Andy Davis preaches a verse by verse expository sermon on Genesis 15. The main subject of the sermon is God’s covenant with Abraham.
sermon transcript
Introduction
We are looking today, as Mac read so beautifully, at Genesis 15. And, I’ve already decided we are only looking at part of Genesis 15. It’s a magnificent chapter, full and rich. Every night, God puts an incredible display of His glory out for people of every tribe and language and people and nation to see, in the starlight. All you have to do is get away from the city areas, go into the higher areas where the air is a little cooler, and all of a sudden, all of the mist and the haze is gone, and the starry night is spectacular and dramatic. Some of you can even remember some nights maybe when you were camping out under the stars or up in the mountains, when you saw the Milky Way, perhaps, for the first time. You didn’t know that it existed because you lived, perhaps, in an urban area but God puts that display of His glory and His splendor for all to see. It is the portion it says, in a scriptural text, of every nation. It’s for all of them to look and to see the glory and the majesty of God.
The Varying Glory of Scripture
Now, if you were to study the sky and look at the stars at any length of time, you would start to notice that some stars are brighter and stronger and clearer than others. Some are bigger than others. It says in 1 Corinthians 15:41, “There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in splendor.” And so it is. Some stars are more glorious and show more of God’s radiant power than others. And so, it is also with Scripture. All Scripture shines as starlight in a dark place, revealing the nature and the character and the quality of God. But not all star has equal glory, and neither does every chapter of Scripture equally reveal the glory and the purposes and the plans of God.
The Glorious Topics of Genesis 15
And when we come to Genesis 15, we come to one of the brightest stars in the cosmos of Scripture. In 1995, astronomers using NASA’S Hubble Space Telescope identified what is probably the most luminous star known to man, the celestial mammoth called the Pistol Star. It releases up to 10 million times the power of the sun, 10 million times the power of the sun, is over 100 times bigger than our sun, and it’s big enough in its size to fill the space taken up by the orbit of the earth around the sun. Can you imagine one star that big? The star unleashes as much energy in six seconds as our sun does in one year, six seconds equal to one year of sunlight. The Pistol Star is probably the brightest star in the cosmos, and so rightly did the Apostle Paul say that star differs from star in splendor.
It’s amazing for me to think that God knows each of the stars by name, and because of His mighty power, not one of them is missing. Pistol Star wouldn’t be able to give off any more light if God didn’t give it energy and strength to do so. Oh, how mighty and powerful is the God we serve, how immense and how beyond knowing. But just as star differs from star in splendor, so it is with Scripture. Not all Scripture equally testifies to the glory of God.
Now, it says in 2 Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.” But not every passage of Scripture is equally glorious. And as we come to Genesis 15, I think we come to one of the greatest and most spectacular chapters in all the Bible. Here we see God make the eternal promise to Abram, which Abram is today enjoying. “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” He’s still enjoying that today. Here in this chapter, we see a series of glorious topics, one after the other. Not only the promise of Abram’s eternal reward, which is mine, too, through faith in Christ and yours as well if you are a believer in Jesus today, but also God’s promise of Abram’s glorious offspring. “So shall your offspring be,” that Abram would have numerous and glorious descendants. Also, Abram’s faith in the promise of God. He believed the promise and it was credited to him as righteousness. We see also God’s solemn and serious covenant in the blood of an animal concerning the Promised Land. We see God’s remarkable seven-fold promise concerning the future of his descendants, and God’s somber warning concerning the sin of the Amorites, that it has not reached its full measure. All of these serious and weighty topics we see in Genesis 15.
The Significance of Genesis 15
We see also some of the significance of Genesis 15. It is the first time here in Genesis 15, the first time it’s ever said, “The word of the Lord came.” Now, you think about how significant that phrase is and the concept, that the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. It’s the first time it was ever said in the Scripture, “the word of the Lord came.” It’s the first vision ever recorded in Scripture. It’s the first time it is ever said, “Do not be afraid.” Over 170 more times it will be said. How many times do the angels come and the first thing they say? It’s always the same. “Do not be afraid.” But this is the first time that God speaks this comforting, encouraging word, “Do not be afraid.” It’s the first time that God is ever called a shield. It’s the first time that the double name of God, Adonai Jehovah, or sovereign Lord or The Lord God, is used.
It’s the first time we find these words “believe” and “credited” or “reckoned” and “righteousness,” these weighty theological ideas, the first time here in Genesis 15, the first time we get the mention of our eternal reward. Most of all, we find in this chapter, or the apostle Paul finds for us, the very way that each one of us sinners has hope to stand before a holy God blameless and unafraid. Where it says in Verse 6, “Abram believed the Lord, and He credited it to him as righteousness.” Can I speak directly to you as an individual? Each of you, I hope, knows you are a sinner, that you have broken the laws of God, and that you have no hope of standing before a thrice holy God apart from His work. But if in the end, you are to stand blameless, unafraid, righteous in the sight of God, He whose eyes are too pure to look on evil, the one whose eyes are like a fiery furnace, if you hope to stand in front of that God, it will be on the basis revealed in this text: a credited righteousness, a righteousness given to you by faith, a righteousness that is not your own, but it’s just given to you by faith.
