Dennis Kinlaw emphasizes the profound relationship between faith and action through the story of Abraham, illustrating that true faith is demonstrated by deeds. He highlights that Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac was not just a test of faith but a revelation of his deep trust in God, who ultimately desires a relationship with us rather than mere rituals. Kinlaw argues that faith must be active and transformative, leading to a life committed to God's purposes, and that God desires to use us in time and space, not just for eternal promises. The sermon concludes with a call to embody our faith in tangible ways, reflecting God's provision and love in our lives.

Passage of Scripture from the book of James, from chapter 2, reading from verse 14. What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, Go, I wish you well, keep warm and well fed, but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, You have faith, I have deeds. Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. You believe that there is one God? Good. Even the demons believe that and shudder. You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the Scripture was fulfilled, it says, Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness, and he was called God's friend. You see that a person is justified by what he does, and not by faith alone. In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. Will you pray with me for a moment? We come now, Father, to the last time to look at your Word, and we believe you have something more to say to us. So this is not just a perfunctory close. We want you to finish in our hearts and in our minds what you designed this conference for. And so give us quiet spirits. It's only going to be a matter of a few minutes, and we're going to be leading each other and facing traffic one way or another, and facing the problems of travel, and reconnecting with all that's in front of us back home. But somehow in these next few minutes, let us put that aside to pay attention to you and your Word, and we will give you praise in Christ's name. Amen. We've been talking in these morning sessions about the book of Genesis as the book of beginnings, and we said it's a very simple book because it is the story of persons and God. But of course there is something redundant about that because God himself is a person, or at least he's three persons. So you can say very clearly that Genesis is simply a story about persons. Now you will remember the leading character in this is the Creator. He not only gives us the account of the creation at the beginning of Genesis, but then as history begins, it's very evident that he's the Lord of it. You can take any part. If it's the flood, he's the one responsible. If it's Abraham starting a new nation, he's the one responsible. You pick that up in Exodus, and when they are delivered from Egypt, it's God who did it. From there on through until the book of Revelation, the Creator is the Lord of history, and he is the Lord over what will happen in the Russian parliament today. But that Lord of history is the Holy One. It is the moral that is the most important thing with him. It's interesting he doesn't give SAT scores, and I'm grateful for that. And he doesn't give personality tests, but he sets moral ethical standards because that's the way persons are supposed to relate. We do not relate to each other like we relate to things. At least we should not. We should relate as persons, and persons can only relate in a moral and an ethical way. And that's where sin comes in. And when it does, it always disturbs relationships. And so this one who is the Creator and the Lord of history and the Holy One is the Redeemer. And we've gotten some clues about that in that the sin in the world pained the heart of God, and he said, how can I redeem my creation? And that's why he called Abraham in the beginning. Now, we said all of this started with a personal relationship between Abraham and God. It started in an encounter where God met him and spoke to him, and Abraham heard him. Now, yesterday we said that these encounters are never as clear-cut as we'd like them. They always demand a response from us, and we can respond in one of two ways. You will remember that God spoke to Jesus in the book of John, and some of the people said an angel spoke, and other people said, no, just thunder. And there are a lot of people that never hear anything but thunder. But Abraham heard a personal voice, and out of that encounter he began to believe. Some way or other, there was something so self-authenticating about this relationship that he said, I want to know more, and I believe enough that I'll start. Lyle Dorsett, who's been with us, I think you know Lyle and Mary, what a privilege it is to have them here, wrote a number of years ago a biography of the wife of C.S. Lewis, Joy Davidman. It is on the bookshelf. It should be, at least it has been, unless they're all gone. It's a priceless biography. Joy Davidman was a Jewish in New York City, a graduate of Hunter College, an atheist and a communist, an editor for the People's Masses, the communist publication in the early 30s in this country. One day her husband told her that he was not coming back, and she was alone in a farmhouse in north of New York City in the Yosemite area. And she said, suddenly I realized I was alone. He wasn't coming home, and I had two babies that I had to take care of. And she said, you know, what does an atheist do? So she collapsed on the floor weeping, and she said, suddenly I knew I was not alone. I think Lyle told me that she said I was the most shocked atheist in the world. Well, she