Genesis 15

0:00 Well, I had a big introduction planned for this sermon, but it was dependent on the Louisville Cardinals winning the game yesterday. So, did I say y'all were loyal and obedient? I did not mean that guy, whoever that was. Well, here's what we're going to do, because otherwise I don't have an introduction to the sermon. We are going to, for just a few minutes, pretend that Louisville won the game yesterday.

0:37 And here's my question to you, if you're a Louisville Cardinals fan. Since we won the game, glorious victory, right? How much did you, as a fan, not talking to you if you played on the team. How much did you, as a fan, contribute to that glorious victory? You want to know what I contributed to that glorious victory? I was there in section 232, and what I contributed was my voice being scratchy this morning as I'm preaching to you.

1:08 I yelled my head off yesterday at that game. But my guess is that my yelling, one of the 50,800 and some odd people that were present at that game, did not contribute really anything at all to that great victory. And I think sometimes as fans, we fool ourselves, at least kind of in a humorous way, and think that our contribution to the whole thing really is doing something. So you wear your lucky shoelaces every time because your team won the one time you happen to be wearing those shoelaces.

1:38 Or you've got your lucky t-shirt, or you think that your voice in the crowd is making a huge difference to what's going on. But if we're really honest with ourselves, we know that our only contribution in something like a glorious victory, as happened yesterday, of course, since we're still pretending, is nothing. Our contribution is just to sit in the stands and cheer. It's kind of what I want to talk with you about today as we look at something else that we have no contribution to, and that is our own salvation.

2:14 Let me invite you to take a Bible, turn over to Genesis chapter 15. That's where we're going to be today. We're picking back up this study of the book of Genesis that we've been in for the last few weeks. It's the very first book of the Bible. So if you're not familiar with the Bible, if you just go to the very beginning of it, basically, you'll find Genesis. It's the first book. You'll find chapter 15 in there. We're going to be looking at that entire section of the book of Genesis. More specifically, this fall, we're looking at chapters 12 through 22, which tell the story of the life of Abraham and God's dealings with Abraham.

2:47 Abraham is one of the most fundamental characters in the entire Bible because it's to him that God makes the sort of foundational promise that he's going to save the world. So he becomes a massive figure in the story of the Bible. He's the father, the patriarch of the nation of Israel. It's out of Abraham that the Israelites come. It's from Abraham that the line of kings comes that culminates first in David and ultimately in the advent of Jesus, the king, king, right? So Abraham's a foundational character in the story.

3:20 Today, not only are we looking at a foundational character in the story, but we're looking at one of the most important events that ever happened in Abraham's life. And as it turns out, it becomes one of the most important chapters in the entire Bible. So if you're familiar with the Bible, if you read through it, you're going to find yourself being pointed back by biblical authors over and over and over to Genesis chapter 15. And that's because what happens here in this chapter, I mean, just to, you know, I don't say this about every chapter, right?

3:51 This was not the case in 13 and 14. It will not be the case in 16 or in 22 or 17 for that matter. What happens here in Genesis 15 is the foundation of the entire good news of Jesus Christ. This covenant, we'll talk about what that means, this covenant that God's about to make with Abraham in Genesis 15 is the covenant that underlies the entire gospel that saves you and me. And without this, there is no gospel.

4:22 So when God sends Jesus to save us, he does so in fulfillment of this covenant. When he saves you as an individual, when the Holy Spirit brings you to life, helps you to see the, causes you, in fact, to see the beauty of Jesus Christ. When God does that, he does that in fulfillment of this covenant in Genesis 15. When you, Christians, stand one day in heaven, You will be there because God is keeping this covenant in Genesis 15.

4:55 So what we're doing today in looking at this chapter is digging down right to the very golden foundation of the gospel. And what we find there is God's absolute trustworthiness. It's his absolute trustworthiness that lies at the very center of it. His unbreakable determination to always, always keep his promises. Now, so far in the story, if you kind of, you know, let your mind go back over chapter 12, 13, 14.

5:28 So far in this story, Abraham himself has been a kind of a mixed bag of a hero, if you think about it, right? I know that we like to take these biblical characters, put them on a really big pedestal and say, look at this hero, I want to be like this guy. But Abraham hasn't really given us much of that yet. I mean, we've definitely seen him do some really kind of courageous and faithful stuff, especially in chapter 13 and 14. We saw him give the good land to Lot because he knew that the good land was next to the evil cities. That was a faithful thing to do.