I can say directly, the righteousness that Jesus Christ won for you by a holy and blameless life and by His perfect sacrifice on the cross, that is your only hope. You have no other hope except that you can believe the Lord and it will be credited to you as righteousness. All of that is in Genesis 15. Can we do all of that in two hours? Probably not. Just joking. I know you’re a little startled. No, we’re not preaching for two hours. There’s no way we could even do it in two weeks, but we can touch on some of these ideas and I hope to whet your appetite for all the glory there is in this chapter.
Abram refused the riches of this world, but God gave him something far more valuable in Genesis 15. He gave him words. That’s all. Words. When all is said and done, Genesis 15 is about a bunch of words that God speaks to a man. That’s all. Not much happens in this chapter, except that words are spoken. But it’s not just any words, it’s the words of promise from God. And believing those words made an eternal difference in the life of Abram, and so it is also with us. You know something, if words mean nothing, our faith is worthless and you’re still in your sins. If God treated words the way we treat words, your faith is worthless and you’re still in your sins. But God doesn’t. These are not idle words for you. They are in fact your very life because God is faithful to His word, because He is faithful to His promises, we have an eternal security. All that’s just by way of introduction. How are we going to look at this chapter?
Well, I break it up into five portions, the message is over the next two weeks, this week and next week. First, in Verse 1, God’s promise of present protection and eternal reward in Verse 1. Second, in Verses 2 through 6, we see God’s promise in the stars, Abram’s glorious offspring. Third, we see Abram’s justification by faith alone in Verse 6. Fourth, we see, and we will not cover it this week, but we see God’s covenant with Abram in blood, Verses 7 through 21. And fifth, next time God willing, we’re going to talk about why God made this dramatic covenant and what it signifies to us. So, let’s begin at Verse 1, God’s promise of present protection and eternal reward.
God’s Promise of Present Protection and Eternal Reward
Context and Abram’s Defeat of Kedorlaomer
In Verse 1, it says, “After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: ‘Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.’” Now, let’s not forget the context. It begins in Verse 1 with the phrase, “After this.” After what? Well, after the great events of Chapter 14. Genesis 14 is strongly linked to Genesis 15. What happened in Genesis 14? Well, you remember that Abram and 318 of his choice soldiers, some night raiders, went out and took on Kedorlaomer, that regional tyrant, and the kings with him, and defeated them and rescued Lot, brought him back, he and all his possessions. Sometimes I think these chapter divisions hinder rather than help our understanding of Scripture.
So, it was immediately after the interaction and the encounter with the king of Sodom, in which Abram swore that he would take no possessions or no booty, no loot from the plunder. He swore an oath, and we’ll talk about that in a moment, that he would take nothing from the king of Sodom. Right after that, God speaks and says, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your very great reward.” What a beautiful connection, the context is.
“The Word of the Lord Came”
Now, it says, “The word of the Lord came to Abram.” Now, that means that Abram was a prophet. When the word of the Lord comes directly from God to an individual and they hear it and they can tell you what God said, they can say, “Thus says the Lord,” this is the work of a prophet. And so, Abram was a prophet, the word of the Lord came to him. God spoke directly to Abram. This is the foundation of the Scripture. If this cannot happen, we have no Bible. But it can happen. God, the eternal God, the Creator of the ends of the earth, he can speak to an individual human being. God can speak. The word of the Lord came to Abram. This is the foundation of our faith. Now, we’re going to see this phrase again and again in Scripture, the word of the Lord came also to Samuel and to David and to Nathan and Solomon, to Elijah and Isaiah and Jehu. The “word of the Lord” comes to each one of these prophets, 24 times it is said, “the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah.” Fifty times it is said, “the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel.” The word of the Lord came to Jonah, the reluctant prophet, and to Haggai, to Zechariah, and to all of the prophets. The “word of the Lord” came here to Abram.
The foundation of my faith is this, Isaiah 1:2, “Hear, O heavens! Listen, O earth! For the Lord has spoken.” If this is just the word of man, we’re wasting our time. But if this is in fact the word of the Lord, I want to hear it. And notice that the word of the Lord came in a vision. The word of the Lord came in a vision. He spoke to Abram in a vision. Now, Isaiah later would see God in a vision. And not just one vision, but a series of visions. It says in Isaiah 1:1, “The vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah son of Amoz saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.” And so, the Lord sometimes comes to prophets in a vision, some kind of a spiritual communication, something they can see in their mind’s eye. Ezekiel saw dramatic visions of the glory of God, and he traveled distances within himself, I guess, in visions given by God. It says in Ezekiel 1:1, “In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month on the fifth day, while I was among the exiles by the Kebar River, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.” What an incredible thing, the visions that God gave to Ezekiel there.
