A Covenant-Keeping God - Pastor Tom Loghry
In Genesis 15:1-6, we see a continuation of God’s promise to Abram, as well as continued growth in Abram’s faith.
Transcript:
I want you to think about the wealthiest person you know. And you have to personally actually know this person. The only rule is it can't be your employer. So anyone else other than your employer, who's the wealthiest person that you actually know? Now let's imagine that this person comes to you and says, come to my house Friday night and I will give you $5 million. It sounds pretty zany, right? But you might just do it. After all, what do you have to lose? But imagine that this person also says, before you come, make sure to tell your boss you're quitting your job. Now that ups the stakes significantly. You'd have to really believe the person to go ahead and do that. If you really trust the person, and some of you would, you might go ahead and do it. Others of you wouldn't be able to bring yourself to quit your job. Seems so risky. You don't know if you can trust this person to follow through. This is a test of faith. If you do have faith and this person's word is reliable, then you have much to gain. If you don't have faith, but their word remains reliable, then you'll be missing out.
As we follow Abram's journey, we find him passing through a series of checkpoints in which he is called to trust God. Once we've covered the entirety of his story, you'll see that there were moments in which he did lack faith. But these moments are not the whole story. Considered as a whole, we will see that he was a man of faith. Genesis 15 is another step in that journey that really crystallizes what it means to have faith. Now you'll recall previously in Genesis 14 that Abram had a little bit of a showdown with four kings the east. These four kings had come along and overthrown the cities of Sodom, Gomorrah, and other peoples in the area and they'd stolen Abram's nephew, Lot. So Abram chased them down, got Lot back, and then he has this encounter with this mysterious kingly, priestly figure by the name of Melchizedek, who blesses him. And as we talked about, this figure of Melchizedek anticipates the person of Jesus Christ, who is both King and our high priest. And after receiving that blessing from Melchizedek, Abram turned down the offer from the King of Sodom that he would keep the loot that he gained from his victory. And he refused that because he wanted all the glory to belong to God. He was trusting in God.
So now here in Genesis 15 after these things have happened God comes to Abram in a vision and we kind of wonder what does that mean? What does it mean for someone to receive a vision? Is it a dream? I tend to think that it's not a dream because the Bible understands that dreams exist and we think about the time of Joseph and how he received dreams from God that foretold that which was to transpire in his own life and the life of the family of Jacob. And so the Bible has the category of dreams. So this vision is something other than a dream, in my opinion. God comes to Abram in a vision. It seems to be that he comes to him at night based on details which follow later on, and he says to Abram, do not be afraid. Now we hear that exhortation in other places of scripture; you think about when the angels come to the shepherds in the field, they say don't be afraid, and the reason why they tell the shepherds not to be afraid is because they don't want them to freak out because they're seeing an angel. That's not what's going on here though. We've already heard God tell Abram to not be afraid. He said, and he tells him, do not be afraid, Abram, because he doesn't want Abram to fear what might happen to his life. because we've already seen Abram kind of suffer from fear from his time in Egypt. And what did he do? He tried to sell out his wife and give her to Pharaoh basically. God doesn't want Abram to be afraid of the threats around him, the things that would seem to put God's promises beyond hope. He says to him, do not be afraid Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward. What a comforting word to receive from God. To have God personally tell you, don't be afraid, I am your shield, your very great reward. Meaning that every blessing that you could possibly hope to receive is found in God. If you belong to God, if God belongs to you, if He is your God, then you will be blessed. That's a great promise to have. And what God is trying to reassure Abram is that as far as he is Abram's God he's providing for him safety and a reward. And this promise that belongs to Abram is a promise that belongs to us as well, because we are the children of Abram by faith. God is our shield. And so I want you to imagine God speaking these words to you because it's not just a thing of imagination. He is actually speaking these words to you. He's telling you, I am your shield. Your very great reward. And we can believe this because we see this declared elsewhere in the Psalms, throughout the Psalms. We see the psalmist declare that God is his shield.. Look at Psalms 3:2-3. It says, many are saying of me, “God will not deliver him.” But you, Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, the one who lifts my head high. In Psalm 18, the Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer. My God is my rock, and in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. In Psalm 84, for the Lord God is a sun and shield. The Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless. In Psalm 119, you are my refuge, my shield. I have put my hope in your word. Abram has received this wonderful word from God, this word that belongs also to us. But as we see in these opening verses of this chapter, Abram doesn't just respond with, oh, great. Rather, he expresses some of his concerns. And in expressing those concerns, he is not so much doubting as he is pressing into his belief and faith in God and just seeking to understand how it is that God will deliver on his promises. In chapter 14, of course, Melchizedek had blessed Abram. In chapter 13, God had told Abram that his offspring would be as numerous as the dust is. And in chapter 12, he had told him that he would become a great nation. But what Abram wants to know is how. How can this happen? Because he remains childless. And If he has no child, it seems that these promises cannot come to pass.
