Dale Partridge - March 23, 2023


Do You Have Supernatural Faith？ - Dale Partridge


Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

143.25526

Word count

1,525

Sentence count

87

Harmful content

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Paul is continuing to correct their understanding
00:00:02.580 regarding the true lineage of Abraham,
00:00:05.860 that it's not by blood, but it's actually by faith.
00:00:10.920 And he uses the testimony of their very own scriptures.
00:00:13.700 He cites Genesis 17, five,
00:00:16.260 that says, no longer shall your name be called Abram,
00:00:19.600 but your name shall be called Abraham,
00:00:21.840 for I will make you the father of a multitude of nations.
00:00:26.160 Now, again, we know that there are Jews
00:00:28.860 that do have faith, but there also is the bringing in of the Gentiles where you're going to have
00:00:34.520 people who are children of Abraham from every tribe, nation, and tongue. So the substance of 0.89
00:00:40.180 the promise was realized in two ways. It was realized physically and spiritually. And so
00:00:47.640 it was realized physically because one of the promises that Abraham would be the father of
00:00:52.460 many nations, one, he needs to have a kid, right? He needs to have a child. He needs to have a son.
00:00:58.200 And it was realized physically in the birth of Isaac and the development of a physical nation.
00:01:05.660 And it was realized spiritually in the birth and resurrection of Christ in the development of a spiritual church.
00:01:12.720 So you got to see this is that there was a promise that there was going to be a physical child and a physical nation, the nation of Israel.
00:01:21.560 And there would be a spiritual reality in the fact that that physical child would result in the serpent crusher, the promised seed that would inaugurate the church.
00:01:37.220 and that was Jesus. And Jesus's death and resurrection was the true seed that by faith
00:01:47.360 would be spread across the entire world and many nations would be children of Abraham by faith.
00:01:55.340 And so the second realization through Christ, essentially God's people are expanded from one
00:02:01.860 nation to many nations, fulfilling God's promise regarding Abraham's descendants to be as numerous
00:02:07.860 as the stars all around the world. In other words, through Christ, God's people are no longer 0.81
00:02:14.100 limited by national boundaries. This is something that would be very difficult for the Jew to
00:02:18.120 understand, but instead they become a global and united family in faith in Christ. And so Ephesians
00:02:25.260 3, 4 through 6 talks about this. Paul says, quote, you can perceive my insight into the
00:02:31.880 mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men and other generations as it has
00:02:36.580 been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles
00:02:43.980 are fellow heirs, members of the same body and partakers of the promise in Jesus Christ
00:02:50.640 through the gospel. This was also prophesied in the Old Testament. So the Jews really had no excuse
00:02:58.120 to be shocked by this reality. Hosea 1.10 says,
00:03:03.680 Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea,
00:03:07.680 which cannot be measured or numbered. And in the place where it is said to them,
00:03:13.520 quote, You are not my people. It will be said to them, You are the sons of the living God.
00:03:19.440 end quote. Zechariah 2.11 continues this line of thinking. It says, quote, and many nations
00:03:27.060 shall join themselves to the Lord in that day and shall be my people, end quote. So Paul goes on
00:03:34.900 in verse 18 to give you a little bit more concept or context about what's going on. Let's go back
00:03:39.240 to chapter four, verse 18. He says, in hope against hope, he believed, talking about Abraham,
00:03:45.740 so that he might become a father of many nations
00:03:49.580 according to that which had been spoken,
00:03:52.020 so shall your descendants be.
00:03:53.840 Verse 19, without becoming weak in faith,
00:03:56.720 he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead
00:03:59.220 since he was about a hundred years old
00:04:00.840 and the deadness of Sarah's womb.
00:04:03.060 Yet with respect to the promise of God,
00:04:05.580 he did not waver in unbelief,
00:04:07.640 but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God
00:04:10.580 and being fully assured that what God had promised,
00:04:13.900 he was able to perform. So Paul goes on to point out that this promise to Abraham regarding
00:04:22.180 his immeasurable progeny, as many as the stars, was received by faith before Abraham even had
00:04:33.120 one biological child. Do you understand this? You have to see that Abraham is receiving
00:04:40.920 by faith, this immense and massive promise. He's got an old body, a wife with a dead womb and no 0.96
00:04:51.580 children. And yet he has been given this promise to be the father of many nations. And he doesn't 0.99
