Nailed to the Ground.

A call to worship.

Themes

Faithfulness • Provision • Hope • Public witness • Pledge of the future • Sorrow and hardship • God sees to it • History and future • Jesus as fulfillment • The Father’s “Yes!” • Trust • Signs • Solid ground

God takes a field, a cave; He takes boundary lines, witnesses, silver; He takes things like negotiations and contracts and purchases, and He makes our hope tangible in them.

God fastens His promises to the ground.

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Scripture reading

Genesis 23

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This call to worship¹ invites us to trust a God who doesn’t just make promises. He nails them to the ground where we live. It points our eyes to the cross and the empty tomb and says: hope isn’t vague; it’s signed, witnessed, and made tangible in Jesus.

In Genesis 23, we read how Abraham handles the death of his wife Sarah. 

“I am a sojourner and a foreigner among you;
give me property among you for a burying place…”

Abraham weighed out to Ephron the silver…
and the field of Machpelah… with the cave that was in it,
and all the trees within its boundaries,
was made over to Abraham as a possession
in the presence of the Hittites, at the gate of the city.

After this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife…
The field and the cave that is in it were made over to Abraham
as property for a burying place.

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Prayer

Father in heaven,
You are not somewhere out there,
speaking an occasional word from a distance
hoping that we hear, 
that we understand, 
that we’re able to grasp it. 

No!

You fasten Your promises to the ground— 
not metaphorically. 
not symbolically. 
You take a field, a cave, 
You take boundary lines, witnesses, silver, 
You take things like negotiations 
and contracts 
and purchases 
and You make our hope tangible in them.

You teach us 
that Your faithfulness 
isn’t something that hovers above us. 
It isn’t an abstract concept 
that we gotta try to understand.
Instead Your faithfulness 
enters our physical realities, 
it signs contracts, 
it secures our history 
and our future.

And so we worship You 
as the God who “sees to it,”
the Lord whose providence 
and whose provision 
is not vague 
or conceptual 
but verifiable,
who turns physical places
—even places of sorrow and hardship— 
into a pledge of the future.

In these places 
You show us Yourself. 
You are the God 
who keeps His covenant in public, 
not just in our private prayer time. 
You are the God 
who plants the first stake 
of the promised land
even while Your people sojourn.

Lord Jesus Christ,
You are the fullness 
toward which every promise points.
You are the Promise Made Flesh.
You are the Future Standing Among Us.

In Your hands, 
our graves are not the end;
in Your name, 
the Father’s “Yes!” is unbreakable.

Let the firm physical realities 
of Your promises, 
of Your covenant with us, 
steady our trust. 
Right now. 
Not in ourselves, 
but in the God 
who binds Himself to us, 
and has done so forever!

Holy Spirit,
gather our scattered minds 
and quiet our hearts.
Keep us from making up our own signs 
to prove that You’re really with us.

Turn our eyes 
to what You have already set in place—
Your promise 
nailed down in real deeds, 
witnessed in public, 
paid in full;
and, above all, 
turn our eyes 
to the cross 
and to the empty tomb.
Teach us to live 
from that solid ground.

We come to praise You, O Lord:
the God who promises,
the God who secures,
the God who will bring all things 
to their fulfillment.
Amen.

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1. This call to worship was given to the small assembly of Christians who gathered at Pathway Church in Beaverdam, Michigan, on Sunday, November 2, 2025.