Genesis 15 - The Signs and the Guarantee
April 8, 2012 Speaker: Series: Genesis
Topic: Sunday Worship Passage: Genesis 15:1–15:21
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[Text: Genesis 15)
Scripture Intro: Abram had heard the promises of God and had seen God in action protecting him and blessing him, but the promises weren’t yet coming true and he was getting old. How could he know that God would do what He said when so much time had passed?
[Read and pray]
Intro: In response to someone looking for assurance, Clint Eastwood said in a movie, “If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster.” What he meant is that we don’t often have the luxury of guarantees assuring us that what is promised will actually be delivered. Sure, the things we buy might come with a limited life-time warranty, but just talk to Drew Carpenter about the headache that comes with those imperfect and incomplete guarantees. And beyond the things you buy, guarantees are elusive. Business ventures are full of risk. Success isn’t guaranteed! The stock markets are full of risk. Success isn’t guaranteed! Even tomorrow is guaranteed to no one. Without a certain, sure guarantee, fear and anxiety thrive. But with a certain and sure guarantee, there can be peace and hope that what is promised will actually come true.
Abram heard the promises of God to him; a promise of offspring, of blessing, of protection, a promise of reward, a promise of land. But there remained a fear inside of him because he couldn’t see how the promises could come true. There was the problem of his children…there weren’t any! There was the problem of some angry kings he had just defeated…what if they came back? How could the Land be his and his children’s when the threat of invasion always loomed? And besides, all the promises of God about offspring and blessing and Land served the larger purpose revealed in the opening of chapter 12 – the core of the promise was to blessing of “all the families of the earth.” If parts of the promises weren’t coming true, then wouldn’t the whole thing fail? Nothing short of the restoration of all that was broken is what Abram feared was being lost as time went by without the fulfillment of the promises!
FCF: There are seasons for us when the promises of God seem to have failed. Too much time has passed. Too much darkness obscures our vision. Doubt rises higher than our faith and threatens to drown us in a sea of sorrow. So we need a guarantee that things will not always be this way; that the hurt and the solitude, the reminders of pain and the reality of sin, the threats from without and the warfare in our own hearts – all the brokenness – will come to an end and be replaced by wholeness and peace and perfect communion with the God who made us for Himself.
And into that raging sea of doubt the LORD comes with greater power, guaranteeing us through His Word that His promises, though slow in coming they seem to our hearts, are sure and they will satisfy us in their coming. And more than that he gives us signs, something to see and touch and smell and taste, guaranteeing that the reality promised is now and will be. He gives us His Word and signs and guarantee to forever drive out all fear and doubt.
Listen to the first thing God says to Abram in the vision. He says in v. 1, “Fear not, Abram….” God knows the anxiety in Abram’s heart and moves toward him to comfort and assure him with His Word. In answer to fear about his protection from enemies God tells him, “I am your shield….” In answer to Abram’s giving up all the wealth gained in his victory over the 4 Kings from the previous chapter God tells him, “your reward shall be very great.”
When a child is afraid of monsters under the bed, you don’t comfort him simply by saying “Don’t be afraid.” You have to give a reason why fear should vanish. To simply say, “Don’t be afraid.” means you may as well have just affirmed that a monster is, indeed, under the bed. It’s like saying, “Honey, all you need to do is simply overcome your fear of this terrible and true reality.” No, you have to assure, you have to guarantee, that the reason to not be afraid is because there is no monster and you’ll prove it by going under the bed yourself. You go under and come back to guarantee your words are true.
The reason why Abram can live without fear is because the LORD is his shield and his reward from the LORD will be very great. The encouragement to abandon fear is given with a Word of guarantee that God’s favor will protect and bless Abram.
Abram’s response tells us that God said “Fear not” for good reason because there was something weighing heavily on Abram. He twice says nearly the same thing about having no child, so that a foreigner and servant of his house would be his heir. Looking back to chapter 12, God had said that He would make of Abram a great nation and that to Abram’s offspring would be given the Land of Canaan. The essence of the fear is that if the first promise of God, the promise of offspring, had failed, then how could the rest of the promises of God – culminating in the redemption and blessing of the world – actually come about?
Into this fear God again speaks. In v. 4 he assures Abram saying, “No, the offspring from you that will bless all the families of the earth isn’t metaphorical. It won’t be this person you have in mind, but a child from your own body will be your heir.” Then he directs Abram’s eyes upward and says, “Just look at the stars, Abram. Count them, if you are able. That’s how big your family is going to be.” God has given His Word, and then he gives Abram a sign. If he is ever in doubt, just look up and start counting. In chapter 13, God told Abram to look at the dust of the ground, so that if he could count the dust, then he could count the number of offspring that would come from him. So now, whether Abram looked down as he walks during the day or up into the sky at night, he would forever be reminded of the promises of God and take comfort in the word of God guaranteeing the fulfillment of the promise.
And Abram believed the LORD, and God counted it to him as righteousness. There may not be any statement in the Bible more important, more foundational to what we believe than this one. In this one statement we understand how humans are restored to the state of rightness before God that was lost because of our running away from God into rebellion and sin. Abram, whom Scripture has already shown to be a sinner, who used to worship the Moon God, who deceived a king for his own gain, is counted as righteous before God because he simply believed God.