00:05:00.620 even have one biological son. In other words, this kind of faith that we're looking at here
00:05:06.480 is not natural faith.
00:05:08.080 This is supernatural faith that Abraham has.
00:05:10.540 It was faith in the one, as Paul says,
00:05:13.140 who gives life to the dead
00:05:14.620 and calls into being that which does not exist.
00:05:18.180 So Abraham believed God
00:05:19.740 because God is the one who can call light
00:05:23.100 and matter into existence from nothing.
00:05:26.840 This is the type of foundation
00:05:30.220 that Abraham has for the faith
00:05:32.640 that is being demonstrated.
00:05:34.700 This faith, again, is a gift of God given to Abraham.
00:05:37.220 He gives life to Sarah's barrenness
00:05:40.260 and makes nations emerge from her dead womb. 1.00
00:05:44.700 I mean, this is miraculous stuff here.
00:05:48.240 This is just as miraculous as raising Lazarus from the dead.
00:05:54.200 He gives, we know God does, God gives life to dead souls
00:05:58.220 and he makes a living church emerge from dry bones
00:06:02.540 all around the world.
00:06:04.700 And he's the God who speaks of things as if they exist when they don't exist.
00:06:11.780 And so he spoke to Abraham as a father before he even had a child.
00:06:17.440 He speaks of nations before these nations were even formed.
00:06:21.580 And to be honest, there are more nations that will be formed
00:06:25.840 that will have people in those nations that'll be children of Abraham by faith.
00:06:32.720 And so the central point that Paul is emphasizing
00:06:34.800 is Abraham's willingness to take God at his word.
00:06:38.880 I want you to grasp that here.
00:06:41.300 The central point is that Abraham's willingness
00:06:43.640 to take God at his word.
00:06:45.120 We see this at the end of verse 21.
00:06:47.840 It says, and being fully assured
00:06:49.140 that what God had promised, he was able to perform.
00:06:54.020 And the question you need to be asking
00:06:55.920 is how does this apply to my life?
00:06:59.260 How does this Old Testament discussion
00:07:01.180 about Abraham and the promise to him, how does that translate to my world? Obviously through
00:07:07.100 the inheritance of the substance of those promises, you are an heir to those promises
00:07:11.960 through faith. So that's one thing, but it applies in many other ways. Abraham is our father in the
00:07:19.360 faith. And as children, we have the same faith as our father, Abraham. And so we can look to
00:07:27.000 Abraham's example as our father. He's a forefather to us in the faith and we can look to his example
00:07:33.120 as we would look to our own father's example. We can learn from his response to the promise
00:07:40.160 of God. In other words, in the same way that Abraham trusted God regarding the promises given
00:07:45.920 to him, we can trust God regarding the promises that are given to us. This is a beautiful correlation
00:07:52.080 that you need to pay attention to.
00:07:53.740 When God's word promises us justification
00:07:56.640 and sanctification and peace and hope and eternal life,
00:08:00.880 we get to be just like our forefather Abraham
00:08:05.020 and trust that God can accomplish
00:08:07.380 what seems absolutely impossible to us.
00:08:11.940 John Calvin observes this exact point in his commentary
00:08:15.540 when he says, quote,
00:08:16.840 all things around us are in opposition
00:08:19.100 to the promises of God.
00:08:20.880 He promises immortality,
00:08:23.320 yet we are surrounded with death and corruption.
00:08:25.840 He declares that he counts us just,
00:08:28.780 yet we are covered with sins and transgressions.
00:08:31.500 He testifies that he is propitiating and kind to us,
00:08:35.700 yet outward judgments threaten his wrath.
00:08:38.860 What then is to be done?
00:08:39.960 We must with closed eyes pass by ourselves
00:08:43.720 and all things connected with us
00:08:45.860 that nothing may hinder or prevent us
00:08:48.380 from believing what God said is true.
00:08:53.120 It's a beautiful, beautiful commentary.
00:08:56.520 We can trust in the promises given to us
00:08:59.440 because we saw Abraham trust in the promises given to him.
00:09:04.900 Ultimately, Abraham's faith is to be an encouragement to us.
00:09:09.100 It's an example that we can look at.
00:09:11.500 When you doubt that God can forgive you,
00:09:13.940 remember Abraham's faith.
00:09:15.320 When you doubt that you can be saved with all of the sin in your life, you get to look at Abraham's
00:09:23.540 faith. When you doubt that God's going to resurrect your dead body at his return,
00:09:29.900 you can, again, look at Abraham's faith. His faith is the same faith that dwells in you.
00:09:38.740 He is the father of the faith and he has passed down that faith.
00:09:44.180 That faith comes from God.
00:09:45.800 It's a gift to Abraham and it is a gift to us.
00:09:48.120 We share in that faith and therefore we have the same ability to believe in the impossible
00:09:54.380 as Abraham did when we trust in God by faith.
00:10:08.740 We'll be right back.