said I didn't know who he was. And so as a Marxist, I got everything of Lenin's and read it. That didn't help. As a Jewish, I got some Jewish literature. That was a little better. And then somebody gave me a New Testament, and I found out his name and who he was. Now, that's the kind of thing that happened to Abraham, and the rest of his life is learning about this other person. And that's what my life ought to be, learning about him. Now, he believed, and it was the belief that caused him to keep seeking and following. As we said, there are three major words that give us this. One of them is to walk. That's the great biblical word in Genesis, and then through the rest of the Bible. If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. In that fellowship, we become what we're supposed to be. And he leads us in the way, and he is the way. And then we have to learn, if we walk with him, that he's the leader, and we have to wait on him. You know, I know what it means to be in a meeting where somebody else is the leader. And if you want to be a contribution to that, and the other person is the leader, you know what your business is? To keep your eyes on him. And when he moves, you move. And when he's quiet, you're quiet. The other person sets the pace, and you see it on his face and in his eyes. I think that's one of the reasons there's so much about the face of God in the Scripture. And so, we follow him. Now, if we follow him, that means that we've made an attachment. We have hooked ourselves to him. And when you make an attachment to him, there is no way that you can attach in one direction without detaching in some other. And so, when he attached himself to the Lord, you will remember that that meant he had to detach himself from her, the cow, thee, and he could no longer be attached to a specific place. That fits with all the missionary thrust, the universal note in the Gospel. Now, you'll remember it detached him from position, because instead of being a member, a significant member of that local community, now he was a wanderer, and he was a pilgrim, a sojourner. He had to be detached from his old ways and the patterns of life by which he had lived, in which he faced his own problems and found his own answers to them. That's what he tried with Hagar and Ishmael, his old way and his old pattern. You'll remember that Paul picks that up in Galatians and says that Hagar is a good illustration of the law, trying to do it your way, but Sarah is the illustration of promise. And so, God says, you'll have to change your patterns and take mine, and you will find as you go that your life is filled with a new set of persons. As the story develops, we need to remember that in Genesis, in these 13 chapters from 12 to 24, 25, in these chapters, the main character is never Abraham. And in Genesis, though we think of these persons, it's not Adam and Eve and Noah and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph. The main character all the way through here is Yahweh, the Lord, the God of history. And he promises to Abraham, he says, if you'll follow me, it's interesting, I'll give you a place. And ultimately, that was to be the land of Canaan, contemporary Israel. He says, I'll give you a position because kings will come out of you. He said, I will give you a way that has significance and meaning. All the nations of the earth will be blessed in you. It's interesting, God never takes anything away, but he doesn't give it back or what is supposed to be there. And what he gives is infinitely better. And he says, I'll give you the means to do and be what God, what I want you to be, and that'll be done through persons. So Genesis is that story of persons. But now in that interpersonal relationship, what is it that he wants? He wants us, and there's a play on two words biblically. One of them is to believe, and the other one is to trust. And you and I, if we think, we use those two words in different ways. You know, it's one thing to believe a proposition in your head. That's what James was talking about when he said, the devils believe that there is one God, but they don't trust him. Now, Hebrew has two different words for that. It has a word, ha'amim, that means that you believe it's the truth. It's something you can count on. But there is another word, batach, which means you lean on, you trust. And that trust moves it from an intellectual thing that you believe in your head to an interpersonal relationship. Now, interpersonal relationship comes out of the belief. And we must never separate these things, and that's what James is hitting at. Christianity has a credal character to it. It has a truth character to it that you can believe in your head intellectually, but not do a thing about it in your life. But what God is after, and what God found in Abraham and that pleased him was, he came to believe that he was the one true God. And he said, I'll follow him and stake everything I've got on him. Now, notice the way the New Testament interprets his faith. Romans 4 says that he believed that Sarah would have a son. Galatians 3 said he believed that he would have seed, he would have a descendant. Hebrews 11 says he believed enough that he went out not knowing where he was going. And he said to the Lord, you lead the way, you pick the road, and I'll follow. It also says he believed for a son. And then thirdly it says, Hebrews 11, that he did not withhold his only son, Isaac, and sacrificed him because he believed that God could raise Isaac from the dead. Now, it's interesting. One of them is in the New Testament the belief for a son. Another one is for a country, because in Hebrews he went out going