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Sermon
Genesis

Covenant Established

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January 28, 2024
Genesis 15
Steven Lee
Pastor for Preaching & Vision

Faith

Transcript

0:13Well, we're continuing our series in Genesis, so leave your Bible open to Genesis 15. And as I pray, I'm gonna pray for the 200 middle school students, high school students and volunteers that are up at camp this weekend as well. So why don't you join me as we pray. Father in heaven, open our eyes to see wondrous things from this chapter. We wanna see more of you and we wanna be conformed to the image of your son Jesus. And we want that to take place among our students as well, our middle school students, our high school students as they're up at camp right now and probably hearing your word opened and singing praise.

1:01We pray that you would break in by the power of your spirit both here and there and cause dead hearts to come alive. Help us to see more of you and to conformed into the image of Jesus. We pray that in Christ's name. Amen. Have you noticed that we increasingly live in a low trust society? You need to lock your doors at night. Don't leave valuables in your car, you gotta watch your back. Don't buy from anyone going door to door. I had a guy try to sell meat out of the trunk of his car, uh, when he just drove up to my door one time. Everywhere you go you see scams and robocalls, spam emails and phishing attempts, phishing with the pH.

1:55You guys know what I'm talking about. Last month actually, someone used the contact us page or the form on our church website to send fake emails to some of our staff and to some of our deacons. The emails were supposedly coming from Pastor Stephen Lee and requested their confidential help. One person responded to the initial email and that individual replied, you know, I need your help to buy, uh, a bunch of gift cards for the staff. Um, and they were told they could even keep one as as long as they kept it a surprise. So the scammer version of me is very generous. Thankfully that person didn't fall for it and let me know.

2:40But we live in a world where we're increasingly trained to trust no one. We have sayings like there's no such thing as a free lunch if it's too good to be true, it probably is. I hate to break it to some of you this morning, but that Nigerian prince does not need your help storing his vast fortune in Walmart gift cards. While skepticism though is really healthy when dealing with scammers and when someone's trying to take advantage of us, it is deadly and dangerous when it extends to our relationship with God. If we approach God with the posture or with the attitude where we're skeptical or doubting or distrusting, it can undermine our very faith.

3:30And so the question before us this morning is this, is God trustworthy? Is God trustworthy? How we answer this question will have massive implications for our life. Do we trust God to be good? Is he true to his word? All of it. Does he keep his promises? Will he over promise and under deliver, am I gonna get to heaven and just find disappointment everywhere? Does God ever lie? Or perhaps some of you are asking this question this morning, can I trust God with the hardest and most painful aspects of my life this morning? Can I trust God when the circumstances around me or of my life look hopeless?

4:33By the end of this sermon, I hope you'll answer with a renewed and resounding yes, I can trust God. In Genesis 15, God goes out of his way to ratify or confirm his promise to Abram. We we saw back in Genesis 12 that God made promises to him and he renewed those promises. In chapter 13, he said, as many as there you see dust on the the earth. Uh, I'm gonna make your descendants like that. God makes this guarantee that his promises will come to pass. And what at first appears to be this really odd passage cut up animals in a flaming pot becomes this powerful picture of God's faithfulness to his word.

5:20My goal this morning is to make Genesis 15, one of your favorite passages in Genesis, so that you'll come back to it again and again and say, look, God is trustworthy and faithful. So we're gonna look at our passage in two main scenes. First, we get the covenant promised in verses one through six, and then we get the covenant ratified in verses seven through 20. And then we'll conclude by seeing how this passage encourages us, encourages us in our faith. So look with me at verses one through six, we have the covenant promised here we have this dialogue between God and Abram. And if you were with us last week in chapter 14, we saw that Abram rescued his nephew, lot fought against these four invading kings and he didn't take the spoil from the king of Sodom.

6:16And now God appears to him in verse one it says this, after these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. So God appears to him and it says, he says to him, fear not Abram, I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great. This phrase, the word of the Lord is a very important phrase. It actually only appears twice in the entire book of Genesis shows up here in verse one and then in verse four as well. But it's a common phrase when God speaks to his prophets. So here we get this vision from God that goes to Abram who's pictured as a prophet, and he says three things to him. Fear not, I am your shield and your reward shall be very great.

7:02Now, what would Abram be afraid of? It could be that he's just afraid of this vision. Whenever God appears to man, it's always fear inducing. Or whenever an angel appears, the first thing they say is fear not. But it could also be that Abram is fearful of these four armies that he just routed. They're gonna regather figure out what's going on and say, let's get revenge. So, so it could be that Abram is fearful of that. It could also be that he's fearful of the promise not being fulfilled again and again, God has told him, I'm gonna make you this great nation. You're gonna have all these descendants.