5:59 We saw him go out to rescue Lot when Lot got captured by these five kings. And Abraham wouldn't even take the spoils of war because he's obeying God and he's trusting God. But we've also seen Abraham pull some truly boneheaded moves. Like going down to Egypt, for instance, in the midst of a famine and lying about his relationship with his wife, Sarah. And here's some truly boneheaded stuff that Abraham has done. And so I think you have to say that by this point, our impression of Abraham is that he is acting pretty much like a normal human being.

6:36 It's two steps forward, one step back. It's over here, it's over there, it's back and forth. He's a mixed bag, much like all of us are mixed bags. So what's extraordinary about this story so far is not Abraham. You have to get that through your head. This is not a hero story about Abraham. He's mostly along for the ride for almost the entire story. It's not Abraham. What's extraordinary about this story is God.

7:09 It's the fact that really out of nowhere, God just plucks this random pagan out of the land surrounding Babylon and makes some spectacular promises to him. And then over and over and over and over, God acts to protect and keep that promise. And he does that whether Abraham's being faithful or not. I mean, sometimes God preserves his promise through Abraham's faithfulness. That's true. Sometimes he does. Sometimes Abraham acts and that preserves the promise. But there are plenty of other times where God preserves and protects his promise despite Abraham's failure.

7:43 So it's not Abraham that's in the sort of screen for you to watch. It's God. No matter what Abraham does, faithful or failure, God keeps his promise. He protects it. He preserves it. And he brings it to its intended end. So that's the story so far. God has made this promise to Abraham, to this random pagan that he plucked out of Babylon. and he's bound and determined to keep that promise despite everything Abraham does foolishly to sabotage it. So that's where we're going to pick up the story today, where God meets Abraham again and turns this, what is currently just a sort of bare promise, right? It's just words. But he takes this bare promise and turns it into a formal covenant. So let's read the text. Look with me at Genesis 15 verse 1. After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.

8:32 Fear not, Abram. I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great. But Abram said, Oh, Lord God, what will you give me? For I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus. So Abraham said, Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir. Behold, the word of the Lord came to him. This man shall not be your heir. Your very own son, from your own loins, it means, shall be your heir. And he brought him outside and said, Look toward heaven and number the stars if you're able to number them and 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 oh 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 didn't cut the birds in half when birds of prey came down on the carcasses Abram drove him away as the sun

9:36 was going down a deep sleep fell on Abram and behold dreadful and great darkness fell upon him then the Lord said to Abram know 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 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 pieces on that day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham saying Now, whether you recognize it or not just yet, that is an absolutely pivotal text that we've just read.

10:39 It's bedrock for the whole rest of the story of the Bible. And the biblical writers are going to return to it again and again and again. So before we go on any further in the details, I think you've got to just understand the significance of what's happening. here. You got to kind of see how this works in the story of Genesis. I'm going to tell you all about the details later, the cut animals, all the stuff. We'll talk about that later. But here's the core of it. This is like the 30,000 foot view of it. Here in chapter 15, God is taking the bare promise in words that he made to Abraham in chapter 12, and he's strengthening that promise by turning it into a formal covenant.

11:17 So all of a sudden, from 12 to 15, it's not just a bare promise anymore. It's not just words anymore. It's an official, legal, signed, sealed, and delivered contract that God is making with Abraham. And this is so important, in fact, that you could say that the whole story of Abraham's life is basically God locking this promise down tighter and tighter and tighter in steps. There are four of them, and they take place sometimes decades apart. So in chapter 12, you get the promise several years later, like a decade, so to speak.