somewhere. And a third one is he believed enough to sacrifice his son. Now, in James, when you get to James, the illustration of his belief is centered around he offered his son. And Genesis 22 and the sacrifice of Isaac is the basis for James of Paul's statement that he believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Now, I've come to love the way the New Testament interprets this story and makes it larger. You will notice that the New Testament understands justifying faith, saving faith, not as a decision, any more than a birth is a life. Because each one of these New Testament writers lays his hand on something different in Abraham's life at a different point. And so Paul can talk about him leaving her the Chaldees as the basis of his justification, and Hebrews in James can talk about his sacrifice of Isaac as the basis of his justification. Now, the sacrifice of Isaac is an interesting picture of justification by faith. That leads me to believe that the Christian life is not just a decision that I've made that makes me a Christian and then I'm fixed. I've got my ticket and nobody, the devil can't take it away from me. And I'm set. It is a relationship of life to life, of me to him, of person to person, and it's not only a relationship of life to life, it is a relationship for life. And I think that's the reason that the New Testament picks out different spots in his life as the basis of the fact that God counted him just and righteous. Now, it means that it's a life commitment and it is ultimately a total commitment because you remember that before we get through with the life of Abraham, God reaches down and takes the most precious thing in Abraham's life and says to him, Abe, will you give it to me? And God knew that if he would give him Isaac, there was nothing else he wouldn't give because Isaac was the most prized thing in his personal existence. And so God decided to test him at that point. The Bible uses the word test. It's a good word for putting us to the proof as to whether we are what we say we are. Now, why Isaac? I don't think there's any question but that he said, laid his hand on Isaac because Isaac was Abraham's greatest love. Now, you tell me what you love and I'll tell you who you are because it's out of our heart that our personhood comes. Now, you know, there's no way to describe what this child meant to Abraham because you and I probably have never had anything that really is comparable to that. I know it's interesting to have children. That's always exciting. But I remember when our first grandchild was due. I remember people would say to me, aren't you excited? And I thought, well, that's just one more. We got five and now we're going to have six. And so I'd listen to people get excited and I thought, yeah, we're going to have one more. And then I was coming back from Kingsport, Tennessee where I'd been preaching early one Monday morning and about nine o'clock I called Elsie and when I got her on the phone and she realized it was I, she exploded into tears, weeping. I said, what has happened? I was horrified. And she said, Bessie has had her baby in Medellin, Columbia and I'm not there. Six o'clock that night we had her on a plane in Cincinnati. And she began to call me and tell me. Now, you know, I've seen her with ecstatic moments, but I never heard that tone in her voice. And I thought, well, that's number six. And I just didn't quite vibrate with that. And then, you know, about six months later I landed in Medellin, Columbia and they picked me up and took me to the compound and they laid that little thing down in my lap. It wasn't a sick one. It was totally, totally different. I got as mushy inside as a rotten squash. Instantaneous. Instantaneous. Look at that. Now some of you were there the other night when we walked in and to our surprise there were 16 kids in front of the fireplace singing, Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. That was all right for you, but it didn't mean to you what it meant to me. It didn't mean to you what it meant to Elton. Well, never mind. But what if you only had one and he never came along until you were 100 and your wife was 90. You'd waited 25 years for him and the hope of the world rested on you. How do you think you'd feel about it? You see, he's not only his greatest love, he's Abraham's hope. He's Abraham's future. Abraham has no future of significance apart from this. And he's not only his future, Abraham knew he was your future and mine. And God says, I want your future. You know there are moments when God may ask you to give up your life, not just your physical life, but your life, your career, all the things that our society says determine who you are. He may lay his hand on you. Now, I don't know where you get your security and where your hope is. You know, you give your life to an institution and you begin to think, God says, no, that's not it. I'm your future. God said to Abraham, Isaac's not your future. I am your future. And Abraham said, if you are my future, then I can give you my son. Now, that's getting to the place where God feels that anything in your life belongs to him because he claims you. I believe that's what John Wesley meant in our tradition was meant by entire sanctification. And it's interesting, you don't get past the 22nd chapter of Genesis before the pattern for that is laid down. And it's there through the rest of the scripture in terms like loving with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. And it really is found in the book of commandment, thou shalt have no other gods before me. So, this for Abraham was a test. Now, why did God test him? You know, God