here.
And throughout the life of Abraham in the book of Genesis, we see the covenant blessings repeated by God no less than 12 times.
Minor variations, he says it in a little bit different ways, adds a couple things here and there, but God repeats these covenant promises, these promises of massive blessing to Abraham no less than 12 times. That was a result of his faith.
The Old Testament is absolutely packed full of promises for those who put their trust in the Lord. And that's just how faith works. When you trust the Lord, you will be blessed.
And this is something that we need to be very careful about. It's true. The Bible says it over and over and over again, but it's something that we need to be very careful about.
Because trusting the Lord, having faith in the Lord, obeying the Lord does lead to blessing in our lives. And yet, there are people who have taken that truth from the Bible and butchered it and turned it into a false gospel.
Some of you remember when we had a movie night here and we watched that documentary American Gospel. And it was all about this very thing, the so-called prosperity gospel.
It's the slick TV preachers with private jets who promise that if you donate $25, they'll mail you a magic prayer cloth and your life, you'll get healed. It's that kind of thing.
It's the kind of thing that says that, yeah, Jesus wants to come into your life and make all of your wildest dreams come true. It's the kind of thing that makes Jesus a means to an end, a tool to get the things that we really want.
But the Bible says that Jesus is the thing that we all really want and need deep down inside. That those who come to Jesus with genuine faith come to Jesus for the sake of Jesus because they love Jesus.
And their eyes have been open to his glory and majesty. And they come to Jesus to worship Jesus and to be saved from their sin. That's real faith.
You don't come to Jesus so that he can get you a Mercedes. You come to Jesus because you're a sinner and Jesus saves sinners.
So when we say that faith and obedience lead to blessing, we need to recognize that our faith is about Jesus, not about the things that he can do for us.
And yet, the Bible does say, generally speaking, that your life will go better if you follow God. I mean, there's promises all over the scriptures, and it's not just in the Old Testament. Let me share a few with you.
Hebrews 11.6 says that without faith, it is impossible to please him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. He rewards those who seek him.
So if you want God to reward you, seek him. If you want God to bless you, obey him. If you want God to discipline you in a way that is painful to get you back on track, then disobey him.
If you want to experience a lot of pain and heartache in this life, do whatever your heart tells you to do and don't worry about what the Bible says. God promises rewards for those who obey him. And what are those rewards?
It says we have rewards. If there are rewards for those who seek God, well, the New Testament promises rewards like peace, and joy, and hope. Jesus declares over and over again that all who believe in him will receive eternal life.
That's a reward. Eternity in heaven with Jesus in the Father's house and a place prepared just for you where there's no sin or sadness or pain anymore. That's a reward.
Ephesians 1-3 says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
It's really interesting, in the Bible, in the Old Testament, there are all kinds of rewards and blessings promised for those who put their faith in God and for those who obey God, and the rewards and blessings in the Old Testament are almost always
material, physical. Like in the Ten Commandments, honor your father and mother that you may have a long life in the land. That's like a physical promise, a physical blessing in response to or as a reward for obeying God. Or we see Abraham.
Abraham's blessed abundantly with livestock and gold and silver, and eventually with descendants. And we see this pattern all throughout the Old Testament.
It's those who obey God receive blessings in this life, and they receive many material blessings. But then you get to the New Testament, and the blessings are almost exclusively spiritual. Things like peace, joy, hope, and eternal life.
And of course, just because they're spiritual, that doesn't make them any less real, doesn't make them any less valuable. In fact, I think it makes them more valuable.
And I should add that in, I forget the exact passage I meant to put it on here, but in one of Peter's epistles, I think it's 1 Peter chapter 3, Peter quotes from Psalm 34, which promises like more material physical blessings for obeying God.
So that part is in the New Testament as well. And generally speaking, what I'm trying to say is that if you are a person of faith, if you really trust Jesus, that will lead to obedience in your life. And when you obey God, things go better.
They go better, both physically and spiritually, both materially and spiritually. Is that the reason we should come to Jesus so he can bless us materially? No, but it is an effect.
That's a real thing in the Bible over and over again. And at the same time, Jesus tells us to count the cost of discipleship. He says, you must be willing to lose your life for my sake.
The epistles say that all those who live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. We can expect suffering along with the blessing because the ultimate goal is not for you and I to have a nice life here on Earth. The ultimate goal is holiness.
The ultimate goal is for God to conform us into the image of his son Jesus, to transform us from the inside out so that we can be filled with the fruit of the Holy Spirit so that we can do good deeds that bring glory to our Father in Heaven.
But again, part of that, part of God's plan for our life is for us to obey him and for the lives to go better as a result.
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Trust Godʼs Vision
But here's the question. God has promised you blessing if you trust him. But do you trust God to keep his promises?
Are you going to trust him and live accordingly? That is the central question of Abraham's life. Derek Kidner, the great Old Testament scholar, describes this passage as another example of the lifelong test of Abraham's obedience to the vision.
This is another example of his lifelong test of his obedience to the vision that God set out for his life. When you follow his story throughout the book of Genesis, that's the central issue on like every page.
God has given him these promises, God has shown him the vision, so is he going to trust and obey or not? Is he going to trust God, or is he going to leave the promised land to go to Egypt when there's a famine?
Is he going to trust God to give him an heir through his wife Sarah, or is he going to try to have an heir with his wife's servant instead? Is he going to trust God? Is he going to obey when God tells him to sacrifice his son Isaac?
And the answer is that by God's grace, in a way that is far from perfect and far from consistent, Abraham is going to trust God. So what about you? Your life as a Christian is also a life-long test of obedience to the vision.
And the vision is that Jesus wants to transform you from the inside out. Jesus wants to lead you to green pastures and still waters. He wants to restore your soul.
He wants to lead you in passive righteousness for his namesake. He wants to fill your cup to overflowing. His goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of your life, and you will dwell with him in God's house forever.
That's the vision. Do you trust him?