Later on, in Ezekiel 11:24, it says, “The Spirit lifted me up and brought me to the exiles in Babylonia in the vision given by the Spirit of God. Then the vision I had seen went up from me. . .” So, he’s traveling somehow mysteriously in a vision. So, also, John in the apocalypse saw visions of heaven. And so it is, we have God speaking to Abram somehow in a vision. Now, what was the word that the Lord spoke to Abram? Well, understand again the context. After the defeat of Kedorlaomer, after the military conquest of the kings in Genesis 14, there were two issues on Abram’s mind. First of all, Abram’s need for protection. And, second of all, Abram’s desire for reward. Let’s look at the first one, Abram’s need for protection.
Abram’s Need for Protection
Now, Kedorlaomer was an awesomely powerful king from hundreds of miles away in Babylonia. He had been ruling over that area, and he came with his allies and defeated the Rephaites and the Zuzites and the Emites and the Horites and the Amalekites. And then he defeated a powerful coalition of five kings. It seemed nothing could stop this man, Kedorlaomer, a minor tyrant. That is, until he took one person too many. He took Lot. And Abram saddled up 318 night raiders and they went and attacked Kedorlaomer and crushed him, destroyed him and defeated him. But here’s the problem. After doing that, Abram could very well be afraid. He’s now made some very powerful enemies. He doesn’t have a very big force. Three hundred eighteen men is pretty small. And so, he could be wondering, “Gee, what have I done? What have I done? What’s my life going to be like? Are all these surrounding people going to be afraid of me? Are they going to come after me? Am I safe?” And so, God comes to him in a vision and speaks right to that fear.
“Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield.” And when we think of a shield, we think of something powerful and strong that a soldier would carry out onto the battlefield and with it, he can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the enemy, or he can block the attack or the strike, the blow of a sword. It can save his life. And so, that’s one sense of the word shield, that God stands between Abram and his enemies. Nothing is going to hurt you. I’m going to protect you. Don’t be afraid. The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous run to it and are kept safe. We are such fearful beings, aren’t we? Do you have anything you are afraid of this morning? Do you have anything outside of you that you wonder if it’s going to come and attack you and harm you? “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield. I stand between you and what can do you eternal damage.” He is the Good Shepherd who goes out and meets the wolf and is willing to lay down His life, less the sheep be harmed or damaged in any way. He is your shield.
But the word shield can also mean something else. In the ancient Near East, it can mean a benefactor king. And the way it would work is a powerful king like Kedorlaomer would come and take over an area and all the minor kings will be under his authority. And the major king would say, “Look, I’m going to protect you and provide for you. I’m going to be your benefactor.” Well, if he’s a good king, you’re in good shape, you never need to be afraid again, you have it made. And so it is. I am your benefactor king, Abram. I stand over you and I provide for you. I keep you safe from all your foes, and I will bless everything that you do. And so that’s Abram’s need for protection.
Abram’s Desire for Reward
We also have Abram’s need or desire for a reward. Abram had refused to share in the plunder. This is pretty much unheard of. When you saddle up and go out to win a military conquest, there is an old saying, to the victor goes, what? The spoils. You get the plunder. That’s what you get. That’s your pay. But Abram had made a solemn vow. In Genesis 14, you can just look back a few verses, in Verses 22 and 23, Abram said to the king of Sodom, “I have raised my hand to the Lord, to God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth,” that’s an oath, I “have taken an oath,” Verse 23, “that I will accept nothing belonging to you, not even a thread or the thong of a sandal, so that you will never be able to say, ‘I made Abram rich.’” I don’t want anything from you, King of Sodom. I don’t want anything; I want nothing earthly from you.
Now God is strongly motivated to come and make a promise to Abram. In Verse 1, he says, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” Now, other translations will turn it around and say, “Your reward will be very great.” If you have the NAS open on your lap or the ESV, you’re going to see that kind of translation. But I think the NIV and the KJV, King James Version, both have it right. “I am your very great reward.” It’s also theologically accurate, isn’t it? Isn’t that what we get? Don’t we get God after all of this? What higher or better reward could there be? Psalm 73:25 says, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.” Is that not Abram? I don’t want anything on earth. I’m an alien and a stranger here just moving through. Naked, I came into the world and naked, I will leave it. I can’t bring any of these things with me. And all of them are under an earthly curse, all of them are going to get rolled up and thrown away like an old garment when Jesus remakes the heavens and the earth. Amen and amen.
And so, there’s nothing here on earth I really want. It says in Hebrews 11:13-16, “All these people” including Abraham, “were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they’re looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country−a heavenly one.” So, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them. It’s the city of the living God, where God will be with His people and they will see him with unveiled face. Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your very great reward. Do you realize that you need to yearn for a reward if you want to be pleasing to God? Oh Lord, I don’t want anything for my life of service to you, I really don’t want anything just that you would get all that you need. You know, that sounds so pious, doesn’t it? As though God were the needy one and we are fine, we have all of our needs. Don’t come to God that way. Because it says in Hebrews 11:6, “Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”
So, within Verse 6, you have the reward, don’t you? What is the reward? Him, because you’re earnestly seeking Him your whole life. And what do you get after a life of earnestly seeking God, what do you get? You get Him, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your very great reward.” Steve Green and his beautiful song, “God and God Alone” put it this way,
“God and God alone will be the joy of our eternal home. He will be our one desire, our hearts will never tire, of God and God alone.”