didn't test him to be mean. You know, I used to think that what was happening here was God said, I'll find out whether you really love me or not. I'll find out if he means what he says and if his language represents the reality. I'll test him, check him out, and I'll find out whether he's real. You know, I don't think this test was for God at all. You know who the guy was who tested Abraham? He's the one who knows everything that'll ever happen. And he knew everything about Abraham already. You know why I think he asked for Isaac? I think he wanted Abraham to have the liberation of knowing himself, that he loved God the way he ought to love God. And believed in God the way he ought to believe in God. I don't believe the test was for God to learn something. I think the test was for Abraham to learn something. And do you know, you're never free until he's put you to the test and you've learned that you can honestly say, Lord, whatever it is, it can happen, because you are first. Now, you know, it's interesting when we talk about love. It's one thing to say to a person, and many of us have some priceless memories of the time when we looked at another person for the first time and said, I love you. But you know, there is a moment when you need to be able to look at that other person and their relationship totally different. When you can look at that other person and say, I know that you love me. And then as the years pass in the relationship, you can look at yourself and say, I know that I love you. The commitment is there. I know it. And God wants us to know that in relationship to him. So he's not playing spiritual games. He's maturing and liberating us. There is a psychological and spiritual freedom and a clean heart filled with perfect love that nothing else can give. But along with this and this test, there is revelation. We've intimated this kind of thing or said this kind of thing about some of the other moments in the life of Abraham. But there is a sense in which in this story there are two levels of meaning, and we need to be sensitive to the second one. Because here we learn not only something about Abraham, but we learn something about the God of Abraham. And if he's to be my God and your God, we ought to be glad to know it. Because by the time we get through with the story, we know that he didn't want Isaac. He was not a god who was out to ask for that kind of frightful sacrifice. In the ancient Near East, the other gods oftentimes demanded that. If a king built a new city for his own capital, he might very well take his own child and bury that child in the foundation so he'd have the blessings of the God. There are some scholars who've interpreted this as saying it was the final proof in the ancient Near East that the true God didn't want a human sacrifice. He's not that kind of God. What he wants is to redeem and give life, not to give dead. And he wanted Abraham, not Isaac. That's the kind of God he wanted. And you know, in that I also think that he wanted Isaac to know that he had a father who put God first. Do you know what I think every child needs to be secure? I think every child deserves to know that when the chips are down, his father will put God ahead of himself and his family. I don't believe any family is safe unless they've been to Mount Moriah. Now, he's not a God who demands from us. He's a God who's looking for a chance to give to us. He doesn't wait till we come to him. He comes to us. Now, when Abraham looked at Isaac and when Isaac said, Father, we've got the wood, we've got the fire, potentially, we've got all that's necessary for a sacrifice, but where's the lamb? Can you imagine the pain in Abraham's heart? And Abe looked at him, and maybe the greatest statement of faith anywhere in the Word of God, when he said, Yahweh, the Lord, my friend, will provide. Now, I want to tell you something about the Hebrew there. Our translations say, the Lord will provide, but that's not what the Hebrew says. The Hebrew says, the Lord sees. Because did you know that if he sees, the provision is already there? I love the first two lines of the 23rd Psalm. In Hebrew, what it says, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not lack. And what Abraham is saying here is, he sees, and we translate, he provides. Now, that's a fair translation, because if he sees his child's need, it'll be met. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. And for him to see, that is enough. Now, let me ask you, as you think about Mount Moriah, it's interesting how that's been dealt with in literature. I sat down the other day and read again Soren Kierkegaard, who's one of the great philosophers of the last hundred years, Danish philosopher, and he's got a magnificent treatment of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac. One of the best, greatest Jewish scholars on terms of literature, western literature, is a man named Auerbach. He's got a magnificent treatment of the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham, in which each one of them tells what went on in the heart of Abraham and Isaac. And you know, in both of the accounts, the implication is that Abraham and Isaac were the main characters here. But do you know who the main character is here? It's not Abraham, nor is it Isaac. It's God. Now, do you know where he offered Abraham, offered Isaac? It was on Mount Moriah. When you get to Chronicles, we're told that that was the site on which the temple was built. And you know, when that dawned on me, this is the city of Jerusalem. It dawned on me that I thought I heard a conversation between the different persons of the trinity. And as they watched