7:39And he, he continues to realize, I can't have kids. The promise is not going to come to pass. The second thing God says to him is, I am your shield. This means I'm your protection. I'm gonna guard you. I'm gonna keep you safe. I think this is this word of reassurance and protection after defeating many of these large armies, he feels very vulnerable at this moment. And third, he says, I will, your reward is very great. He suggests wages or spoils from victory with that word reward here. Now, he had just passed up this huge windfall from the king of Sodom. And so God reassures, Abram, you didn't miss out.

8:29I will cause my reward to come to pass. You did good in trusting me. Don't regret it now. Now in verse two, we get Abram speaking to God for the very first time. He says, oh Lord God, what will you give me for I continue childless. And the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus. And Abram said, behold, you have given me no offspring and a member of my household will be my heir. Eliezer is probably one of the slaves or people that he picked up along the journey. And Abram is acutely aware that God's promise and his lack of children are at odds. Now, look how Abraham addresses God here. He says, oh Lord God.

9:18And in your Bible, you might have GOD capitalized there. This is Adonai Yahweh, which means sovereign Lord. And Abraham is saying, I, I can't have kids, yet God keeps telling me that I'm gonna be this great nation and I have no idea how it's going to happen. And so God reassures Abraham verse four, 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 look. And he brought him outside and said, look toward heaven, number the stars if you are able to number them. Then he said to him, so shall your offspring be. What is God saying to Abram here in this moment? Trust me.

10:03Trust me. I'm going to cause my promises to come to pass. He, he tells him, not only are you going to have a child, but your descendants are going to be like the stars in the heavens. Now tried to do a little research. How many stars are there in the sky? And you'll realize if you try to do that research, it's a difficult task. Researchers estimate 2 trillion galaxies and the average galaxy has 100 million stars. So if you take 100 million times 2 trillion galaxies, you get a really big number at the end of that. The point is that Abram will have innumerable descendants even though he doesn't even have one child.

10:53Yet God's point in this is that whatever looks impossible in your life is possible with me. Whatever looks utterly incomprehensible, I can cause to come to pass. Now verse six tells us how Abram responds and he believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness. Abram trusts God despite not seeing, not being able to see how God would accomplish his word. He still didn't tell him how he was going to have children. And every year it looks more and more unlikely. And yet Abram believed God's promise and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now, this is a unique phrase. Normally we speak of someone as a righteous man, meaning their life or conduct is upright or moral.

11:50But here Abram is not called a righteous man. His faith, trusting in God's promises, despite the appearance of things, is counted to him as righteousness. Abram doesn't get the promise because he's great. Instead, God counts Abram's faith as righteousness. Now, Abram is far from perfect in Genesis. He, he lies to Pharaoh when God first comes to Abram in at her of the Chaldeans, Abram was a worshiper of pagan deities. Joshua 24, 2 says, in Joshua said to all the people, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel. Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates terror, the father of Abraham and of NoHo.

12:35And what did they all do? They served other gods. So Abram was worshiping false gods when God called him out of earth, Abram didn't do anything to earn God's favor. He didn't have a really good heart. So that God wanted to give him these promises. God chose Abram from his sovereign design. It's all of grace. And this is important this morning because it reminds us that God makes promises and keeps promises. And not only that, God will work in impossible situations to bring about His purposes. Some of us this morning need that word of assurance. We have impossible circumstances in our life or we're facing difficulties, uncertainties, things that appear hopeless.

13:31We just ponder the next year and we're thinking, I don't know how I'm gonna do it. We have health stuff, we have difficult family dynamics, we have financial struggles. This week, uh, I was talking to my wife and, and I told her I was ready to wash my hands of a situation that just seemed entirely impossible, too overwhelming. And yet this little interchange in Genesis 15 shows us that nothing is impossible with God. In fact, Jesus says this very thing in Matthew's gospel, mark's gospel and loose gospel as he tells the disciples that how difficult it is for a rich man to get into heaven. It's like a camel going through an eye of a needle.

14:16And then they all respond, who then can be saved? And what does Jesus say? What is impossible with man is possible with God? And so this morning, why should we trust God? Why should you trust him with the challenges, with the struggles, with the difficulties in your life, with the things that feel overwhelming, the things that keep you up at night and cause you to cry? It's because God keeps his word and he never lies. If God can count the millions of stars in the trillions of galaxies and every grain of sand on the earth, then he can handle our problems, can he not? If I handed you a handful of sand and said, count every single one, it, it would be near impossible.