And earlier you sang this, didn’t you? In “Be Thou My Vision,” I took the time to write it down while I was singing it. Didn’t sing the fourth verse, sorry, but I wanted to take the time and write it down. The third verse of “Be Thou My Vision:”
“Riches I heed not, nor vain, empty praise. Thou mine inheritance, now and always. Thou and thou only first in my heart. High king of heaven, my treasure thou art.”
That’s what God is saying to him here, “I’m your reward, Abram,” and there’s nothing the king of Sodom can offer that compares with that, amen? And so, that is the reward that he gets, God Himself.
God’s Promise in the Stars and Abram’s Glorious Offspring
Secondly, God’s promise in the stars. Pagan astrologers, from time immemorial, have sought to look up at the celestial, the skies, the starry host, and to discern the future. Millions of Americans read their horoscopes everyday thinking that the future can be predicted in the stars. Please don’t tell me you do, okay? I don’t want to know what your sign is, I don’t really care because there is no information like that up in the stars, nothing. But it’s interesting to me. And, by the way, the center of it all was Babylonia, those Babylonians, they could look at the Chaldeans, they could look at the stars, and they had whole elaborate systems of interpretation of the future based on the starry alignments. And it was out of that, that Abram came. And yet, it’s interesting when Abram wants to know about the future, what does God do but bring him out and say, “Let’s look up at the stars.” Isn’t that an interesting thing, but it’s different, okay? The stars don’t represent Pagan deities that we are going to bow down and worship. Oh no, the stars were created by the God who’s about to interpret them to Abram.
So, He said let’s come out and look at the stars and He makes him a promise. Look at Verses 2-6, it says, “But Abram said, ‘Oh, Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus.’ And Abram said, ‘You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.’ Then the word of the Lord came to him: ‘This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.’ He took him outside and said, ‘Look up at the heavens and count the stars−if indeed you can count them.’” And then He said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Verse 6, “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.”
Abram Turns His Sorrow Over to God
Now, first we see Abram turning his sorrow and his grief over to the Lord. He said, “Okay, Lord, you are my shield and my very great reward but what can you give me? Because I’ve got a problem. Okay, you told me that my descendants, through my offspring, all peoples on earth will be blessed. Well, right now, I don’t have any offspring. Okay, I’ve got Eliezer of Damascus, and he’s a good guy. But how far is Eliezer going to take me? Did you really have Eliezer in mind when you made that great promise to me? Is that what’s going on here, he’s going to be kind of my adopted son, and then he’s going to be fruitful and multiply? Is that what’s going to happen here?” And so, God in a progressive revelation, clarifies very strongly what is going to happen.
And I think this is a good example for us, isn’t it? There is a grief in Abram’s heart, there is a grief in Sarai’s heart, it’s the grief of childlessness. You know, Americans don’t look on that as a major tragedy, but we should because children are a blessing. And you know, there are perhaps some in our midst that are yearning for children and they can’t have them, there is some kind of physical problem, and that is the way it was for Abram and Sarai. It was a great grief to them, a great sorrow. And what does Abram do here, but bring that grief back to the sovereign God and say, “You have chosen not to give us any children,” and he’s not being disrespectful, he’s being theological. “You are the creator of the ends of the Earth. You can easily open my wife’s womb and give us a child, but you’ve chosen not to do it.” I think this is right and respectful, bring your grief to God.
Can I just stop for a moment and give you a word of application? If you’re facing some kind of grief today, it may be a chronic illness, or the chronic illness of a loved one, it may be a broken relationship, it may be joblessness, it may be some other bitter struggle that you are going through in your life, bring it back to the sovereign God. Bring it to Him in prayer as Abram does here. Ask Him for help, ask Him for insight. And that’s exactly what he does. “What can you give me since I have no heir?” And then God makes a very plain promise to him in Verse 4. He states it directly.
God’s Promise Stated
The word of the Lord came to him, “This man, Eliezer, will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.” What could be plainer than that, you are not going to have an adopted son is the first link in this chain of faith and promise, I’m going to give you your own son, a child coming from your own body, even at your old age, Abram. I can do this. And so, he unfolds in a progressive revelation, little by little, the plan of God. This was God’s original intent in the first promise in Genesis 12, in which he said, “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.” In Verse 7 of Chapter 12, “The Lord appeared to Abram and said, ‘to your offspring, I will give this land.’”
Well, this is what he had in mind. You are going to have a physical child, a son, coming from your own body. But that’s not enough for God, is it? He doesn’t just say it. He says, “Come, let’s go for a walk. Let’s go for a walk.” Now, I imagine that he was just reading between the lines, he was in his tent, it was night. It was late at night. Maybe Sarai was sleeping, I don’t know. And Abram’s brain was filled with glorious light, a vision from God as God was speaking to him. And he said, “Get up and come out of the tent.” That’s a beautiful thing when you think about it.
