Church events and activities add up to about 5% of our lives. But church is more than activities and events – it’s the friendships, the meals, the prayer requests along the way.
But so much of our life consists of births, arguments, financial decisions, making cakes, funerals, weddings, politics, prayer, and more.
When all that stuff gets messy, how do we work out how to live?
The Bible has clear instructions in parts, but most of it is story.
Stories of people messing up.
Stories of people discovering God’s grace.
Stories we can learn wisdom from.
The middle bit of Genesis tells the story of three generations who discover what it means to be God’s people in God’s plan for his world.
And they don’t always get it right.
Their stories include: marriage problems, death and grief, parenting struggles, choosing a spouse, sexual immorality, deception, reproductive ethics, unjust employers, relationships that distort God’s design, the strength of friendship, birth, infertility, abuse, betrayal, forgiveness, aging, value of life from womb to tomb, loneliness, racism, politics, war, buying land, wealth management, and learning wisdom from all the ambiguity of ordinary life trying to trust God in a fallen world.
We face many issues in life where we have to ask: What does it mean to be God’s people in this? What’s God’s plan for it?
From January to April we will look at the calling of Abraham and Sarah (at first called Abram and Sarai), Hagar, and Lot.
From April to July we will look at the messy families of Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob (later renamed Israel) and Esau, and Rachel and Leah.
Who were Abraham and Sarah?
Abraham didn’t perform any miracles, had no disciples, and made no prophecies. Yet around half the population of earth call him their spiritual grandfather – Jews, Muslims, and Christians.
“Abraham was no superhuman superhero in the classical mould. He is presented to us as a flawed man, a man who worried about his own safety and twisted the truth to try to ensure it, and a man who struggled in his marriage to Sarah with the physical process of being fruitful and multiplying.” – John Lennox
So why study Abraham’s life with Sarah if he’s not a perfect role model? Why is he so great to so many people on earth?
As we will see, Abraham is a model of someone who learnt to trust God and was counted righteous in God’s eyes by his faith alone, not because of his actions.
Find the Companion Guide for this series at christcentral.church/guide