15:11It would be a handful. It we would just, you know, magnifying glass tweezers, it would take us forever. And God has named every single one, and he's named the stars. He counts them. He knows them by name. God did not spare his own son, but gave him up to be crucified on the cross for us. How will he not also with him graciously, gloriously, kindly give us all things, we will not have any lack or deficit. So this morning, this passage is a call to hold on to his promises. Now that that's the covenant promise. Now he ratifies this covenant. So in verses seven through 20, we see the covenant ratified.

16:01And here we get this dialogue that continues between God and Abram and it culminates in this covenant ceremony. So he reminds him that he brought him out of her in verse seven. And then in verse eight, Abram says, oh Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it again? Abram's like I, I, I hear these things, but I don't know how it's actually going to happen. It's a very reasonable question. And God says, bring a, a heifer, a young cow, a female goat, a ram, a turtle, dove, and a pigeon. And each should be three years old, meaning they should be fully grown. And he cuts them all in half creating the, this little pathway between the bloody carcasses.

16:40Now what's going on here? This is not familiar kinda ceremony for us. This is a covenant sign ceremony. So God gives promises and he's ratifying that promise. And so these animals are typical of Israel's sacrificial rituals that kind of happen later on in the kind of the whole of the Bible. As Moses writes, uh, heifer was used for purification rights. A goat was used for Passover in the day of atonement, a ram for the ordination of priests and guilt offerings and birds for various offerings and purification ceremonies. Now to understand what's taking place here, many see parallels in Jeremiah 34, which also has parallels with other Assyrian and Aramaic vassal treaties.

17:29Now, I, I won't read it, but let me just describe what would often be done. They would take an animal, they would cut it in half and they would make an agreement and then parties would have to walk through those pieces. And what that would be saying is, may it be done to me if I don't keep my end of the bargain, may I be cut in half and torn apart if I don't keep my end of the bargain. It, it's kind of like what we have in modern day pinky swearing, right? You know, like you lock your pinkies, sometimes you do a thumb kiss or whatever, but, but you lock your pinkies. And if you don't keep your end of the bargain, hypothetically, I should be able to break your pinky as kind of payment punishment if you don't keep your end of the deal.

18:11It's probably why we have the idiom because very literally making a covenant is cutting a covenant and we have the idiom, let's cut a deal. So now notice what happens next. The sun goes down, a deep sleep along with dreadful and great darkness falls on Abram. And then God appears to him and says, no for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there and they will be afflicted for 400 years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve. And afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your father's in peace and you shall be buried in good old age and they shall come back here in the fourth generation for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.

19:00God gives Abram bad news. Your descendants are gonna be sojourners. They're gonna become slaves afflicted for 400 years. Some manuscripts say 430 years afterwards, they're gonna come out with great possessions and finally enter into the promised land. But by that time, Abraham will be long dead. God is giving Abram the sneak peek of the future to reassure him of the promise. He's telling him it's going to come to pass in precisely in this way. But consider how Israel would hear these words. Uh, as this was passed down and as Moses was writing it, the original audience of Israel on the cusp of the promised Land would've heard this with just electric excitement flowing through their veins.

19:50This is us. Uh, the the enslavement is passed. Hope would begin welling up in their hearts so that they would reach into their pockets and feel the weight of Egyptian gold, great possessions. And finally, it's our time to enter into the land. God wasn't giving them the land right away. Why? It's because in verse 16, the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. This means that God is both sovereign, but he's also patient. And just God is waiting for the sin of the Canaanites, the Amorites to rise up to a certain level where then he would bring justice and judgment. He's patiently going to wait for 400 years until their sin is to be punished at the right time.

20:48And many, when they read the rest of the scriptures, they struggle when the Bible commands Israel to enter into the land and to kill the Canaanites and to show them no mercy. And they think, look how terrible the Bible is. It is, you know, calling for genocide. How can you worship a God who ordains such destruction of human life? But what the Bible is doing for us is it's revealing that God is just, and that he's carrying out his judgment according to his perfect wisdom. God's people when they come back after 400 plus years are going to be instruments to bring God's punishment upon the Amorites for their wickedness.