God’s Promise Displayed and Restated
This is one of the most significant moments in the entire Bible. Now, how much we miss by not seeing with spiritual eyes. If you lived back then, you would have said the defeat of Kedorlaomer, the big splashy events of Genesis 14, now, that’s bigtime stuff and if there had been a Time magazine or New York Times back then, they would have covered the Kedorlaomer thing. Alright, thank God there weren’t. But anyway, it would have covered those events, but Genesis 15, a man out looking up at the stars, hearing voices in his mind, no coverage on that one, no photographer, and yet, which of the two is more significant for Abraham and for all who have followed after the quietness of God, you see. God’s ways are not our ways. Yes, He cares about the big splashy events, Kedorlaomer and the defeat, World War II, all these big events. Yes, he cares and he uses them. But here it is, one man and his God, and God speaking to him in his heart. He took him outside and said, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars−if indeed you can count them.” And then He said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Note the intense personal love relationship between Abram and God, He took him outside. What did that look like?
What did that look like? I think it’s a lot like Enoch. You know how it says of Enoch in Genesis 5:24, “Enoch walked with God; and then he was no more, for God took him away.” You know, there’s just that intimacy. Are you walking with God today? Are you walking with him today? Is he your friend, is he the lover of your soul? When he leads and says, “Come out here, I want to show you something.” Do you follow or do you miss it? Abram got up and followed, he got out of the tent. And so, it was said of him in James 2:23, “Abraham was called God’s friend.” There’s an intimacy in this relationship, and so he goes out and he looks at the night sky, and what did Abram see as he looked up in the sky? Well, he saw what he had seen countless times before, but it would never look the same again after that night. The stars would never just be stars anymore, from now on, the stars would be promise, the stars would be prophecy, not the way the Babylonians, the Chaldeans saw it. But in a whole different way, because God had assigned meaning to the quantity and the glory of the stars.
Now, if you went out and looked at the stars, if you got away from the city and got up to a mountain, maybe in the western part of the state, how many stars do you think you could count? Well, I know it depends on your character, doesn’t it? Some of you have a long attention span and some of you a little bit shorter. Alright. So, you’d get to about 100 and say, “Gee, that was fun. What are we doing next?” Okay, but others would stick with it, and they tell me I’ve never done it, being of the shorter attention span in this matter. Okay, but they say you can count several thousand stars with the unaided eye. Now, if you were looking and you could see the Milky Way, you would have a sense that there was more here than met the eye, right?
I mean, yeah, I can see these distinct points of light, but there’s more here, isn’t there? And, suppose your friend Galileo was standing next to you and said, “Here, try this,” and hands you, his telescope. Oh boy, all of a sudden, a lot more stars, and you count and count and count and count, and you get up to the tens of thousands now. But then there’s this same phenomenon, again, there are these hazy areas and you just can’t make it out, and so it goes, and so it goes, Mount Palomar, Hubble Space and we keep seeing the same thing. It never ends. We have no idea how many stars there are. You know there is a lot, but you feel there might be more, and so it is also with the promises of God, “I don’t have any idea, God, what are you going to do in my life but I know it’s going to be glorious.” And so, God used the stars to display His promise to Abram, “So shall your offspring be.”
Abram’s Justification by Faith Alone
Central Question of Our Existence: How Can I be Saved?
And now, in Verse 6, we come to the pivotal moment of his eternal existence. I’m talking about Abram. It says, “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” The central question of your existence is this. You may not know it is, but it is, how can a wicked sinner stand righteous before a holy God? That’s it. Now, there are different ways to phrase it, but bottom line is, how can a sinner stand righteous before God on Judgment Day? Does that question matter to you, does it make a difference to you how a sinner can stand holy and righteous before God on Judgment Day; if you’re a Christian, you better believe it matters to you.
Simple Statement in Genesis Text . . . Easily Missed
And the answer is in this one verse, a simple statement in Genesis, and frankly, I have to tell you, I’m not so great a Bible scholar that if Paul hadn’t given me a commentary on this, I would not have noticed how significant it was, I would have read right over it. “Abraham believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.”
Justification by Faith
This is the doctrine of justification by faith alone, apart from works of the law. Justification is the doctrine of a perfect righteousness being credited to your account, and in that perfect righteousness, you will stand on Judgment Day and not your own filthy rags. Think if you’re traveling in Europe and you are a college student and you run out of money, you know it’s been known to happen. And let’s say you had a wealthy father, and so you go to the bank in Zurich and you make a call and you say, “Dad I’m just plumb out of money.” “Well, what happened to the $20,000 I wired you last week?” “Well, you know, it’s gone. I need some more.” He is able to wire some more money to your account if he wants to. Alright. And so, he would make a call to his bank and they would credit to your account there in Zurich, another $20,000. And so, it is also, Abraham believed the Lord and it was credited to him as righteousness. Now, where did that righteousness come from? Well, it came from the perfect life of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten son, lived a holy and blameless life. Every moment He did the will of His Father. He never sinned, he turned back every single temptation that came His way, and He could say rightly at the end of His life, not at the end of one hour or at the end of one day, but at the end of His life, “Father, I have brought you glory on Earth by doing everything you told me to do.”
