God's Promise to Abram

How do you deal with discouragement and despair? What do you do whenever your expectations are not met? What do you do when you are discouraged and tempted with great despair? Do you talk to someone about it? Is it your spouse, a sibling, a parent, a friend? Are you dealing with discouragement by sitting silently in your own room? avoiding thinking about it and explicitly talking about it. What do you do? Whatever your experience does not align with your beliefs and expectations, particularly Christians. When you expect God to do something specific and that doesn't happen. When you have great hopes and expectations of what God might do and have blessings for you and it doesn't happen, what do you do? Do you doubt God? Do you question God? Do you seek counsel from others? Well, this morning, we're going to look at God giving great promise. We're going to look at how God gives great promise to Abraham and how Abraham confronts God with his despair, with his discouragement. We're going to be looking at Genesis 15 this morning. We're going to be looking at a passage that follows God calling Abraham out of Ur in chapter 12. A great victory in battle and then a blessing from Melchizedek. And now chapter 15. We see God and Abraham having a conversation, God giving promises, Abraham giving what really are complaints, and then God giving more promises. Let's look at our text, Genesis 15. We'll be reading the whole chapter. After these things, the word of the Lord came to Avram in a vision. Fear not, Avram. I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great. But, Avram said, O Lord God, what will you give me? For I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eleazar of Damascus. And Avram said, Behold, you have given me an offspring. And a member of my household will be my heir. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, this man shall not be your heir. Your very own son shall be your heir. And he brought him outside and said, look toward the heaven and number the stars. If you are able to number the stars, then he said to him, so shall your offspring be. And he believed the Lord. And he counted it to him as righteousness. And he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess. But he said, O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it? He said to him, bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtle dove and a young pigeon. And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. And when the birds of prey came down to the carcasses, Avram drove them away. As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Avram. And, behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. Then the Lord said to Avram, Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs. There will be servants there. And they'll be afflicted for 400 years. But I'll bring judgment on the nation that they serve. And afterward, they shall come out with great possessions. As for yourself, you shall go to your fathers in peace. You shall be buried in a good old age and they shall come back here in the fourth generation for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot, and a flaming torch passed between the two pieces. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Avron, saying, To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenazites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites. Here we see one story that has two main scenes in it. And I believe the story happens over two days, because the first scene, verses 1 through 6, you have Avram, God gives him a vision. I'm assuming it's at night because then he takes him outside and they look at the stars. In the next scene, verses 7 through 21, well, the sun is going down. So you really have two different days, two main scenes. Verses one through six make up the first scene. Here, God declares his promise. Of an offspring for Abraham, scene two focuses on the promise of a land, and so one through six focuses on the offspring promise and seven through twenty one focuses on the promise of land. These two scenes parallel one another. So if you look there, verses one and seven. God initiates a conversation. God comes in a vision and makes a great promise. Those two stories parallel because 1 and 7, the events, the scenes are introduced with God declaring promises to Avram. They also parallel because in verses 2 and 3 and in verse 8, you see the introduction, but, Avram said. There's a disjunction. Avram doesn't just say, yes, Lord, he makes really what's a complaint. He states a complaint, he states a concern, he brings a question to God in both stories after God gives a promise. Verses two and three, he questions the air. Verse eight, how will I know this will be my land? And then God provides a great assurance in verses 4 and 5 in scene 1 and verses 9 through 21 in scene 2. If we were to put these two scenes together, really verse 6 stands out. It's kind of the odd verse in all of this story, because what you have here is a narrator declaring what happens. You're seeing the heart of Avram and the mind of God. Really, it's a God's eye view of what's taking place right here in the middle of these two scenes. And we'll discuss