Abraham ready to sacrifice his son, and then God spoke and said, Abe, I don't want him. I don't want him. Put your knife down. The second person of the blessed trinity said to the first person, Father, this is not the last time we're coming to this mountaintop, is it? And the first person of the blessed trinity said, No, son, we'll be back here in about two thousand years. And the second person of the blessed trinity said, Father, when we come back the next time, it won't be one of them that's on that altar, will it? And the father said, No, son, when we come back the next time, it'll be one of us. It'll be you. And the eternal son, the only begotten son, the only son, said, Father, when they get ready to put the knife in, are you going to say to them, Stop, don't touch the boy the way you just did? And I think I heard the first person of the blessed trinity say, No, son, when we come back the next time, I'm not going to say, Stop, don't touch the boy. You know, son, we never ask them to do in symbol what we're not willing to do in reality. God has never asked one of us to go before him. God simply says, Follow me. Which means there's nothing he'll ever ask out of me that he hasn't done. And there's nothing he'll ever ask out of you that he hasn't already experienced. It doesn't matter what it is. If it's a part of this package for you, he has already gone through it. Now, that brings us to chapters 23 and 24, and we get to the end of the life of Abraham. One of the things that fascinates me about the Bible is the passages that bore me. Because, you know, I've learned something. The passages that bore me to tears when I was 13, now I consider some of the most important parts of Scripture to me. And the passages that bore me to tears at 30 are parts now that are pricelessly rich to me. So I've decided I sort of look for the boring passages, because I know that sooner or later they'll come alive. Do you know one of the most boring chapters in the Bible for me for years is chapter 23 of Genesis? Because it's Abraham, and Sarah, now what, 137 years of age, dies. And when she dies, or 127, I've forgotten. John Oswalt can tell you that. But anyway, Sarah has died, and Abraham's got a problem, because he doesn't own a cemetery lot. And it's against the law for anybody who's not a Canaanite to own real estate in Canaan. So how's he going to bury his wife? So he goes down to the gate, and he meets there the elders of the city, and he says, I have a problem. My wife is dead, and I need a spot to bury her. And so they look at him and said, you're a noble man, a prince with God. There's not a one of us here who wouldn't be happy to have your wife buried in one of our cemeteries. Just take your pick and bury her. And he says, no, you don't understand. I want to own the piece of property that she's buried in. They said, well, you know, that's a bit of a legal problem. And he said, well, is there not some way we can work it out? And so they said, well, if you've got enough money, things can always be arranged. So he paid through the nose and got a cave site to bury Sarah in. I now am convinced that that is one of the greatest evidences of Abraham's faith in the whole world. Because you will remember that over the rest of the book of Genesis, no matter where they are, take Jacob, for instance. He's down in Egypt, and he's older, and he knows his days are almost over. And he looks at his son Joseph and says, don't bury me down here in Egypt, because this is not where our future is. Our father bought us a piece of real estate, and that's the first step in God's giving to us that whole land. So when I die, you take me back and bury the side of Abraham and Sarah and Isaac and Rebekah. Isn't that interesting? You see, Abraham believed that one of these days, all that land was going to belong to him, his descendants. So he said, I don't want my wife in one of your Hittite graves, I want her in a Hebrew grave, because this land is going to be ours. Now you know, there are symbols that make the difference. In the Old Testament, the symbol that a person belonged to God was that the males in the family were circumcised. There are symbols in the Christian life, like baptism, Lord's Supper, these things, like wedding rings for marriages, licenses, these things are symbols, driver's licenses. I think that burial plot is a symbol. Now I'd like to ask if there are any symbols in your life. The unique thing to me, one of the most unique things about Abraham's faith, I'd quickly see if you hear me on this, we said there's no discussion in the book of Genesis about individual sins, there's no law. But do you know there's no discussion of heaven or hell or life after death? The only thing you've got is Enoch was not, because God took him. Do you know that Abraham never read John 14, or 1 Corinthians 15? Do you know what I've come to believe? That we could profit by reading Genesis. Because do you know what most of us have done? We've made salvation another worldly thing. And justification by faith gives me a place in heaven. But do you know what justification by faith meant for Abraham? It meant God keeping a promise in time and space and history. Not in eternity, because they're not going to need real estate in eternity. Could it be that we've lost something with our other worldly emphasis? And that the true believer is the person who believes God's going to do something here? Do you know why we're sitting in this auditorium? There was a Methodist evangelist who was coming home from a meeting. And he was sitting in the train depot, the train station in Lexington. And an inner voice said, I want you to start a Christian