21:30And in the same way God uses evil nations like Assyria and Babylon to punish Israel and to bring them into exile. And so what we see here is God's patience, but then also his divine judgment. He is a patient God, but he's also just, he's holy sins must be paid for and we don't even know how long his long suffering is ongoing for us as a people and nation. Now look at how this chapter ends. Verse 17, when the sun had gone down and it was dark. This is verse 17, behold a smoking fire pot and flaming torch passed between these pieces. And on that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram. This is the ratifying of the covenant between God and Abram.

22:24This is the covenant ratification ceremony. It's like signing on the dotted line or putting your seal or your thumbprint or a drop of blood. But notice that Abram doesn't pass through the carcasses. It's not Abram walking through those pieces of animal saying, may it be done to me if I don't keep my end of the bargain. Rather it's a smoking fire pot and torch that passes through. Now what does that mean? I think this symbolizes God's presence. We see it throughout the scriptures, but you can just kind of think about the exodus. God's presence went before Israel as they came out of Egypt as a pillar of cloud and a fire.

23:04When they get to Mount Sinai. God descended on Mount Sinai as fire and smoke. In Exodus 40. The Lord filled their tabernacle by cloud by day and fire by night. God appears to Moses at the beginning of Exodus in a burning bush at Pentecost, flaming tongues of fire appear on the disciples. All of these instances signify God's presence and the animals probably represent Abraham's descendants. And so when Abraham drives away the birds, the wild birds that are coming in verse 11, I think it's this living picture, this living metaphor of Abraham defending his people by faith. And the ceremony that unfolds then for us is this.

23:49It's God's presence passing through a representation of Abraham's descendants in this covenant ratification ceremony. And this is what it's saying, Abraham, my presence will go with you. I will be with you. You don't have to worry. You're asking how will I know? And I'm giving you the most wonderful precious thing in all the world that you could possibly get. My very own presence will go before you and with you to make sure these things come to pass. We read in chapter 14, who is this God, God most high possessor of heaven and earth, the one who holds all of the world and all of the nations in all of the earth.

24:46And he's the one who says, I am going to be the one to go with you. It could be that God is saying like from Jeremiah 34, may it be done to me if I don't keep my promise. God cannot curse himself. He can't swear by anything greater than himself I I think this is a visual representation of this covenant promise. I will never leave you nor will I forsake you. That's what God is saying to Abram in this moment, I will be your shield and I will be your reward. Now, Hebrews six refers to what takes place here. Just listen as I read it, Hebrews six 17 and 18. You can turn there as if you want as well.

25:36So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise, the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. Why do we hold fast to the hope of Christ? What are the two unchangeable things? God never lies. What he says is true. What he says will come to pass. And then God keeps his oath because he made an oath with Abram and he's gonna cause that to come to pass. He made a covenant, he put himself on the line.

26:23God gives clear discernible boundaries for this promised land. And the last three verses, we get this list of 10 peoples that inhabit the land. And I think this list of 10 symbolizes the fullness or the completeness of all the nations in that region that Israel will dispossess to take the land. So in Genesis 15, we get this covenant ratification ceremony where God cuts a covenant with Abram. He promises him his very own son. He promises him descendants as numerous as the stars. He promises him the land after 400 years of affliction. But most of all, God promises, Abram, that I will be with you.

27:07My presence will go before you. I will guarantee my very own presence will guarantee that my promises will come to pass. Now, before we conclude, I wanna go back to verse six. 'cause verse six is a really important verse in our Bibles. And he believed of the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness. Genesis 15, six is quoted in Romans four, Galatians three and James 2 23. So if you have a Bible, turn with me to Romans four, and I wanna look at that together. In Romans four, three, he quotes this passage. It says, for what does the scripture say? Abram believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

27:57Now what's the flow of thought here at the end of Romans three? Paul is arguing that human beings cannot boast about their salvation. What we can't be proud, we can't boast in, in in our salvation. Why? Because it's God who saves us. God justifies by faith alone, not by works. God justifies us. When we believe in him, we put our trust in him, not by anything that we do.

28:24But then he raises the question in chapter four, verse two was Abraham justified by works because Abraham in Genesis 17, he he's called to have the sign of circumcision. And so those are works. Was Abraham made right with God because of his obedience or because of circumcision? And the answer is no, because God counted his faith as righteousness. And he goes to Genesis 15, six. So Abraham believed in God, that's faith, which was counted to him as righteousness. This means that his sin is not counted against him, but rather it's counted or reckoned as righteous. Abraham did not work hard to become righteous as though he could earn God's favor.