What Abram desires is the complete blessing of God, not a second-hand blessing. which would be the case if his estate, if everything that he has was just left to a servant of his household, whom he names as Eliezer of Damascus. And this was a common practice at that time. If you don't have someone who's to be your heir, you leave it to someone in your household, they take care of your affairs, they make sure that you receive a proper burial. It's just an effort to try to make the best of the situation. Abrams believing for something more than this. to make best of the situation. He wants the full promise of God. And God does not begrudge him for this. In verse 4, God responds to him. He says, this man will not be your heir, talking about Eliezer, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir. He took him outside and said, look up at the sky. and count the stars, if indeed you can count them. Then he said to him, so shall your offspring be. Abram believed the Lord and he credited it to him as righteousness. So God gives Abram reassurance. that his heir will in fact be of his own flesh and blood. that his line will in fact be continued. But as we see, as we will see as we go along in the story of Abram, this is going to continue to be a kind of point of frustration because God doesn't fulfill this promise the next day. Rather Abram's got to wait twenty five years until this promise will come to pass. You can imagine waiting over that time your faith might be tested, and Abram's faith certainly was tested. But God gives him a reminder, a reminder to help him keep the faith. You think about how God put a rainbow in the sky as a sign of his covenant with Noah and the world that he would never destroy the world again by a deluge. In a similar way, God points out the stars to Abram as a sign to him. It says count the stars if you can. That's how many your offspring's gonna be. What a wonderful reminder for Abram that every night when he would look up the stars, he'd remember God's promise to him.
That didn't remove the difficulty of having that faith over those 25 years. But it's a promise that God did in fact bring to pass, which we know today because we are included as children of Abram by faith. But even just about four or five generations out, four generations out, when Moses was leading the children of Israel into the promised land in Deuteronomy 10:22 it says, your ancestors who went down to Egypt were seventy in all and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in the sky. Wherever you see when it's making a reference to the stars in the sky in the Old Testament, it's referring back to this promise that God made to Abram right here. When God told Abram this, it says that Abram believed the Lord. And God's response to Abram's belief, his faith, is that he credited it to him as righteousness. What does that mean? Credited to him as righteousness. What does righteousness mean? Well, to be righteous can also be understood as being just. And in fact, when you're getting down to the the Hebrew word, it's zedek, and it can be translated either way, as righteous or as just. We can understand it as being cast as just because if you're a righteous person, then you're doing everything that you should unto God that you ought to do, and you're doing everything unto others as you ought to do. You're giving everyone that which they deserve, to God, and to your fellow man. And insofar as a person is righteous, they are blessed. God's righteousness, this righteousness in God's blessings go hand in hand. And so if you're someone who's blessed, which God says that he's going to bless Abraham, then he must be someone who is righteous, someone who's been doing what's right. This leads us to ask the question, well, who is righteous? Who is counted as righteous? And based on the testimony of Paul in Romans 3, no one is righteous. In Romans 3:10-12 Paul says, as it is written, there is no one righteous, not even one. There's no one who understands, there's no one who seeks God. All have turned away. They have together become worthless. There's no one who does good, not even one. And what Paul's doing here is bringing together some scriptures from the Psalms and from the Ecclesiastes and putting forward this testimony that no one is righteous. No one does good.
