God signed for both sides.
A call to worship.
Themes
Covenant • Divine initiative • Faith • Righteousness • Incarnation as fulfillment • Redemptive history • Divine patience • Sacrifice • Substitution • God's personal involvement • God’s not distant • Fulfillment of the Law and Prophets • Worship
The story God was writing was not microwavable. It was holy. It was patient. It was purposeful. It was costly.
Scripture reading
Genesis 15:1–6, 12–13, 17–18; Galatians 3:16; Revelation 13:8
This call to worship1 is about our God who made a covenant, and then made Himself responsible for keeping both sides of it—even though it would mean taking into Himself the full cost of all our failures.
It is about our God who redefined righteousness as simply trusting Him.
It is about our God who patiently prepared the world, story upon story, generation after generation, century after century—patiently prepared the world for Christ.
In Genesis, we read how God spoke to Abram: “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield. I am your very great reward.” Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, what can You give me, since I remain childless?” Then the Lord took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars— if indeed you can count them. So shall your offspring be.” And Abram believed the Lord, and it was credited to him as righteousness. Later, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and God said to him: “Know this for certain: your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years. But I will bring them out.” And when the sun had set, and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot and a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces of flesh. For on that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram. Much later, the apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians: The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say “to his seeds,” meaning many people, but “to his seed,” meaning one person—who is Christ. And the apostle John, in his vision of heaven, calls Jesus: The Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world.
Prayer
Father in heaven, You have never been distant or detached. You have never been abstract or theoretical. You did not send us messages or ideas from afar. Instead, You bound Yourself to us. You did not deliver truth in the form of theories or propositions, but You came in person, step by step, across a long unfolding history, through a call to Abraham, through covenants and rituals, through exodus, through the giving of the law, through kingdom, priests, and prophets, through exile and return, all by way of a promise You swore to keep. You called Abraham. He did not discover You; but he trusted You. And You counted that simple trust as righteousness. Not because Abraham was righteous, but because You are faithful— faithful to speak to us, faithful to awaken faith in us, faithful to fulfill the covenant Yourself, fulfill it all in Christ. And on that day, You made that covenant. But it wasn’t a two-sided deal like all other covenants. You did something new. You alone walked between the torn flesh. You made Yourself the one who would bear the cost. You took on the whole obligation Yourself. You swore by Yourself. You didn’t just make a promise— You became the Promise. And then You waited. Your Word did not rush ahead. You let generations pass— through slavery, and silence, and wandering, and exile. Because the story You were writing was not microwavable. It was holy. It was patient. It was purposeful. It was costly. It was all necessary, just to prepare us. It was a story that You carried, that You wove into yYurself, that You bled for before we even knew it, before the foundation of the world. So that when Christ came, He came already clothed in every sorrow, clothed in every failure, clothed in every human ache for restoration. He came not just to forgive, but to fulfill: to fulfill the righteousness the Law demanded, to fulfill the faithfulness we could never offer, to fulfill the obedience Israel could never sustain, to fulfill the Law by embodying its deepest intent, to fulfill the prophets’ cry for justice, to fulfill the psalmist’s cry for mercy, to fulfill the return from exile by bringing us home to the Father. This is why we come, here, now, not because we have believed perfectly, but because You, O God, have been so perfectly, patiently faithful with us. In the name of Jesus Christ, the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, Amen.
1
This call to worship was given to the small assembly of Christians that gathered in Pathway Church, Beaverdam, Michigan, on August 3, 2025.