11:50 In 15, you get that promise being turned into a covenant. About 10 more years later, in 17, you get the seal of that covenant being placed on it. We'll talk about that in a few weeks. And then in 22, you get a confirmation of the covenant. So it's one step after another. over the course of probably 30 or 40 years, God takes this promise and locks it down step by step by step, from promise to covenant, to sealed covenant, to confirmed covenant. And that's what's going on. But this is the moment here in 15, where the whole thing is sort of set in divine concrete. And once again, what's utterly astonishing about it is that the covenant God makes here with Abraham is unilateral. It is only God making a promise to do these things no matter what. So main idea of the sermon this morning, main idea of this text is that your salvation,

12:51 Christian, your salvation depends solely and completely on God and not at all on you. Praise god your salvation depends solely and completely a hundred percent however you want to say that no caveats solely and completely on god and not at all on you so what do you need to do what do you contribute to the whole thing what do you need to do just trust him to do what he's promised and that's what faith is right justification by faith alone in christ alone you trust him to do what he's promised but he does everything now in terms of structure of this this chapter it breaks down pretty nicely into two parts very easy first part is verses one to six god reiterates this promise to make abraham a great nation it's about offspring then the second part is verse 7 all the way down to the end. It's much longer, where he reiterates his promise to

13:53 give Abraham and his descendants land. So 1 to 6 is a promise about the offspring, right? The creation of the nation, the children, the descendants. 7 through the end is about the promise of land, the promised land, as it comes to be known. So two points to the sermon corresponding to those two parts of the chapter. Number one, what God requires. What God requires. And number two, what God promises. So let's take a look. Number one, looking at verses one through six of chapter 15, what God requires. So the last time we were in Genesis, we looked at chapters 13 and 14, and in those chapters it seems like what's going on there is that Abraham is growing in his faith in God. It's coming right on the heels of chapter 12, where the promise is made, and then immediately on the heels of that promise, second part of 12, he goes off to Egypt and starts lying about his wife, and puts the promise and peril and God pulls him out of it. It's just an extraordinary story. But in 13 and 14, it looks like Abraham is growing. He trusts God enough to let Lot take the more fertile land. He trusts God

14:57 again in this war against the four kings. So by the time 15 gets here, things are looking okay. It's looking okay for Abraham. And God appears to him in this vision. If you look at those two sections of the chapter that I gave you, one to six, and then seven to 21, you'll see that those two sections follow the same pattern. So it's a three-step pattern in both of those. They're parallel, right? So in step one, in both sections, God just reiterates his promise. He just says, Abraham, I've already told you this, but I am the Lord, and here's what I'm going to do for you.

15:37 First one about offspring, second one about land. He just reiterates the promise. The second step in both of those sections, is that Abraham questions him. And he basically says to him, really? Are you really? I know you've said you're going to, but this looks really, really difficult to me. So how do I know that you're really going to keep these promises? And then in the third section of both, or third step of both sections, God answers it. Now, the big difference, of course, is that in the first one, it's a very quick answer, right? He just kind of says the promise again. He's like, believe me about this. This is actually going to happen. It's in the second section, the third step of the second section, that you get this long ritual having to do with these animals and the making of the covenant and all of that. And I'll tell you about that later.

16:25 But I want you to look for now at this one through six, where God reiterates the promise, Abraham questions it, and then God says it again. Because you get a much more straightforward conversation between Abraham and God. So look at those verses, one through six. So first of all, in verse 1, the focus of what God says to Abraham there is really on who God is and what he's going to do, right? After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. He says to him, fear not, Abram, I am your shield and your reward will be very great.

16:57 In other words, I'm going to protect you and I'm going to reward you. I'm going to give you good stuff, right? I will protect you and I will give you good stuff. Why does God there tell him not to be afraid? Very first thing he says, fear not, Abram. What is he supposed to be afraid of at this point? Well, some people have looked at it. They've said it's tied back to chapter 14, this war of the five kings.

17:29 Maybe Abraham is afraid that these kings are going to come back next year and take revenge on him, right? They're going to whoop him for what he did to them the year before. I mean, maybe that's what Abraham is afraid of. Maybe we're supposed to read a little bit of that into it. But I don't think that, I don't think so. That's just not the direction the story takes. The five kings don't show up again. It's just they're off the scene. That doesn't seem to be the point. So other people have said, well, this is just the fear that kind of naturally happens to people when they encounter God. Or when they encounter an angel.

18:00 It's like Gabriel appearing to Mary and she being sore afraid. right and then and then them saying fear not don't be afraid I'm just a I'm an angel right maybe that's what's going on but again I don't think that's what happens I think the actual conversation that happens between Abraham and God is way more specific than that I mean if you look down at verses two and three Abraham tells you and he tells God what he's afraid of two and three look, Abram said, Lord, what are you going to give me? You say you're going to give me this reward.