Now that can be a little bit difficult for us to believe. We can say, well, I see people that do good things. But what Paul is talking about is that there's no one who is completely righteous. Yes, sometimes we do the right things. but we don't even always do that. And even when we do the right things, we don't always do it with the right heart. And that's what we always see Jesus pressing into again and again in his ministry. While the Pharisees and the Sadducees are concerned with outward things, Jesus is concerned, what's the condition of your heart? Because God wants a righteous heart. Paul says that there is no such person. There's no one who does good. And yet we do hear testimony in the Old Testament of those who God considers to be righteous. I've selected several verses from Psalms and Proverbs that I think helps illuminate the dynamic that's going on here. In Psalm 112:6-7 the psalmist says, surely the righteous will never be shaken. They will be remembered forever. They will have no fear of bad news. Their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord. We go to Proverbs 11:28. Those who trust in their riches will fall, but the righteous will thrive like a green leaf. In Psalm 37:29-34, The righteous will inherit the land and dwell in it forever, hope in the Lord and keep his way. He will exalt you to inherit the land; when the wicked are destroyed, you will see it. Now there's a common thread between these three verses apart from the fact that we're speaking about righteous people here. And it is that the righteous person is the person that has faith. Their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord. They're the sorts of people who don't trust in their riches, but who trust in God. the sort of people that keep their hope in the Lord. If you hope in the Lord, then you're certainly trusting the Lord. Faith and hope go together kind of like hand and glove. So with that in mind, and moving to what's been revealed in Jesus Christ, I believe what we can see and understand is that those whom God has called righteous throughout history are those who are not righteous on their own account, but insofar as they have put their faith and trust in God. And so they've been counted righteous just as Abram has been counted righteous. And this righteousness that comes by faith is something that is only possible because it's made possible by the power of God. This is what Paul says in his letter to the Romans, Romans 1:16-17. He says, ”For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes. First to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the Gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written, the righteous will live by faith."
Paul says something very similar to this in Galatians 3 as well. The thing to notice here is that in speaking about faith and belief, the salvation that comes by just believing by faith is something that is accomplished by the power of God. And so if righteousness comes by faith, then righteousness itself might be something that is accomplished by the power of God. So stick that in your mind. Righteousness is something that is accomplished by the power of God. Now Paul says that the righteous will live by faith and what he's quoting here is Habakkuk 4 where it says, See the enemy is puffed up, his desires are not upright, but the righteous person will live by his faithfulness. That's interesting. I've seen in various translations it can be translated either as faith or faithfulness. I think using that word faithfulness helps kind of capture what we mean when we're talking about faith because when we're talking about faith we're not talking about mere mental ascent. The faith that God desires, the faith that gets credited as righteousness, is a faith that acts out. Faith is not the absence of righteous deeds. Genuine faith acts. And this is what James attests to in James 2:24-26. He says, “You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone”. And he is previously talking about something that Abram did, and we'll get back to that later in our series going over Abram. But he says, “You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone. In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead." What James is saying here is that if faith does not manifest itself in action, then really, it's not faith at all. It's just dead. It's like you and I. If we're not living, if we're not moving, then we're just dead. And then we're not really us. We're just a corpse. And this is the case with faith. Faith without action is just a corpse. It's not faith at all.