that verse and its grand, great importance for us in a moment. Let's look at scene one. Let's walk through the process here. After these things, this is probably just referring to the great battle that just took place. Everything that's happened in Avram's past could be in view, but I think it's probably just referring to these things, the blessing from Melchizedek. The Lord comes in a vision and He declares three things. Fear not. What great words of comfort. When God comes and starts speaking to you, those are sweet, comforting words to come right off the tongue. Fear not, God says. This could be, do not fear those who are maybe going to come back and battle you. The kings that He has defeated just in the previous chapter. I'm assuming this is more to do with God coming to him who was to be feared. Fear not, Abram, I am your shield. Now, the word that Abram uses in chapter 14, I'm sorry, Mekhizek uses in chapter 14, when he says God delivered you, the same exact word, the same exact root, the word for deliver and the word for shield. It's the same basic word that shares the same root here. God is saying, I am your shield, I am your defender, I am your deliverer. And finally, your reward shall be great, and I believe here God is referring to the reward that Avram has been promised. He will have many descendants and he will have land. And there's two great problems with both of those promises. He can't have many descendants because he doesn't have a son yet. He doesn't have a child, so how can he have many descendants? And the land that God has promised him, well, it's full of all those names we read from 19 through 21. And here's where the story really gets interesting. But. Avram said, Oh, Lord, God, that is, in Hebrew, Adonai Yahweh, the God in all caps, that's God's personal name. The Lord there is referring to his sovereignty. This is the way an intercessor approaches God, all sovereign, personal, almighty God. What will you give me? That is striking, your world shall be great, what will you give me? For I continue childless in the air of my house is Eliezer of Damascus. Now, this is a new name, a new person. It's assumed that this must be the chief servant in Abram's house. And in the ancient Near East, the way you transferred property, if you did not have your own child, is you adopted someone in your household or someone from outside of your household in order to make sure your property passed along to someone you trust and someone that you felt faithful and would care for your widow and your livestock. And your other servants, you adopted someone. And so here, I believe Avraham is referring to Eleazar of Damascus, someone who is in his household, someone who's probably a faithful servant, that he's thinking, I'm going to adopt him so that he can be my heir. It gets a little more pointed. There's Hebrew parallelism. He makes the same complaint twice. Behold, you have given me no offspring. That's quite the accusation. God has promised him all great descendants, but of Romans sitting here without a child, he's openly and honestly saying, but God, you haven't given me an offspring. There's a trust there that you are the one who's supposed to give me an offspring. There's a trust there in his power. There's an honesty with his disappointment. And a member of my household will be my heir. That's referring to Eliezer again. And God responds, Behold, the word of the Lord came to him. This man, Eliezer, shall not be your heir. Your very own son shall be your heir. God responds to his complaint by an assurance of his promise. This is not going to be the way it is. I will fulfill my word to you. In order to fulfill his or to prove his promise, he gives him a sign. He takes him outside. He says, Look to the heavens. If you can count those stars. You can count. You'll be able to count your descendants. So that's the first scene. What's striking here is Avram's despair and discouragement and his ability to speak openly and honestly with God. And verse six really concludes this section and begins the next. And Avram believed Yahweh and he counted it to him as righteousness. Now, typically, the way you're supposed to be righteous is by being righteous. You are righteous when your actions, your thoughts, your desires, when everything you do is good and right, you are righteous. But here it doesn't say Abram is actually righteous in his own being, in his own actions, in his own work. No, it says God counted it to him as righteousness. So, this is the foundation for the doctrines that unite us and that we believe in the doctrine of justification, that God doesn't look at us and see us as righteous. Rather, he looks at us just like he looked at Abraham. And he saw that he was a sinner. He saw that he was rebellious. He saw that he had doubt and confusion. And he sees him as a sinner. But here of Rome, he hears God's word. He hears the promise and he believes it. And that belief in God's promise causes God to look down upon him and count him as righteous. Calling a sinner a saint, calling a wicked, evil person righteous and good, it doesn't change Abraham's nature. But it changes his standing before God. It's a legal declaration. You are no longer