Then God turns the discussion toward the land and another of Abram’s fears rises. God reminds Abram of who this YHWH is and what He has already done and promised regarding the Land Abram is in. And yet Abram still needs assurance. He needs a guarantee. He says, “O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?
We should see the grace of God here in many ways, not least of which is how gently God deals with his friend here. Abram comes to God with honest questions borne by love and respect for God. Such questions from His children don’t make God angry or afraid. But note the tone Abram uses with the LORD, referring to Him as O Lord GOD, YHWH ELOHIM. He uses the name of the LORD and he does not use it in vain or pride. He uses it, as the text tells us, in faith.
Abram essentially says, “My faith is weak…I need a guarantee!” And God is gracious toward Abram’s honesty. And He is the same toward us. He knows we are weak and that we need visual things that we can see and touch and have as reminders of larger realities. And God wants us to be honest with him. But there is a difference between humble honesty and accusing God of wronging us. There is a difference between struggling with unbelief and with weak faith in God. Prideful unbelief is often met with harsh treatment. But weak and humble faith is met with gentleness. In answer to Abram’s fear, God says, “Bring me some animals.”
No further instruction is needed because Abram knows what is happening. In Abram’s day, when two parties were entering into an agreement, a covenant relationship, they did so as a way of guaranteeing that the parties in the relationship would actually do what they were saying they would do. It was called “cutting a covenant” and it was quite serious.
Abram prepared the animals, cutting them in half and making an aisle out of them by laying the pieces opposite each other. You can imagine the blood involved. Then the sun set and God sent a supernaturally deep sleep on Abram. Then the LORD spoke to Abram and said, “Know for certain…” God gives Abram a guarantee about what the future holds, both for his offspring to come and for Abram himself.
But the guarantee isn’t all brightness and sunshine. God gives the details about how the nation that will come from Abram will suffer and be formed. They will endure 400 years of affliction and be redeemed by the LORD himself. As for Abram, peace and old age will be his and after a time his offspring will come into the Promised Land. Calvin writes, “thus does the Lord deal with his own people; he always makes a beginning from death, so that by [giving life to] the dead, he the more abundantly [shows forth] his power.”
The covenant cutting was serious because by cutting the animals in half and making a bloody aisle out of their bodies, the parties who walked through the aisle to guarantee their promises would be saying, “If I don’t hold up my end of the bargain, if I fail in this relationship, even as you see these animals, I will be like them. I will be torn in two.”
Look at verse 17. Abram remains in his deep, God-induced sleep, so who passes through the bloody aisle? God alone walks through. The smoking fire pot and flaming torch represent God himself. So here God gives a guarantee even beyond the Word and sign He has already spoken, a guarantee that is meant to assure Abram’s weak faith that the promises of God will certainly come true. As the only one to pass through the bloody bodies of the animals, the responsibility of bringing the promises into reality rests on God alone. It also means that if the promises fail, God alone will bear the curse of the covenant; he will tear himself in two. If Abram was looking for a guarantee, this is the certainty he needed.
God gave Abram the sign and the guarantee that assured him the promises made would come to pass. God made the stars become a perpetual reminder to Abram of God’s faithfulness toward him to give him offspring, even if it took more time. Every night, Abram could look up and be reminded of God’s guarantee. He could say to himself, “God sees me. God made promises to me. God will take care of me and will do what He promised.”
And God cut a covenant with Abram only once, but once was enough. The one-time event was sufficient to guarantee to Abram that God would give the Land to Abram’s offspring. The ceremony was burned into Abram’s mind through the vision of God passing alone through the bloody aisle, assuring Abram that the responsibility of bringing everything to pass rested on God alone.
And the sum total of the sign and the guarantee, both the perpetual and the one-time, strengthened Abram – not perfectly as we’ll soon see because Abram remained weak at times and was still very broken. He still was in need of grace. And yet Abram believed God and received and rested in God and in His promises as true and certain. And God counted Abram’s faith, that belief, as righteousness.
As the Story of Redemption unfolded and Jesus of Nazareth came on the scene, God gave us His Word and made promises through Jesus; promises of the forgiveness of sins and healing of hurts, promises of rest from our efforts to save ourselves and make life whole again and promises of Spirit empowered work for us to do, promises of eternal life and promises of joy that is fuller than our hearts can comprehend and promises of restoration with God now and forever in the new heavens and new earth.
God invites us to believe Him, to believe Jesus himself and set our faith in him alone. Just as Abram believed the LORD and God counted him as righteous, so you too are invited to believe the Lord Jesus Christ and be counted as righteous in God’s sight. Only Jesus can save us from our sins because he shed his blood on the cross to satisfy the justice that should have fallen on us. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household. That is the promise of God in Jesus.
But as you hear those promises made in Jesus, maybe you can understand Abram’s desire for a sign from God so that you can rest in the assurance that what he says about Jesus is true. God understands our weakness and he has given us signs and a guarantee that is better than those given to Abram.
