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It Is Written

John Bradshaw

Great Characters of the Bible: Isaac

Coming up next, please stay tuned for It Is Written, presented by Pastor John Bradshaw.

Carlo was born in March of 1883 in the town of Lugo in the north of Italy.

He was 21 years old when he arrived in the United States, and after trying his hand at various jobs and enterprises, he finally hit upon an idea that he was sure would make him a fortune.

Investors poured millions of dollars into his company.

Some mortgaged their homes and invested their life savings with Carlo.

Within months, He was bringing in a million dollars a day in revenue in 1920.

But it was soon discovered that Carlo's company wasn't generating any profits at all.

Carlo had been using the money from new investors to provide dividends to longer-term investors.

When greater numbers of his clients began demanding their money, Carlo, or Charles Ponzi's scheme, was revealed to be a massive fraud, and many people lost everything.

In 2008, the late Bernie Madoff was charged with securities fraud for running a massive Ponzi scheme that resulted in actual losses to investors of about $18 billion.

It was thought to be the biggest fraud in the history of Wall Street.

Even though $14.5 billion was returned to investors, Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison.

People trusted Madoff and Charles Ponzi decades before to do the right thing with money they invested.

We live in a world that is based on trust.

You mail a letter And you trust that if you put it in that box or through that slot, it's going to make it to where it's meant to go.

The mechanic tells you that your car needs this done, and you trust the mechanic.

Your doctor tells you that you need this certain medication, or maybe surgery.

Most of the time you have no idea, but you trust the physician and things work out.

I got my hair cut once at the airport in Toronto, Canada.

Oh man, it was so bad I remember it all these years later.

The person who I went to to have the mess fixed up said that the woman who cut my hair in the first place committed malpractice.

In fact, there are times you'd be unwise to trust.

That phone call when someone tells you they're going to send you a large sum of money, but first you need to send money to them?

But someone who can always be trusted is God.

We're continuing our series, Great Characters of the Bible.

And as we look at the life of Isaac, we see a life demonstrating trust in God.

He was the child of promise, born to Abraham and Sarah.

Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born.

When she heard she was going to have a child so late in her life, Sarah laughed.

In fact, she and Abraham did not trust God to begin with.

In Genesis 12, God said to Abram, I will make you a great nation.

I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing.

But time passed by and no child was born." When Abraham brought this up to God in Genesis 15, God brought him outside and said, Look now toward heaven and count the stars if you are able to number them.

And He said to him, So shall your descendants be.

The Bible says Abraham believed in the Lord and he accounted it to him for righteousness.

Sarah was getting older and she wasn't getting pregnant.

So Sarai said to Abram, "'See now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing children.

Perhaps I shall obtain children by her.' And Abram heeded the voice of Sarai." Which wasn't a great move for any number of reasons.

The lack of faith in God created friction which is still being experienced today.

Now let's say this, They're an elderly couple and they doubted that Sarah would become pregnant.

I mean, who would have thought that Sarah would conceive at that very advanced age?

It was God who promised a child would be born.

And so therefore, it's up to God to work that out, even if it seems unlikely from a human standpoint.

Our faith in God needs to stretch way further than the limits of our human understanding.

If your faith in God only goes as far as your faith in yourself I could never do a job like that.

I just don't know how we could ever afford to support that missionary family.

I can't see how grandma could possibly recover.

Then that's evidence that you don't have faith in God.

It's not easy to explain exactly how God created the world.

But Hebrews 11 tells us that by faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.

Hebrews 11 verse 3, We understand by faith.

A God in which you can have faith can raise the dead.

He can feed the 5000, open up the Red Sea, bring water out of a rock, and see to it that a 90-year-old woman can have a baby." Speaking of Abraham, Paul wrote, "...and being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, " when he was about a hundred years old, "...neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb.

He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully persuaded that what he had promised, he was able also to perform." That's Romans 4 verses 19 through 21.

Abraham simply believed that God could do what God said he could do.

Belief that God could do what God said he could do.

Faith, trust in God, belief that God could do what God said he could do.

And before long, Young Isaac was going to have to exercise faith of his own.

He was the first human being ever created, the father of the human family.

And in Adam's story, we find some of the highest and lowest points of the human experience.

Our free offer today is Great Characters of the Bible, Adam, part of the ongoing great characters of the Bible series.

To receive this free DVD, call 800-253-3000 or visit us online at www.iiwoffer.com.

That's 800-253-3000 or visit www.iiwoffer.com.

Thanks for joining me today on It Is Written.

Before I go any further in talking about faith and trust, let me say this, there are scams everywhere today.

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Great Characters of the Bible: Isaac

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