counted in Adam's sin. You are no longer counted in your sin. You are no longer counted guilty. Rather, you're now counted among God's children. You're now counted as right. And again, we'll discuss more of what this looks like in the larger picture of redemptive history later. Let's go on to scene two. Since it was nighttime earlier and you have sun going down, we assume this is happening somewhat during the day. The next day, we don't know when this next word begins, but the scene begins the same way the previous scene did. And he said, I am the Lord who brought you out from the from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess. For the first promise, God was assuring Abraham of his offspring. Now he's assuring him of his land. God said, I'm the one that brought you out. I'm the one that's protected you. I'm the one that's called you forth here. This will be your land. But Ephraim said, Oh, Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it? Now, this is a little less provocative in terms of the way he's addressing God, isn't it? There's a little bit more faith. He wants a sign of assurance. God says to him, Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtle dove and a young pigeon and cut these in half, except for the birds, because they're too small to cut in half. And as the sun was going down, a deep sleep falls over Abram. A deep sleep, the same word is used whenever Adam falls asleep and Eve is created out of his side. A deep sleep falls over Abram. A dreadful and great darkness. And the Lord declares to him, your people will go into another land. They're going to sojourn somewhere else for 400 years, four generations. A generation will be about 100 to 110 years. They're going to be somewhere else in a foreign land. They're going to be afflicted. But out of that affliction, they're going to leave with great possessions. Now, obviously, we know this is Egypt. God is foretelling how he's going to give Avram the land. He's going to send them to Egypt, which is going to function really as an incubator. We're going to get to the end of Genesis and see how God really provides their way into Egypt. They get the best land in Egypt. They're left alone in Egypt. They're left to prosper and grow in numbers. And they're going to leave with great possessions and come back to the land that God has promised. And in that time, in those fourth generations, the iniquity of the Amorites will become complete. Now, there's two ways to interpret that. Maybe there's not enough sin among the Amorites, which is the Amorites, I believe, is just a general term that really includes all of these different Gentile nations, pagan nations in Canaan. Two ways to interpret it. One, maybe there's not enough sin to judge them yet. Well, that can't be true. God doesn't need more and more evidence of sin. Once there's sin, God is good and just and right to judge sin. That's not really an option. Maybe if they're given more time to repent, they're waiting for the iniquity of the Amorites to continue to reject God and continue to reject God and continue to reject God. That's a real possibility that the iniquity of the Amorites is they're growing. in wickedness and their continual refusal to acknowledge God. I believe what this clearly shows is that their wickedness grows great, they're advancing in wickedness, and God is one waiting 400 years to grow up his nation, Israel, and two. He's waiting for the Amorites to grow completely wicked. And then he will judge them. In verse 17, this is where it gets, well, pretty intense. The sun had gone down. Behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch pass between the two pieces. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Avram. I will give this land to your offspring. Now, this is a bizarre scene for us. Okay, he's cut animals in half, he's laid them side by side, and then all of a sudden a smoking pot and a torch starts going between them. That is rather peculiar, but if you're an ancient Near Eastern Perizzite or Rephiam or Kenite or whoever it is, or an Israelite, you know what this symbolizes. Especially if you're an Israelite who's coming out of the Exodus, you know what this symbolizes. First, the fire symbolizes God's presence. When God called Israel out of Egypt, He was there present with them in a cloud by day and a fire by night. God's presence is symbolized by this flaming torch. So, this flaming torch is God Himself walking between these two piles of dead animals. Now, this isn't just a religious ceremony. This is actually the way you made a contract in the ancient Near East. Sounds pretty weird, but this is the way they did it. What they were doing is saying, all right, here's a cow. This cow is now dead. You would separate the cow or whatever animals there are, and two people would walk back and forth between those two pieces. making an agreement. I will be purchasing your bike. I will trade your car for my car. I will be buying a house. It was a grand contract that two people are walking back and forth reciting the deal. And what they're saying as they walk back and forth between these two piles of dead animals is, if I am not good on my word, I am as good as dead. I am forsaking