Now I want to take you back to the example that I opened with, thinking about this person that would offer you $5 million. But now I want to switch the positions in the relationship. Now I want to imagine that you have $5 million. You've saved a bunch of money. And you've offered this to your friend. Now imagine this person comes to you on Friday night and says, “all right. I've showed up on Friday night, now give me what I deserve." Well, you kind of say, whoa buddy, what are you talking about here? You don't deserve this money. This is money that I've worked for, that I myself have saved up. One doesn't earn five million dollars just by going over someone's house on a Friday night. I mean if that was the case, I'm going to everyone's house on Friday night. No. They don't deserve the five million dollars, but you share it with them only because they've responded with faith. If they don't show up, they can't get the five million dollars, but they have not earned it just by showing up. It remains a gift. I think this helps us understand the nature of faith in this way. We should understand that faith itself is not what saves us. It's not so uncommon that people in our society might call people and say, oh, you know, keep the faith. You know, I'm a person that believes and just has faith. Just having faith itself isn't going to do you any good. I could have faith that someone's gonna give me a million dollars, but just because I believe that doesn't mean that they can actually give it. If I went to any of you and said, I have faith you're gonna give me maybe five million dollars, that's not gonna make a lick of difference. Because you don't have the resources to just give me that. Faith does not produce five million dollars. That money, in the case of righteousness, when we think about righteousness, must come from somewhere else. In this case, it comes from God. It comes by the power of God. I'm now taking this, that this righteousness is not something that is accounted on the basis of our faith, but it's something that comes by the power of God. We can now tie this together with the blessings that God has promised Abram. Paul ties this together. In Galatians 3:5-9 Paul says, so again I ask, does God give you his spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law? Or by your believing what you heard? The reason why Paul is saying this is because the Galatians were beginning to get into not depending on righteousness that comes by faith, but by their own works. He says, so also Abram believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. Understand then that those who have faith are children of Abraham. Scripture for us saw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and announce the gospel in advance to Abraham. All nations will be blessed through you. So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. The reason why we have a share in the blessings of Abraham is because God promised that he would bless the world through Abraham. But notice what Paul is saying here is that the way in which we get access to those blessings, and it really goes hand in hand with those blessings, is that by faith we can be accredited as righteous, just as Abraham was.
Paul continues with this kind of thinking in his letter to the Romans in Romans 4:16-17 and 20-25. He says “Therefore the promise comes by faith. so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all of Abraham's offspring, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. As it is written, I have made you a father of many nations. He is our father in the sight of God in whom he believed, the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not." So again, God's intent all along was that the children of Abraham would be those who would be counted by faith, not by mere blood, because if it was by mere blood, then the whole world could not be blessed in the way that God had in fact promised. Because if it's just based on blood, then the rest of humanity is just cursed to destruction. Continuing in verses 20-25, Paul says, yet Abraham did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had the power to do what he had promised. This is why it was credited to him as righteousness. The words it was credited to him were not written for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness, for us who believe in him who raised Jesus, our Lord, from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification. So Abraham believed that God could deliver on his promises. And so because of that, He was accounted righteous. But those blessings, the promise that God had given him, included the sending of Christ and the joining of the Gentiles to the family of Abraham. And that only comes through Jesus Christ. And what Paul is saying here is that by faith and trust in Jesus Christ, we can be accredited as righteous. And there's something critical here in that it's Jesus who actually makes this possible. He is the one that provides the righteousness which is not our own. Paul says he was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification. and being justified we are counted as righteous, even though on our own accounts we are not righteous. Now I've created a little bit of a list here to kind of help break down logically everything that we've been saying here, because it's easy to kind of get the wires crossed and to start losing track. If we can go to the next slide. It’s called the logic of blessings and righteousness by faith.
So Abraham had faith. that God would bless him.
God credits Abram as righteous because he believes God's promise to bless him.
On their own, no human is righteous. Paul talked about that.
If no human is righteous on their own, then the righteousness God credits to the response of faith is a separate righteousness. It's like you believing in, trusting someone who has the five million dollars to give it to you. You don't just produce the five million dollars on your own. It has to come from somewhere else.
Only the righteous will receive God's promised blessing. We saw that indicated in the Psalms. It's implied throughout the Scriptures.
If only the righteous will receive God's promised blessing, then faith in God's promise includes the belief that God can make persons righteous through faith. Because it's only those who are righteous who receive these blessings. It's God who makes righteous, just as he counted Abram as righteous, just for his own belief.
If God has promised to make persons righteous through faith, and this righteousness is not their own, then God must provide and produce this righteousness. And so lastly,
Through Jesus Christ, the Son of God, God both provides and produces this righteousness for those who would have faith in Him.