“I always please Him,” He said another place. That righteousness was consummated and made perfect on the cross, when He obeyed his father even to death, death on a cross. That righteousness can be credited to your account. Isn’t that incredible? And He will see you on Judgment Day as perfect and holy and blameless as His own son, or He will send you to hell. Those are the two options, there is no third option. And so, we will stand in Christ’s righteousness alone on judgment day, or we will be spending eternity in hell. And the scripture says, “The smoke of their torment rises forever and ever. There is no rest, day or night, for those who cling to their own righteousness.” This is the doctrine of justification.
Now, if you had been there with Abram watching, what would you have seen Abram do that night? What muscles would he have moved? Answer, none. What works did he do to get this gift of righteousness? None. What sinner’s prayer did he pray? None. How then was it credited to him as righteousness? Inside his mind, he heard the word of God, the promise of God, and he believed it. That was the work. And it is no work. Frankly, I believe that faith is the eyesight of the soul by which we receive from God what He’s wanting to give. Just like the eyeballs can look up at the stars and see distant starlight coming into our eyes, and we see it, and we receive. The eyes, don’t make the stars be there, the eyes don’t make the light be there, they just receive what’s emanating out from what God has created, and so it is with faith.
You don’t make anything be there that God isn’t giving, but when God opens up your blind soul and gives you sight like He did to the man born blind, all of a sudden, “Wow, God is giving me something,” and you receive it. And Abram that night, the eyesight of the soul was opened up, and he saw and believed, he heard and believed. It was credited to him as righteousness. And he stood holy and blameless at that moment.
Paul’s Main Point: Everyone Gets Saved the Same Way
Romans 4, Verses 1-5 says, “What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather, discovered in this matter? If in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about−but not before God. What does the scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. Now, when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation. However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.” It’s a gift of righteousness, folks. It’s our only hope. It’s our only hope. And it saved Abram that night.
Hadn’t Abram Already Displayed Faith?
Now, you may ask, “Didn’t Abram show faith before that night?” Yeah, he did, he did. It took faith for him to get up out of Ur of the Chaldeans and follow, it took faith for him to build altars to the Lord, it took faith for him to call on the name of the Lord. But I think that this was his justifying night, others disagree, but I think it was this night. That he saw by faith the Son of God. I think that’s what happened this night, he saw by faith, the Son of God. Why do I say that? Well, in Galatians 3:16, it says, “The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.” The scripture does not say, unto seeds, meaning many people, but, unto your seed, meaning one person who is Christ.
And so, Jesus stated openly that Abraham’s joy was focused on the person of Christ, whom he saw by faith, I believe, that starry night, it says in John 8:56, “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.” I think that happened, that starry night, God spoke to Abraham in a vision and showed him Christ, and he believed, and he was justified. Now, next week, God willing, we’ll talk about the covenant and blood. I want to apply, however, just these first six verses.
Application
First application, trust in Christ alone to make you righteous, give up on any works, give up in trusting your good things, they will get you nowhere. If you are sitting here today thinking, “I’m basically a good person and in that basic goodness, I will stand before God,” you are lost. But if, on the other hand, you say it is because of Christ and what He did on the cross, that I have any hope of salvation, you have eternal life.
Second, feed your faith in God’s promises. Read the promise. You know what? You have better promises than Abram got that night. He got, “So shall your offspring be.” “Look up at the heavens and count the stars, so shall. . .” We have got “all your sins will be forgiven.” “The Holy Spirit will come live within you.” “I will take you to be with me so that you also may be where I am.” “My father will come and eat and dine with you.” We’ve got John 5:24, which says, “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.” We’ve got John 11:25 and 26, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” We have so many good promises from God, feed your faith on those good promises.
Third, marvel at God’s amazing track record. He is faithful. When Israel took the Promised Land, it was said that they were as numerous as the stars in the sky. God fulfilled his promise to Abram that night, didn’t He? And He is going to fulfill every one of His very great and precious promises to you in Christ.
Fourth, focus on God and God alone as your eternal reward, give up on earthly idols, they don’t mean a thing, they are not going to bring you any eternal joy. Focus on God, and on God alone.