18:34 What are you going to give me? Because I continue to be childless and the heir of my house is going to be this random dude over here, Eliezer of Damascus. So he said, behold, Lord, you have given me no offspring and a member of my household. In other words, one of my, you know, top servants, not one of my family, but my top servant is going to be my heir. He's going to get everything because you're not giving me a kid so what's he afraid of he's afraid that God is not going to keep his promise and it's hard to blame him for that to be honest I mean think about it when Abraham first gets this promise from God back in chapter 12 he's 75 years old now it can be a little bit hard to sort of you know piece it all together because you know when Moses writes Genesis his main aim is definitely not to give us a nice, clean chronology of the kind we like.

19:24 But if you look at it, you can kind of estimate that from Genesis 12 to Genesis 15, it has been 10 years-ish since God made that promise to him. 10 years, a decade of waiting on God to keep the promise, to give him a baby. And what's happened? Abraham's just gotten older. That's all that's happened. That's why Paul says in what we read together earlier in the service, his body is as good as dead.

19:55 He's done by this time, biologically speaking. It ain't going to happen. All that's happened is that he's gotten older. There's no baby. There's no string of miracles. It's just life, day after day after day for 10 years. And Abraham is getting worried, reasonably worried. Do you ever doubt that God is going to keep his promises?

20:29 Now, think about that a little bit. There's an interesting thing about this. Maybe what I'm going to say here is not the case for you. But for me, at least, as I kind of explored this in my own heart, it's a good thing to do sometimes to kind of walk around in your heart and see exactly what's going on there. But I think for me, I don't think that any doubt that I have tends to land on doubting that God is going to keep his promises. I don't think that's where it lands for me. Any doubt that I happen to have at any given time is way more likely to land on some question like, is there a God at all?

21:09 Or has God, that God, if he exists, right, has he really made these promises at all? But once I manage to nail those two questions down, once I nail it down that, yeah, I really do think that there is a God of the universe, and yeah, I really do think that God has made these promises about Jesus Christ, I don't tend to question then, oh, but I wonder if he'll really keep them. Now, maybe you're different. I mean, maybe you can be totally convinced that there is a God and he's made these promises, and you just doubt whether he'll keep those promises.

21:41 But I think what's going on in my heart, I think what protects me from having that particular kind of doubt is exactly stories like this in the scripture I think if I didn't have stories like this I might doubt what kind of God is this and does he actually keep his promises but this book over and over and over and over again shows God to be faithful he never once whiffs he always keeps his promise and so that's created this kind of fortress in my heart that I don't doubt that now The doubt will sneak in other ways, but that I don't doubt.

22:20 At this point, though, Abraham doesn't have the scriptures. He didn't have thousands of years of God proving his faithfulness. He's still learning about who this God is. He doesn't know as much about this God as we do. And at this moment, he's wondering, is this God really going to do what he said? Or am I going to be stuck making one of my servants my heir? That's his fear. That God isn't, after all, going to do what he says. So in verses 4 to 5, God makes this promise again.

22:53 Behold, the word of the Lord came to him. This man will not be your heir. You don't have to worry about that. That's not going to happen. Your very own son, and that's got, in the Hebrew underneath it, it's very biological. It's, you know, the son from your loins shall be your heir. And he brought him outside and said, look toward heaven. Number the stars if you're able. said so shall your offspring be and he believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness now that image of the stars recurs throughout both the Old Testament and the New Testament again and again and again but what is it talking about who are the stars if Abraham's offspring are going to be like the stars of the heavens in number who are those stars are they the literal blood descendants of abraham are they modern day jewish people well there's definitely some biological stuff going on

23:54 but and and that may even be what was at the front of abraham's mind but that's not the way the new testament takes that image it's not the way the new testament drives that image it doesn't drive it towards saying all those stars that god promised you All those offspring are your literal blood descendants. No, the New Testament says that those stars, those grains of sand are everyone who puts their faith in Jesus. Jew or non-Jew. So Galatians 3, Paul writes this.

24:25 Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. Who are the sons of Abraham? Those who are of faith. In the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, in you, all the nations will be blessed. So he says, if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring. Heirs according to promise.