And now this leads us to the critical question of, well, how does God do this? How do God and Jesus Christ provide this separate righteousness that can be applied to us for our sakes? We could do a whole other sermon on this. Only one passage I'll give you. Romans 3:25-26. Paul says, God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood. This is how God justifies us. Jesus is perfectly righteous and He offers His life as a ransom unto God. And the nature of Christ's life is not only is it perfect, but it also is powerful. It has the power to restore creation. It has the power to restore those who would be covered by Him. So Jesus is a cleansing, restoring ransom. He makes amends. We think about how do you make things right between two people. Either you have to make amends or that person is punished. In the case here of Christ, he makes amends through the suffering that he endured. Obedience to the point of death on a cross. So if we accept that, if we believe that, that through Christ this perfect man we can be justified before God. We can have access to that separate righteousness that he has provided on his own account by faith. Paul says to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed before unpunished. So again, righteousness is, you can alternately say righteousness or justice. So he did this to demonstrate his righteousness, his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed before unpunished. Something had to be done about sin. God couldn't just withhold his just response to sin forever. Rather than destroying us, he sent Jesus Christ. So in verse 26, Paul says, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus Christ. So through the sending of Jesus Christ, we see both God's perfect mercy, because we receive a gift that we did not deserve, just as if someone offered you five million dollars, you don't deserve that. And we also see God's perfect justice, and that it's through Jesus that things are mended, because he offers the human life that all of us were to offer unto God, but have not, and he offers the human life that can restore things in a way that we cannot restore things.
You see, the good news that Jesus brings is even better than a gift of five million dollars. Your rich friend may give you a share of his wealth, but he will keep some for himself. This is not what Jesus is doing for us. Jesus is offering all of himself to us. The New Testament depicts the church as the Bride of Christ because just as in a marriage, everything that belongs to Jesus now belongs to us when we are joined to him by faith. There are no separate accounts, it's all one. We're all in the Jesus account. God has promised to bless Abram. He invites the world to share in that blessing because it is now possible through Jesus Christ. By faith in Jesus, we are credited as righteous. The devil condemns, but God declares us innocent and righteous. But most wonderful of all, God's declaration is not mere talk. It is transformative. The Apostle John says in 1 John 3:2, Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him. We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Already, today, we are the children of God because of Jesus. But our current condition will not be our lasting condition. Because we know that we're sinners. We know that we mess up. But you and I will be made like Jesus in every way. What a promise. What a blessing. Whispered in Abram's day, and now proclaimed to the world. It is your promise, your blessing, if you believe that God is your shield and your very great reward. Let us pray.
Father, we thank you for giving us what we do not deserve. Abram did not deserve the blessings that you gave him. He didn't deserve to be counted as righteous just by mere faith, Father. But both these blessings and this righteousness you gave to him as a gift. You've done this, Father, because it's possible. Because you've sent your Son into the world. Father. Give us faith so that we may share in those blessings and that righteousness. That we would believe in Jesus Christ. and that in believing in Him, we wouldn't just believe that He merely exists, Father, but that we would believe and have faith and trust in Him, that it is through Him that we can be credited as righteous, seen as just in your eyes, even though we've been terribly unjust and rebellious. That because of Jesus, Father, we believe that we can have a share in those blessings because of what He's done, not what we have done. Give us faith, Father, to believe that this is true, even though we do not see these things. Even as Abram did not see all your promises in his own time. Father, we look forward to the day of Christ's return when these full blessings will be revealed. when we will inherit the earth as the children of Abraham, and when we will be made completely righteous, not because of us, not because of anything that we've done, but because of Jesus Christ. And you will make us like him, Father. We give you praise for this. Set our hope in this, Father, we pray. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen.
Hey there, Pastor Tom here. I hope you enjoyed this sermon I offered to Rockland Community Church. Rockland Community Church is located at 212 Rockland Road in North Scituate, Rhode Island, just around the bend from Scituate Public High School. We invite you to join us this Sunday as we continue our sermon series looking at the Bible's account of Abraham. It's our joy to welcome you into our community.
Intro/Outro Song
Title: River Meditation
Artist: Jason Shaw
Source:http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/RIVER_MEDITATION___________2-58
License:(CC BY 3.0 US)