And finally, fifth, bring your griefs to Him in prayer, as we’ve already talked about. It may not be childlessness, it may be something else, bring it to Him in prayer, say, “Sovereign Lord, you have chosen that I not get a job yet,” or, “You have chosen that I have this illness that just won’t go away,” or, “You have chosen that I have this relational difficulty in my family, help me with this.”
sermon transcript
Introduction
We are looking today, as Mac read so beautifully, at Genesis 15. And, I’ve already decided we are only looking at part of Genesis 15. It’s a magnificent chapter, full and rich. Every night, God puts an incredible display of His glory out for people of every tribe and language and people and nation to see, in the starlight. All you have to do is get away from the city areas, go into the higher areas where the air is a little cooler, and all of a sudden, all of the mist and the haze is gone, and the starry night is spectacular and dramatic. Some of you can even remember some nights maybe when you were camping out under the stars or up in the mountains, when you saw the Milky Way, perhaps, for the first time. You didn’t know that it existed because you lived, perhaps, in an urban area but God puts that display of His glory and His splendor for all to see. It is the portion it says, in a scriptural text, of every nation. It’s for all of them to look and to see the glory and the majesty of God.
The Varying Glory of Scripture
Now, if you were to study the sky and look at the stars at any length of time, you would start to notice that some stars are brighter and stronger and clearer than others. Some are bigger than others. It says in 1 Corinthians 15:41, “There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in splendor.” And so it is. Some stars are more glorious and show more of God’s radiant power than others. And so, it is also with Scripture. All Scripture shines as starlight in a dark place, revealing the nature and the character and the quality of God. But not all star has equal glory, and neither does every chapter of Scripture equally reveal the glory and the purposes and the plans of God.
The Glorious Topics of Genesis 15
And when we come to Genesis 15, we come to one of the brightest stars in the cosmos of Scripture. In 1995, astronomers using NASA’S Hubble Space Telescope identified what is probably the most luminous star known to man, the celestial mammoth called the Pistol Star. It releases up to 10 million times the power of the sun, 10 million times the power of the sun, is over 100 times bigger than our sun, and it’s big enough in its size to fill the space taken up by the orbit of the earth around the sun. Can you imagine one star that big? The star unleashes as much energy in six seconds as our sun does in one year, six seconds equal to one year of sunlight. The Pistol Star is probably the brightest star in the cosmos, and so rightly did the Apostle Paul say that star differs from star in splendor.
It’s amazing for me to think that God knows each of the stars by name, and because of His mighty power, not one of them is missing. Pistol Star wouldn’t be able to give off any more light if God didn’t give it energy and strength to do so. Oh, how mighty and powerful is the God we serve, how immense and how beyond knowing. But just as star differs from star in splendor, so it is with Scripture. Not all Scripture equally testifies to the glory of God.
Now, it says in 2 Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.” But not every passage of Scripture is equally glorious. And as we come to Genesis 15, I think we come to one of the greatest and most spectacular chapters in all the Bible. Here we see God make the eternal promise to Abram, which Abram is today enjoying. “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” He’s still enjoying that today. Here in this chapter, we see a series of glorious topics, one after the other. Not only the promise of Abram’s eternal reward, which is mine, too, through faith in Christ and yours as well if you are a believer in Jesus today, but also God’s promise of Abram’s glorious offspring. “So shall your offspring be,” that Abram would have numerous and glorious descendants. Also, Abram’s faith in the promise of God. He believed the promise and it was credited to him as righteousness. We see also God’s solemn and serious covenant in the blood of an animal concerning the Promised Land. We see God’s remarkable seven-fold promise concerning the future of his descendants, and God’s somber warning concerning the sin of the Amorites, that it has not reached its full measure. All of these serious and weighty topics we see in Genesis 15.
The Significance of Genesis 15
We see also some of the significance of Genesis 15. It is the first time here in Genesis 15, the first time it’s ever said, “The word of the Lord came.” Now, you think about how significant that phrase is and the concept, that the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. It’s the first time it was ever said in the Scripture, “the word of the Lord came.” It’s the first vision ever recorded in Scripture. It’s the first time it is ever said, “Do not be afraid.” Over 170 more times it will be said. How many times do the angels come and the first thing they say? It’s always the same. “Do not be afraid.” But this is the first time that God speaks this comforting, encouraging word, “Do not be afraid.” It’s the first time that God is ever called a shield. It’s the first time that the double name of God, Adonai Jehovah, or sovereign Lord or The Lord God, is used.
It’s the first time we find these words “believe” and “credited” or “reckoned” and “righteousness,” these weighty theological ideas, the first time here in Genesis 15, the first time we get the mention of our eternal reward. Most of all, we find in this chapter, or the apostle Paul finds for us, the very way that each one of us sinners has hope to stand before a holy God blameless and unafraid. Where it says in Verse 6, “Abram believed the Lord, and He credited it to him as righteousness.” Can I speak directly to you as an individual? Each of you, I hope, knows you are a sinner, that you have broken the laws of God, and that you have no hope of standing before a thrice holy God apart from His work. But if in the end, you are to stand blameless, unafraid, righteous in the sight of God, He whose eyes are too pure to look on evil, the one whose eyes are like a fiery furnace, if you hope to stand in front of that God, it will be on the basis revealed in this text: a credited righteousness, a righteousness given to you by faith, a righteousness that is not your own, but it’s just given to you by faith.
