Abraham
Fifteen weeks in Genesis with the father of faith, warts and all, and the God who keeps every promise.
Father of faith, warts and all.
Abraham's life reads as a long, honest account of faith and failure, a man learning to trust God one step at a time. Over fifteen Sundays at New Hope, we followed his story through the book of Genesis.
From the first call to leave home to his death in Genesis 25, the series traces both Abraham's obedience and his stumbles. Again and again, God stayed faithful. His promises held, even when Abraham's faith wavered.
April 24 to July 31, 2022 · 15 Messages
“Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.”
Genesis 15:6
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All fifteen messages.
Genesis 12:4-20
Abram does everything right. He leaves home when God says leave, arrives where God sends him, and builds two altars. Then a famine hits the land God gave him, and he walks out of it. Pastor Mark Addis works through the first of Abraham's warts.
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Genesis 13
Pastor Andrew Lynch once built an entire desk before discovering that the pre-drilled holes were facing the floor. He had got step one wrong, so he got to build it twice. Abram, in Genesis 13, has to walk his mistake back the whole way too.
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Genesis 14
Pastor Tim Rolen read Genesis 14 the day before a long drive and thought it might be the dullest chapter in the Bible outside Leviticus. Then he asked God to pull something out of it, and got six things and one very good question.
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Genesis 15
Sprinkle pepper on a dish of water and it floats. Touch it with a drop of soap and every fleck flees to the edges. Pastor Andrew Lynch runs the experiment on stage, then says the pepper is our fears and doubts, and God's promises are the soap.
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Genesis 16
Sarah has waited ten years in Canaan for a promise that has not moved. So she stops waiting. Pastor Mark Addis works through Genesis 16 and what it cost, then asks the harder question underneath it: how long are you willing to wait on God?
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Genesis 17
A nine year old plants a cherry tree, then discovers it will be years before it fruits. Meanwhile the two fifteen foot trees already in the garden turn out to be cherry trees too. Pastor Andrew Lynch uses that to open Genesis 17 and the thirteen years of silence hidden between two verses.
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Genesis 18:1-15
New runners all make the same mistake. They start too fast, and the coach yells pace yourself. Then, near the end, the same coach yells finish strong. Pastor Tim Rolen says that second shout is what God is saying to a ninety year old woman named Sarah.
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Genesis 18:16-33
Abraham talks God down from fifty to ten. Pastor Mark Addis uses that negotiation to ask a plainer question: when we bring God a request, what are the ways he can answer it?
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Genesis 19:1-29
Nip it in the bud is a phrase about stopping something while it is still small. Pastor Andrew Lynch opens with the years Europe's leaders spent not doing that in the 1930s, and then turns to Genesis 19.
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Genesis 19:14-38
The original plan was to skip the back half of Genesis 19. Pastor Tim Rolen decided partway through last week's service that skipping it would be cowardly, and preaches it instead.
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Genesis 20 and 21
Genesis 20
A Canadian schoolteacher once spent eighteen months counting every promise in the Bible. He found 8,810. Pastor Mark Addis uses that as the way into the six verses where God finally keeps the one he made to Abraham.
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Genesis 22:1-19
Trappers in southeast Asia catch monkeys with a buried pot and a narrow mouth. The monkey reaches in, grabs the fruit, and its closed fist will not come back out. It could let go at any moment. It never does.
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Genesis 24
Abraham sends his most trusted servant five hundred miles to find his son a wife. The servant asks God for a sign, and the sign he picks is a woman who will water ten camels. Pastor Mark Addis works out what that actually cost her.
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Genesis 25:1-11 and Conclusion
Genesis 25:1-11
Three farmers pray for rain and a stranger tells them they are wasting their time. Asked what he would do instead, he says he would have brought an umbrella. That is where Pastor Tim Rolen closes fifteen weeks on Abraham.
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Abraham carried us through the summer of 2022. Browse the rest of the year, or join us on a Sunday.