24:56 Philippians 2, Paul grabs this imagery and says that we shine like stars in the universe as Christians. In Revelation chapter 1, the risen, reigning Lord Jesus holds in his hand stars that represent the church. The New Testament takes that image and makes it so that it's not the literal blood offspring of Abraham that that promise is talking about. It's you and it's me if you're a believer in Christ.

25:30 So when God tells Abraham to look into the night sky and see his descendants, that wasn't just a promise that he's going to have a really big biological family. It was a promise that God's going to save the world from its sin. That he's going to take that promise from Genesis 3.15 and establish a new king who's going to reign forever. And then he's going to draw around that king a nation of people whose trust is in him and who will live with him forever. This is a big promise, not just about one nation. It's glorious stuff. And here's what I want you to look at next.

26:03 What in this glorious promise is Abraham's role in all of it? What is his role in all of it? I mean, look at it. Look at the first six verses. Think about it. What does God here require of Abraham? What's his role in it? What's his side of the bargain? What's his contribution that's demanded of him? Nothing except to trust that God is going to do what he said he'll do.

26:34 I mean, look at it. It's really incredible. In all of this promising, there's no, I'm going to do this, but as for you, you need to do this. There's no, I'll do this as long as you do this. There's nothing like that. It's just one more time God saying, I'm going to do it. It was like that in chapter 12, and it's that way here again. And in fact, that point is made just thunderously clear in verse 6. Look at verse 6. He believed the Lord, and the Lord counted it to him as righteousness.

27:11 Now, that is a mysterious little verse. It's mysterious because, first of all, it's very, very strange wording. And I'll talk to you about that in just a minute. It's very strange wording. But also, it's mysterious because you read the rest of the Bible, it sits right at the galactic center of the good news of Jesus Christ. Paul quotes it at least twice, maybe even three times, in Romans, in Galatians. James quotes it in his book, too. In fact, it's one of the most important verses in the entire Bible for understanding exactly how God saves his people.

27:44 So look at it. Look at how weird it is. He believed the Lord and he counted that to him, his belief, as righteousness. Strange. Now, there are a couple of ways to misunderstand that verse. And one of the best ways to understand it rightly is to knock out the misunderstandings. So let me give you a couple of ways people tend to misunderstand it. One way to misunderstand this verse is just to kind of cross your eyes, blur it out, smear the words across the page, and basically just flat contradict it.

28:19 That's one way people misunderstand it all the time. So what you do is that you say, well, what was really credited to Abraham was his righteous works, the things he did in obedience to God. And that's what that little word belief actually means. Belief is really obedience. Abraham did righteous stuff, and God looked at the righteous stuff, and God said, that's some righteous stuff. You're righteous. But there are at least a couple of problems with that.

28:52 One is that that is just flat, not what it says. It doesn't say anything about Abraham doing righteous stuff, and God therefore declaring him to be righteous. It says he believed him. That's all. And besides, if it means something like Abraham did righteous stuff and God said that's righteous stuff, we're left as readers going, I don't think he did that much righteous stuff. I mean, he did some stuff, but he's not like this paragon of moral virtue. There's nothing spectacular, and he's done just as much bad stuff as good stuff.

29:27 And in the next chapter, he's going to commit adultery. So it just doesn't make sense to say that what this really means is that Abraham is being rewarded for being a good person just does not make sense that leads us to another way people go wrong with it and that's by saying well what it's saying is that his belief in God was righteous his belief was good it was righteous it was virtuous and meritorious and so God looked at his belief and said that's good therefore I declare you to be righteous okay but that's where the weird wording of this verse becomes really critical so look at it it does not say Abraham believed God so God declared him to be righteous doesn't say that it doesn't even say Abraham believed God and that was righteous, doesn't say that, it says, weirdly, God credited his belief as righteousness,

30:34 counted it as righteousness, now, why the weird phrasing, I mean, I mean, why go to all that trouble to put all those extra words in, it's because when you credit something as being something else, you're saying that the thing is not itself that thing, it's just not the same thing. You have to count it as being that thing. So let's think about that, because you've got to understand this. Let's say that I gave you a loan of $5, right? I give you $5, and then a few months later, you come back to me, and you say, I've got your money back. Here's your $5, and I accept it, and I look you deep in the eye and say, I will credit this to you as $5. You would think I'm crazy.