liberal arts college. And John Wesley Hughes said, Lord, I was 17 before I could even read or write. Me start a college? And the Lord said, yes, I want you to start a college. And he said, Lord, you must be kidding. But he couldn't get away from it. He went home. And when he got home, he said, I've got a way out. When I tell my wife, she'll say, you're crazy as a loon. God's not going to use you to start a liberal arts college. And he said, he took her in the bedroom. And he said, you know, I have the strangest impression. I think God is calling me to start a liberal arts college. And she said, I think so too. And you and I are sitting here 103 years later. And there are missionaries scattered around the world. Do you know the faith that justified John Wesley Hughes? Not just that he believed God was going to take him to heaven. But he believed that God was going to use him in time. Do you believe that God's going to use you in time? I think if you have biblical faith, you know it. Now, not all of us are going to do the same thing. I asked Bill Kearse, has your thinking changed since you've been in the ministry? Oh, yeah, he said, I thought I was going to be in the secondary grave when I started. He said, now I know my ministry is a different kind. It's in the local church. But do you know that's where somebody found Billy Graham? God wants to use every person in this auditorium in time and space. Not just say this three times. And you say, what can I do? Well, if you're in the ministry and you have a call, that settles that. Well, what if you don't have a call? What if you've got ten children? You've got the call of all. Who knows what will come out of those ten children if you are faithful? But you also have time. And do you know the most effective work in the world is prayer? And you know you can put a person in solitary confinement in prison. And you can touch the world. Now, not many of us believe it, but it's true whether we believe it or not. And all of us have some resources that we'll talk to them about. We can do something with it. We can have a part in the ministry of a missionary or an evangelist or someone. I got a letter the other day from a girl in Tianjin, China. Three years ago she wrote me. And she said, my father is a communist official in the city government here. When I found Christ, they put me in the servant quarters to let me know they were unhappy with me. She's a university graduate. She said, as I've walked with Christ, she said, he has put a passionate burden in me to become an evangelist. And she said, I need training. Is there any way I could come to answer you? And so we wrote back and forth. And the government told her they would not give her a visa to get at it. But about two months, about seven weeks ago, I got a letter from her. And she said, the government officials have told me that if an institutional mistake will assure me that I am accepted, that I can get a visa. So I picked up the telephone and called an 87-year-old man, son of Henry Clay Morris, who had talked to me before. And I said, Frank, that girl can get out. Well, he said, I've got $5,000 to help you get started. Can you imagine what the future will be out of that? Do you know something I've learned? It's a lot more fun to be a part of somebody else's ministry than to have your own. That's one of the shocks to me. Now maybe that's what happens when you get old, I don't know. And maybe young people can't sense that. But do you know, the thought of being a part of somebody else's ministry, what an incredibly exciting thing. I want to ask you if your faith, if your belief in God, for something in time and space and history, and if there is, draw this symbol in your house. Maybe a deed to a cemetery lock. I talked about this at the OMS convention, and the head of their work in India came up to me afterwards and his eyes filled up and he said, if it helps bring India to Christ, I'll buy a cemetery lock in India. But you see, we need to objectify our faith. Henry Clay Morrison said that when God told Abraham he was going to have a son, the next day he went down to the local furniture store and asked Jake the Jew if he had a good baby buggy in the house. And Jake looked at him and said, Abe, one of your servant girls going to have a child? And Abe said, no not Jake, this is going to be hard on you, hold steady. Miss Sarah's going to have a baby. And Jake said, Abe, have you lost your mind? And Abe said, Jake, you want to sell a baby buggy? And being a good Hebrew, who went and got the most expensive one in the house? And Abe pushed it down the street all the way home and every woman in every house down the street got a crink in her neck and craning her head out the window watching this white haired old man pushing an empty baby buggy down the street. He pulled it up over the steps across the porch, parked it in the family room next to the fireplace and said for 25 years it was a conversation piece. And everybody that came in said, Abe, why the baby buggy? And he said, you see that old woman over there? She's going to have a baby. And do you see these hills around her? One of these days they're going to belong to mighty Samuel. Have you got any baby buggies in your family room? I think that represents biblical faith. Do you believe? Well, we've come to the end. No, we've come to the beginning. And now we leave for Calvary and we go out and we don't go alone. We go into a world that doesn't understand us, but there's one who goes before us and there's one who goes with us who is the Lord of History. He made it all. He's sovereign over it. And when he sees, and he sees it all, everything is provided.