my right to live. If I am not good on my contract, my promise to you. And so what's supposed to happen, you're supposed to have two parties reciting together a mutual agreement and saying, if I don't keep this, I'm dead. I'm swearing by my own life. Well, first we can see this is Not exactly that kind of a contract, because there's not two people walking between the two piles of dead animals. God alone is walking between the two piles of dead animals. God alone is making a promise to Abraham. God alone is saying, if I do not keep this promise, I am as good as dead. If I am not keeping this promise, I will be dead. And what's beautiful about that promise is it's impossible for God to die. He is life itself. And so what God is saying is you have no greater assurity that I'm going to keep this promise. It's not based upon you. It's not based upon your good works. It's not based upon anything you have to do. I myself am committing to it. And it will be done. It's a beautiful picture of God's single minded, single hearted focus on committing himself to Avram and his people. And then, as you see, the promise is that all of these nations, well, they're going to be destroyed. God is ultimately promising that all of these nations, they're going to be moved out. Or rather, Israel will have a great victory over each one. Well, friends, let's think about what this passage has to teach us first. God listens to his children. God listens to his children. Let's go back to Abraham's example here. He complains to God. It's just outright a complaint. You haven't given me a child yet. It jumps off the page as disrespectful at first, but after I thought this long time, I really appreciate the honesty that Abraham has in talking to God. You see that Abraham is holding God to his promise. Abraham is saying, you said certain things are going to be so, but they're not yet. And he honestly approaches God with a question and really a complaint. What's interesting about that verse six, God counted his righteousness as that preceded by a complaint and followed by a question. Avram's grand declaration that he is righteous is surrounded by his complaining and his questioning. Now, let's just jump right into the theological problem. Is complaining to God antithetical to faith? Is complaining and talking to God about your despair and discouragement contrary to a true faith in God? I say no. If we have a true faith in God, we're going to talk to Him about our discouragement. If we have a true faith in God, we're going to tell Him how we're discouraged when we're in despair. A true faith in God talks to God about everything. A true faith in God knows that He can handle your little question. A true faith in God believes He is good and loving and able to hear you. A true faith in God knows that He's patient with us. A true faith in God knows He already knows our hearts better than we know it. He is our shield. He protects us from the grand pain. He protects us from being overwhelmed with discouragement. We'll always be persecuted. We'll always have pain. We'll always have despair. We'll always have sin. We'll always have struggles in this world. But God is our shield that keeps us from being destroyed by these things. If we're truly Christians, we're going to truly have a faith that's courageous enough to go to God, who is good and trustworthy, and tell Him of our afflictions. It is not contrary to faith to talk to God honestly about what's going on in your heart. We can see examples of honest declarations of God. We can turn to Psalm 13. How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? These are good, honest, heartfelt, discouraged questions. Consider and answer me, O Lord, my God. Light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death, lest my enemies say I have prevailed over him, lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken. This person declaring this psalm is in real affliction, is in real difficulty. And he's modeling for us how we can talk to God openly and honestly about our afflictions and about our discouragement. But notice how it ends. But I have trusted in your steadfast love. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me. He goes from the complaining, he goes from voicing those difficulties, he goes from voicing those problems, the despair, the discouragement. To doing the only thing he possibly can do in ending with the greatness and the beauty and the power of God. God longs to hear His children cry out to Him in their true problems. What keeps us from doing it? Is it pride in our own selves? Is it pride that we are opposed to actually admitting any weakness in and of ourselves, even in our conversations with God? Is it lack of faith? He'll smite me. He won't listen to me. Friends, if anything, through Genesis thus far, we've seen God is patient and good and loving. We've already seen this great symbolism that He is committed to His people and His love is a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul. Friends, He already knows our hearts. What we need to do is explicitly express Those discouragements, those questions we have, the reason we pray is to align our hearts with God. The reason we pray is so that