31:22 Because you would go, what do you mean you'll credit it as $5? It is $5. Nobody says something like that. That's a ridiculous thing to say. It is $5. You're going to call it $5, and that's that. Don't act like you're doing me a favor. Okay, but let's say, you know, instead of $5, you know, you walk up to me and you hand me that little loaf of bread right there. Like, here's payment of your loan. Now it would make sense if I look at that and then look at you and look at that and say, okay, I will credit this bread to you. as your five dollars well all of a sudden that makes sense right and the reason it makes sense is because the bread ain't five dollars faith is not righteousness faith is not righteous and actually theologically speaking this whole idea that faith isn't virtuous it's not meritorious it goes right to the very nature of what faith is it is deep theological stuff but but it goes to why God declared that it's going to be faith in Jesus that's the instrument of salvation,

32:26 the thing that moves you to salvation. It's that rather than anything else. You ever wondered about this? Why doesn't God say, okay, you know, why isn't it salvation by love alone? Why isn't it salvation by charity alone? Salvation by courage alone? Salvation by obedience alone? Why isn't it that stuff rather than faith what's different about faith well it's that things like love and charity and courage and obedience are virtuous in themselves they're virtuous in themselves I mean think about it all those things have merit you can look at them and you can say that is inherently a good thing that deserves something but not faith faith by its very nature is empty it's a hand that grabs it it has to grab onto something else and it takes its virtue or lack of virtue from what it grabs if you say i'm gonna have faith in a demon to save me

33:37 well that is a stupid and evil faith right it's a dumb faith to put your faith in a demon and it's because your faith takes on the color of the object that it grabs. If you say, like so many in the world say, my faith is in myself. That is a stupid faith. Because your faith takes on the character of what you're grabbing and you're wholly incapable of saving yourself. But, friends, if you say, if you say, my trust is in Jesus.

34:13 Well, then your faith isn't the right thing. because the object of your faith is infinitely good you know that's what it means to become a christian that's why we talk about faith all the time faith is reliance right it's you can think of it as leaning on something you think of it as grabbing something but but basically to become a christian to have faith in jesus is to embrace him with everything you've got and say my trust my reliance is in you to save me i can't do it myself no one else can do it and if you don't save me I'm done.

34:45 I got no other plea. Remember the old hymn, just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me. That's what you're saying when you become a Christian. I got no other plea to God. The only thing I'm going to say before the throne of God, if he were to ever ask me the Billy Graham question, why should I let you into my heaven, is going to be, I got nothing, but he's got everything. Talk to him. That's what it means to become a Christian. What God requires is faith in Jesus. Here's number two, what God promises, looking at 7 through 21.

35:20 So in 7 to 21, you really get to the point of the story. This is why the story is here. And it's God taking his promises to Abraham and now formalizing them into an official covenant. So you can look down at verse 18 and see that word used explicitly. This is why we know that it's a covenant, because verse 18 tells us so. Now, let's talk about covenant for a second. Covenant is not really a word that we use very often. Though I think for several different reasons, we do have at least a kind of vague sense of what covenant means.

35:53 I mean, we've all heard of a marriage covenant. Sometimes you might run across a student covenant at a Christian school or college or something like that. We have our church covenant here at Third Avenue. Sometimes sports teams will talk about a covenant with each other. So we don't use it very much in daily life, but at some of the high points of life, we'll talk about a covenant. To give you a quick definition, a covenant is a set of promises made between at least two parties. It's a set of promises that are made between two parties.

36:25 One side makes these promises and the other side makes these promises. So now you can see why we talk about a marriage covenant. Because when two people stand up here and they get married, the guy makes promises, the girl makes promises, and bam, there's a covenant that's created, right? That's what it is. So that's what's happening here in 15. But there is an incredible and unexpected twist in this covenant. So stay tuned for that if you haven't picked it up already. Second part of chapter 15 opens in verse 7 in almost perfect parallel to the first part.

36:58 So in verse 7, God speaks to Abraham, basically says again, I am the God who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldea. Tells him who he is and then tells him what he's going to do. I'm going to give you this land. That's why I did what I did. This time, what he says is focused on the land, right? First part was offspring. This is about the land. In 17, you're going to get the big blessing to the nations. But that's what's happening here. And then again, just like in the first section, in verse 8, Abraham questions that promise. How can I know that this is actually going to happen?