29:17And that's what many religions around the world will say. You just try harder, give a little bit more, live a more or moral life, be more ethical, and then perhaps you can earn your way, move up the rungs of the ladder to reach God. And Paul is guarding against that. It's all by faith. In Genesis or in Romans five, six, God justifies the ungodly. This is what we call justification by faith. And we see it not just in Romans, but we see it in Genesis 15, six. God is justifying ungodly people not because of anything that they do by faith, because God's sovereign call and choice and the response of faith that God gifts to them and then he saves.

30:15Now, Abraham isn't righteous because he's counted righteous by faith, or Abraham isn't righteous, but he's counted righteous by faith because he believed and trusted in God's promise. Now, how then is Abraham counted righteous? 'cause Jesus doesn't come till many thousands of years later. It's Christ's righteousness is imputed or credited to Abraham by faith. So Jesus takes our curse and condemnation and gives us his perfect life and righteousness. This means that a right standing before God is not earned, but it's a gift. Salvation is this free gift that's obtained by faith. And in this transaction we get the doctrine of imputation.

31:05Christ's righteousness is imputed, is given to those who believe him, believe in God's promise by faith, and he takes our sin on him. This is the glorious good news of the gospel, brothers and sisters. This is why we're gathered together because of what Christ has done. The church is not a place for perfect people who get it all right, who raise their kids and children perfectly, who do everything perfectly, who never sin. The church is a place where everyone falls short. We're sinners who say we need help. We need a savior. We need a alien righteousness credited to our account. We need a savior who will take the punishment but not only take the punishment that we rightly deserve, but we need a righteousness that we can't produce.

31:59And Jesus is our righteousness. He imputes that righteousness to us. And so if you don't know Jesus this morning, we want you to know him. The call is not to work harder and do more and try harder, but it's by faith to put your hope and trust in Jesus and in his promises that if you come to him, you can find forgiveness of sins and an imputed righteousness and eternal life. He is trustworthy and true. Now, if you're still in Romans, look at Romans 4 22. This is the second place that they quote Genesis 15, six. Again, Abraham didn't waver but was fully convinced that God would fulfill his promise.

32:46Then it says in Romans 4 22, that is why his faith was quote, counted to him as righteousness, but the words it was counted to him were not written for his sake alone. This was not just written for Abraham, but verse 24. But for ours also, it will be counted to us who believe in him, who raised from the dead. Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. Genesis 15, six was written for us today so that we would see that God saves not by works, but by faith alone. And it's to call us to put our faith and trust in him. We began by asking, is God trustworthy?

33:42And the answer is yes, a million times, yes, God's word is true. He never lies. He will be true to his word. Spoiler alert, for the rest of Genesis, he does give him a son in Isaac, despite their shared failure in chapter 16, which Andy will show us next week, God will bring his descendants into Egypt for 400 plus years and then lead them out by his flaming presence and bring them into the land. Genesis 15 tells us that we can trust God this morning. You can trust God this morning. The question for us is, will we believe God's word and hold on to his promises. If God is for us, who can be against us?

34:38Do we believe that this morning? If God is for us, who can be against us? No enemy, whether that's Satan or layoffs or cancer or blindness or unemployment or random acts of violence or trauma or Alzheimer's or dementia or depression or bone cancer or debilitating anxiety or even death, can separate us from the love of God in Christ. So this morning, let us go to God with his promise on our lips. Abram received a promise and he asked, oh Lord God, how am I to know? And this morning, perhaps you're asking, how am I to know? And all we have to do is look at the cross. We look at the cross of Christ where Jesus indeed was torn apart, not just, may it be done to me, me if I don't keep my end of the bargain, but let me lay down my life, shed my blood for a people who will not keep their end of the bargain.

35:46Let me lay down my life, shed my blood so that they would know that it's not by their obedience, but by faith in Christ that they can be ushered in to a new covenant, a better covenant, a covenant not of works, but upon what Christ has done. And so as you cry out how Lord hear his answer, I will never leave you, nor will I forsake you. Let's pray. Father, we pray that you would cause this word to come alive in our hearts so that we would see the wonder and beauty and majesty of your trustworthiness, of your goodness, of your kindness and all that you have promised in Jesus. For us, we thank you that we have been saved, not by works, but by faith.

36:49Faith alone in Jesus. So enliven us this morning so that we would draw near to the throne of grace with confidence knowing that we have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus, his righteousness imputed to us, and that we might walk as those who can trust in you. I pray that in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Genesis 15

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