we can explicitly declare to God what the problem is. And here his counsel. We do this, we must pray respectfully, we must pray to the sovereign, personal God. We must pray your will be done on Earth, as it is in heaven. What is it that you're discouraged about today? What is it that you have despair over? What is it that you have questions about? Is it your spouse, your children, your job, your happiness? Or is there something in your life that just feels incomplete? Talk to God about it. Don't sit there silently in your despair. Speak to God who is good. Speak to Him and talk to Him about what is truly discouraging you and expect a response. Expect Him to remind you of the promises He's already made to you. Expect Him to bring brothers and sisters into your life that will remind you of God's goodness. We must audibly declare to God our problems. It's throughout Scripture, throughout the Psalms. And we must expect a good and faithful God will keep His promises to us. God listens to His children. He is a good and loving Father who does not turn us away. The second thing we see is God makes and keeps His promises. God initiates His love, His salvation for us. We see here a covenant being made where God alone is the actor. God alone is the promise maker. God alone is the agent who declares good promises. It's not what we do. It's not what we say. It's not what we give. He gives everything in this promise. He gives everything in this covenant. Now, if we look at the Abrahamic Covenant, this particular symbol is happening to reassure him that he's going to get the land. But it's the larger covenant we're looking at. Genesis 3.15, where God promises Eve, someone will come and reverse the curse. Someone from your lineage is going to come and overcome death and sin. And so we see descendants, we see lives coming from Eve. all the way to Abraham now. And we hear that the covenant has come, that God has chosen His specific people, His specific place, through whom? Abraham. He's going to fulfill that grand promise in Genesis 3.15. His children will be established as God's people that we put in a specific land and He will keep them. Now, in order to really understand this, we're going to jump quickly to the Mosaic covenant. And we're going to try to be a big picture of God's covenants. So this could be complicated. God made a great salvation plan. He gave a great salvation promise. There's one plan of salvation. It begins in Genesis 315 and it ends when Christ returns. That promise in Genesis 315 goes to Abraham. Abraham, the covenant made with Abraham is fulfilled in Christ, in Christ alone. But God has another covenant between Abraham and Christ. He has the Mosaic covenant, and the Mosaic covenant is not the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant. It's a subset. It's part of the Abrahamic covenant. It's an addendum. It's a subcontract. It's only meant to be temporal. The Mosaic covenant, as is what Paul calls the guardian for God's people. until Christ comes and finally and absolutely fills the Abrahamic covenant. The Mosaic covenant is what a covenant God makes with the nation Israel on Sinai. It's kind of like the DTR that define the relationship. God goes and he says, you're going to be my people. And this is what it means for my people. The Sinai covenant is meant for to be mutual. God says, I am your God. You are my people. That is the Abrahamic part of it. But in all the commandments, that's the Sinai part of it. God is telling his people how they are to live as his people, and there's obedience and blessing follows obedience, and there's disobedience and curse follows disobedience. God has them give him their word. We saw last week it was only temporal because of the sacrifices that are aligned with the Sinai Covenant. It's only temporal because the priests and the sacrifices were not meant to be the perfect and pure sacrifices and the perfect priest. It's temporal because it's just one nation and one race that God intends the Abrahamic Covenant to be all people in all races. It's temporal because it failed. You can just read the Old Testament. It failed. Every king failed. Every prophet failed. Every priest failed. It never completely delivered the world from sin. The Mosaic Covenant is a subset of the Abrahamic Covenant to hold God's people in place, to keep building up the promises while the world waited on the final fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant, which is Christ himself. As we read in Galatians, Christ is the one offspring that blesses the entire world because He died on the cross for the sins of every nation. Christ is the one offspring who rose again so that the nations can be united under Him, under His banner, under His victory. Christ is the blessing of many offspring because everyone who believes in Him is Abraham's offspring. Abraham's offspring are not physical descendants. Abraham's offspring are those who believe in Christ, who believe in God's promises. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the promise of land. It is not just some little piece of land in the Middle East. It's the entire world. When Christ comes back, everything is going to be in submission to Him. All things are put in subjection to Him. This entire world is going to be redeemed. Not some little piece of land. The entire world. When Christ comes back, he's going to have a final victory and every evil, every enemy will be a footstool to him, be crushed under his feet. So the Abrahamic covenant is bigger, better in Christ. It's not just a small land. It's the whole world. It's not just redemption of one race. It's every race. Friends, if we want to participate in these great promises and this great commitment that God makes to us, believe in God. Believe in Christ. We see this single minded, single promise maker that walked between the two dead piles of carcasses. God says, I'm going to do it, and He does it. We can't save ourselves. God Himself had to come. Add to himself a nature just like ours. God himself had to come and live like us in every way except for sin. God himself had to come and be the righteous one that would deliver us. God himself had to come and free us from our own sin, our own death, our own destruction. And only God could do this great deliverance. We must believe in him. We must respond the same way Abraham responds, with belief. His promise is sure. His promise is steadfast. We now get to look back and see how God has delivered us. Abraham was only hoping for what would happen. We get to believe in what did happen in the cross and the resurrection. Friends, finally, we see that God is just and the justifier of sinners. God is just and the justifier of sinners. God declares Abraham to be in a right standing with himself. God declares Abraham, who's a sinner, to be good and right. Now, this should bring some confusion, because how can God keep his holy standard of goodness and yet declare someone who's not good, good? How can God be just and right and perfect and yet say you're forgiven to someone who's a great sinner? We want God to be good. We want God to punish sins, not necessarily our sins, but we want God to punish sins. We want God to wipe out the evil in this world. How can God simply declare someone is righteous and not deal authoritatively? finally, completely and truly with the evil that was in Abraham and the evilness in this world. Well, God is able to be just, keeping His holy standards and the justifier, because God Himself died for us. That man, Jesus Christ, was God Himself who came and lived a just and righteous life. He died on the cross innocent, perfect and righteous. When He died for us, He took upon our unrighteousness. He took upon what we deserve in God's wrath. That's how God can be just and the justifier. Because He Himself took upon our sin and destroyed it. In return, for all who believe, He takes upon our sin and He gives us His righteousness. We are declared to be righteous Because Christ has given us his righteousness. We are considered sons of God because the Son of God died for us and rose again. Many people see a problem of evil as a real problem within Christianity. How can Christianity deal with the problem of evil? I think that's a weird question, because Christianity is the only religion that I know that actually deals with the problem of evil. Christianity is the only religion, the only worldview that really looks at the world and sees how disgusting, how corrupt, how wicked it really is. Christianity is the only religion that gives a real explanation of why things are as bad as they are. Beyond that, Christianity is the only religion that provides a solution. Christianity is the only religion that provides a real solution to sin. And it's God himself coming down to destroy it finally and completely. For God has given us such great promises. God is faithful to his word. God is faithful in his love. God is faithful and patient to his children. If you're not a believer here this morning, Your wickedness will be punished by God. Your unrighteousness is offensive to God and He will punish your sin unless you believe in Jesus Christ. Unless you believe in the Son of God who died on behalf of sinners so that you do not have to die before God. You believe in Jesus Christ who rose again and gives you hope of eternal life so that you do not die the final death. Christians have a courageous faith in God that speaks to him honestly about your discouragement. Do not fall into discouragement and despair silently. Speak to God, speak to your brothers and sisters. Let the spirit truly remind you of his promises and who he is. And know that it's not of your own work. that you're saved. It's not of your own works that we get to worship. It's only in Christ and His great work for us. Let's pray. Almighty God, how great you are to stand before us and make such great promises. Even though we're fighting against you, you promise To us, such great blessings, you promised us. Eternal life, you promised us life abundantly, you promised us a seat at the eternal table where we will worship you face to face forever. We praise you, Lord, for these promises, we praise you, Lord, that in Jesus Christ, every one of these promises are yes and amen and ours. We thank you, Father, for the great victory we get to have. Pray that we will walk faithfully. Knowing Your truth is reliable. In Your name we pray, Amen.