37:32 How can I know that you're actually going to keep that promise? Now, again, it's a reasonable question. Just like the first one was reasonable, so is this one. and this land that God has promised him is full of pagan nations it's like a it's like a hornet's nest of pagan nations in the promised land and Abraham's family isn't even that big and to make matters worse it's all tied together because he doesn't have a son so how in the world is he going to possess this land it's an excellent question so this time God goes well beyond just reiterating the promise. If you look at verses 9 and 10, basically what he tells them to do is gather up all these different animals and cut them in half, except for the birds for some reason, but cut them in half and basically lay the halves of the animals out in a pathway, right, so that you could pass through the parts. We don't know why the birds weren't cut, but they weren't. They would have just been laying there whole. Now, Genesis doesn't tell us a whole lot about the specific meaning of all

38:38 that. It just kind of assumes that the reader is going to know what's going on here. Now, people have tried to come up with all kinds of symbolism for this. So, for example, the animals that God calls for turn out to be the same animals that the nation of Israel uses over and over again in its sacrificial system. They're the clean animals. And the birds of prey that come down and, you know, Abraham has to like, you know, get them off. The birds of prey in the Bible are often symbolic of all the evil nations of the world. So you might, it's possible, you might have a picture here of the nations continually attacking Israel and God, kind of in the person of Abraham here, fending the nations off. Maybe. Seems like a bit of a stretch to me. Seems a little bit silly. I don't think that's what's going on. What we do know, though, is the actual meaning of all of this. We can look at this and know from history what is going on. Because this ritual of cutting animals in half

39:41 was very, very common in the ancient Near East that Abraham lived in. So he would have known exactly what was about to happen. So let me tell you what's about to happen. So let's say you've got two warring tribes, warring kings, the war happens, they come to the end of it, and the two kings decide to make a peace agreement with one another. I'm going to give you this much money and that much land, and I'm going to give you this, and we're going to surrender, and you know, we'll pay you 10% of the crops for the next 20, whatever the set of promises was, this cutting of the animals in half was a way to solemnize those promises, to solemnize this covenant that's being made. And the way it would work is that you would take some animals, like a heifer and birds and, you know, whatever it was, and you would cut those animals in half and place them in a pathway like this. And then each of the two kings that was involved in the covenant would walk through that bloody pathway in order to symbolically say, if I break my side of this bargain, may the same thing that happened to these animals happen to me. Now, it took different forms. Sometimes

40:47 they just cut the throat of the animal and put them on the two sides, and you'd have to walk through it. Maybe that's what's going on with the birds. Maybe there are multiple kinds of death going on here. But basically, if you're a king walking through these cut up dead animals, you're saying, if I break this covenant, may I also be cut apart and destroyed. So that's what's happening. And look what happens here. When the sun goes down, we're in verse 12 now. When the sun goes down, Abraham is put into a deep sleep, and God restates his promise. He even gives Abraham a look at the future, right, in 12 through 16. He says, your people are going to be slaves in a foreign land for 400 years. Then they're going to return, and they're going to possess the land.

41:29 All of that's going to happen. Gives them a look at the future. Just as a side note, look at the very end of verse 16. Where it says there, they'll come back here in the fourth generation. For the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. That's important. Just as a little aside. Because it pulls back the curtain a little bit on why God later commands his people to totally destroy the Canaanites. or the Amorites, as they're called here.

42:00 Same thing. When Joshua and the people of Israel come into the land and God commands them, you're to absolutely destroy them. That strikes us as mean, strikes us as bad, strikes us as wrong. But this little verse right here helps us to understand what was going on. It was not just a kind of paroxysm of rage that God was pouring out on the Canaanites. Destroy them all! It wasn't that. It was God's long-settled opposition to the Canaanites' sin.