He has given us a one-time sign and a perpetual sign: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Baptism is a sign assuring us of our union with Christ and our enjoying all his benefits and the promise that we belong to the Lord both now and in the age to come. It is something that only needs to be done once, just like Jesus died once and rose from the dead once and forever. Once you are joined to Jesus in faith, there isn’t any need to do it again!
The Lord’s Supper, on the other hand, is meant to be a perpetual sign to the Church, repeated frequently and often, to proclaim the death of our Lord until he comes again. We believe that when we receive it by faith in Jesus, even weak faith, we are strengthened, not because of some good in us or some value in the elements themselves or some goodness in the person passing them out, but because of the blessing of Christ who loves his people and promises to strengthen and bless us in the receiving of the bread and cup.
These things, baptism and the Lord’s Supper are signs pointing us back to the Gospel, that Jesus died for us and now lives for us to give us new life in him. They point us to a reality that is true now and brought about by God himself and they assure us that He will fully deliver the full salvation that He promised long ago. And there is power in them to strengthen and assure our faith in Jesus who says in them, “I love you. I died for you. I live now for you. I will take care of you!”
God has given us these signs for the building up and encouragement of the Church. But he has given a guarantee as well beyond these things, which these things point us toward. The resurrection of Jesus that we celebrate this day and every day in our hearts is the guarantee that what God promised long ago, that the head of the dark power who led humanity into rebellion would be crushed and the redemption of all things would be won by God himself. Because Jesus died and is alive again now and forever, we live with the best guarantee that God can give that His promises are true and find their fulfillment in the person of Jesus. And the resurrection tells us that the work of salvation and renewal God is doing does not depend upon us. Just like with Abram, the full weight of the responsibility lays on God’s shoulders alone – a weight which Christ bore on the cross.
If today or any day you find doubt or fear in your heart, then look to the promises of God and look to the signs He has given to us for our assurance that His Word and promises do not fail. Remember your baptism and remember that you have been united to Christ by believing him. When you celebrate the Lord’s Supper, as we are about to do, do it in faith that the sign given is powerful to strengthen you as Christ spiritually gives his own flesh and blood to feed and nourish you and tells you that he died and now lives for you and will come for you so that where he is, you may be also.
Christ died, Christ has risen and the Living Christ will come again to bring the full restoration of all things promised by God in the beginning. That restoration began with the guarantee of its completion in the resurrection of Jesus, the firstfruits of the glory that awaits the children of God. Hear the Word of God, see the signs and believe God. Set your faith in Jesus Christ and know for certain that salvation is yours in him.
(move to the table) Believe and be strengthened by Christ who draws you to himself in this meal…
LEAVE OUT WHAT FOLLOWS
God always guarantees his promises with a sign, something tangible for us to see or touch or smell or taste to remember the reality that God promises is now or will be.
God has given us both his Word and a sign that is meant to bolster our faith and assure us, even in the darkest times of our lives when our own sin weighs upon us and the brokenness of this world feels crushing. As we hear His promise made to us in Jesus that our sins are forgiven and all things are being renewed by God so that sin and death will no longer be a part of this world, he also gave the sign of the resurrection so that we might look to the risen Jesus and know that the reality promised has already begun. And the resurrection tells us that the work of salvation and renewal God is doing does not depend upon us. Just like with Abram, the full weight of the responsibility lays on God’s shoulders alone. (Christ bore the weight on the cross…)
From Andy:
Issues as americans – instant gratification – even for popcorn
vv. 1-6 – God addressing Abram’s fears by giving him His Word
vv. 7-19 – God giving him assurance of the promises
Trusting God with our future makes living in the present easier: Because he takes away our fears
Because he replaces our fears with assurance
- Stars – offspring “from your loins”
Abram believed God and it was counted…
- Covenant – Land
A one-time baptism (covenant ceremony)
A perpetual reminder – the Lord’s Supper (dust and stars)
(not one-for-one, but talking about patterns of how God works)
Romans 4 – God prolonged the promise because he was waiting until Abram was “as good as dead” so that all the glory belongs to God. There could be no other explanation than God being at work!
“My faith is weak…I need something to see!” God is gracious toward Abram’s honesty. He knows we are weak and that we need visual things. He wants us to be honest with him. There is a difference between humble honesty and accusing God of wronging us. There is a difference between struggling with unbelief and with lack of faith in God. Unbelief is often met with harsh treatment. Lack of faith (weakness) is met with gentleness (v. 13 – “Know for certain…”)
(vv. 13-19) God’s glimpse of the future is gracious to us because it helps us in the Now. It
Between the giving of the sign of the Lord’s Supper and the command regarding sign of baptism, a guarantee was given to men to confirm the promises of God. To guarantee the authority of Christ and to confirm God’s pleasure in him, God raised him from the dead.
More in Genesis
March 3, 2013
Genesis 50 - How to Die. How to Live.February 24, 2013
Gen. 48-49 - Crossed Hands and Undeserved BlessingsFebruary 10, 2013
Genesis 46-47 - How God Supports His People