42:31 He was using the Israelites as his sword of judgment against them. And he had been waiting 400 years with his own people in exile to get them out of the way. They'd been waiting 400 years for their iniquity to fill up all the way to the brim. And then he executed judgment. anyway, look what happens next, 17 and 18, when the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces, and on that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham, now the fire pot and the torch obviously represent God, throughout the Old Testament, fire, smoke, light, common way that God reveals himself, but what do you notice about this story especially now given your phd level knowledge of covenant making rituals in the ancient near east what do you notice what's supposed to happen

43:34 in this covenant making ritual that doesn't happen abraham doesn't walk through the pieces he didn't go only God walks through the pieces so this is a unilateral covenant it's weird in that way it's striking you're supposed to notice it God makes this covenant alone and therefore the whole for the whole rest of the story of the Bible no matter what happens on top of it this is the golden foundation that never ever breaks this covenant is never broken it holds forever it holds right now and is completely and totally fulfilled. The new covenant that we are in with Jesus Christ, the new covenant is the ultimate fulfillment of this Abrahamic covenant. You see the point?

44:25 You see the point? Because this is big storyline stuff, but when God locks himself into this unilateral covenant here, he's saying, I am so serious about this promise. I am so serious about sending this king to save my people from their sins and bring them back to live with me in the new heavens, and new earth, I'm so determined to keep it that if I don't, I myself, the ever-living God of the universe, should be torn apart just like these animals, which is just unthinkable.

44:59 And so it's unthinkable that God might not keep his promise. I don't know who you love most in your life your spouse your children your parents your best friend I don't know who you who you love but my guess is you've never made them a promise quite like that because you wouldn't trust yourself to keep it but the God of the universe has made that kind of promise to you if I don't keep my promise to save my people may I be ripped apart just like these animals unthinkable that is so unlike us, isn't it? It is so unlike us because we human beings, if anything, if we are anything in the world, we are promise breakers. And the story of the Bible is about us as a human race breaking one promise after another, shattering one covenant after the other, and having the curses of those broken covenants rain down on us like thunder. We human beings broke the covenant in

46:01 eden israel broke the covenant of sinai and every single one of those broken covenants demands death friend you know that's where you are right you know that's where you are if you're not a christian you are a covenant breaker and the curses of that covenant hang over your head like the sword of damocles about to find its sheath in your heart at the moment god decides you are a covenant breaker and you deserve death.

46:33 You've broken God's commands. You've broken the covenant that he made with humanity in Eden. If you're of Jewish descent, then you've also broken the Sinai covenant too. And death hangs over you like a sword. And you don't know when that sword might fall. But here's the thing. Here's the thing about Genesis 15. Over against that death sentence stands this promise of Genesis 15 unbroken and unbreakable. And so the God of the universe stepped into our world and kept this promise.

47:09 When Jesus, the Son of God, the eternal second person of the Trinity, died on the cross, all those covenants that we broke and all their curses fell on him. The offended Adamic covenant in Eden struck at his heart. The offended Mosaic covenant stabbed its curses into his soul. And as a result of that, we are free and saved. The canons of God's wrath fell silent. And God kept this promise of Genesis 15.

47:41 Look, I know that this might be new to you, new language, new concepts. But don't turn away from it. Don't look away just because it's unfamiliar. It's like this whole big, beautiful world, like a grand, epic story, like a world. Some of you probably, especially if you're young, you're gamers, right? One of the most exciting things, as I understand it, about gaming is exploring a new world.

48:12 What's out there? You need to look at the Bible like that. Not some unexplainable, non-understandable thing, but a brand new, epic world for you to explore. But it starts with this. It starts with recognizing the very first thing, that you as a sinner, as a rebel against God, deserve to die. And yet God has promised, unbreakably promised, that if you will come to Jesus and trust in him to save you, to stand in your place as your representative and your substitute, your king and your champion, he will save you from your sins.

48:53 That's where it starts. and then the starting gun goes off and you spend eternity getting to know him let's pray our Lord Jesus we thank you that by your blood you established a new covenant that was the fulfillment of the covenant that God made with Abraham Lord, we thank you that you are a covenant-keeping, promise-keeping God that never in all the history of the universe have you broken a promise.

49:33 And Lord, we thank you that you will not break your promises to us. Oh God, I pray that if there's anybody in this room today who doesn't know Jesus as Lord and Savior, Lord, I pray that the great promise that you've made in the gospel, that all those who believe in Jesus will not perish but have everlasting life, Lord, I pray that that promise would loom huge in their minds. And I pray, oh Lord, that you would bring their hearts and souls to life so that they can believe those promises and trust in Christ and be saved. Lord, we thank you for these things. And we pray, even as we come to the Lord's table now, Lord, we ask that you would drive them deeply into our hearts so that we will love you more.

50:08 We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.