I can say directly, the righteousness that Jesus Christ won for you by a holy and blameless life and by His perfect sacrifice on the cross, that is your only hope. You have no other hope except that you can believe the Lord and it will be credited to you as righteousness. All of that is in Genesis 15. Can we do all of that in two hours? Probably not. Just joking. I know you’re a little startled. No, we’re not preaching for two hours. There’s no way we could even do it in two weeks, but we can touch on some of these ideas and I hope to whet your appetite for all the glory there is in this chapter.
Abram refused the riches of this world, but God gave him something far more valuable in Genesis 15. He gave him words. That’s all. Words. When all is said and done, Genesis 15 is about a bunch of words that God speaks to a man. That’s all. Not much happens in this chapter, except that words are spoken. But it’s not just any words, it’s the words of promise from God. And believing those words made an eternal difference in the life of Abram, and so it is also with us. You know something, if words mean nothing, our faith is worthless and you’re still in your sins. If God treated words the way we treat words, your faith is worthless and you’re still in your sins. But God doesn’t. These are not idle words for you. They are in fact your very life because God is faithful to His word, because He is faithful to His promises, we have an eternal security. All that’s just by way of introduction. How are we going to look at this chapter?
Well, I break it up into five portions, the message is over the next two weeks, this week and next week. First, in Verse 1, God’s promise of present protection and eternal reward in Verse 1. Second, in Verses 2 through 6, we see God’s promise in the stars, Abram’s glorious offspring. Third, we see Abram’s justification by faith alone in Verse 6. Fourth, we see, and we will not cover it this week, but we see God’s covenant with Abram in blood, Verses 7 through 21. And fifth, next time God willing, we’re going to talk about why God made this dramatic covenant and what it signifies to us. So, let’s begin at Verse 1, God’s promise of present protection and eternal reward.
God’s Promise of Present Protection and Eternal Reward
Context and Abram’s Defeat of Kedorlaomer
In Verse 1, it says, “After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: ‘Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.’” Now, let’s not forget the context. It begins in Verse 1 with the phrase, “After this.” After what? Well, after the great events of Chapter 14. Genesis 14 is strongly linked to Genesis 15. What happened in Genesis 14? Well, you remember that Abram and 318 of his choice soldiers, some night raiders, went out and took on Kedorlaomer, that regional tyrant, and the kings with him, and defeated them and rescued Lot, brought him back, he and all his possessions. Sometimes I think these chapter divisions hinder rather than help our understanding of Scripture.
So, it was immediately after the interaction and the encounter with the king of Sodom, in which Abram swore that he would take no possessions or no booty, no loot from the plunder. He swore an oath, and we’ll talk about that in a moment, that he would take nothing from the king of Sodom. Right after that, God speaks and says, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your very great reward.” What a beautiful connection, the context is.
“The Word of the Lord Came”
Now, it says, “The word of the Lord came to Abram.” Now, that means that Abram was a prophet. When the word of the Lord comes directly from God to an individual and they hear it and they can tell you what God said, they can say, “Thus says the Lord,” this is the work of a prophet. And so, Abram was a prophet, the word of the Lord came to him. God spoke directly to Abram. This is the foundation of the Scripture. If this cannot happen, we have no Bible. But it can happen. God, the eternal God, the Creator of the ends of the earth, he can speak to an individual human being. God can speak. The word of the Lord came to Abram. This is the foundation of our faith. Now, we’re going to see this phrase again and again in Scripture, the word of the Lord came also to Samuel and to David and to Nathan and Solomon, to Elijah and Isaiah and Jehu. The “word of the Lord” comes to each one of these prophets, 24 times it is said, “the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah.” Fifty times it is said, “the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel.” The word of the Lord came to Jonah, the reluctant prophet, and to Haggai, to Zechariah, and to all of the prophets. The “word of the Lord” came here to Abram.
The foundation of my faith is this, Isaiah 1:2, “Hear, O heavens! Listen, O earth! For the Lord has spoken.” If this is just the word of man, we’re wasting our time. But if this is in fact the word of the Lord, I want to hear it. And notice that the word of the Lord came in a vision. The word of the Lord came in a vision. He spoke to Abram in a vision. Now, Isaiah later would see God in a vision. And not just one vision, but a series of visions. It says in Isaiah 1:1, “The vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah son of Amoz saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.” And so, the Lord sometimes comes to prophets in a vision, some kind of a spiritual communication, something they can see in their mind’s eye. Ezekiel saw dramatic visions of the glory of God, and he traveled distances within himself, I guess, in visions given by God. It says in Ezekiel 1:1, “In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month on the fifth day, while I was among the exiles by the Kebar River, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.” What an incredible thing, the visions that God gave to Ezekiel there.
Later on, in Ezekiel 11:24, it says, “The Spirit lifted me up and brought me to the exiles in Babylonia in the vision given by the Spirit of God. Then the vision I had seen went up from me. . .” So, he’s traveling somehow mysteriously in a vision. So, also, John in the apocalypse saw visions of heaven. And so it is, we have God speaking to Abram somehow in a vision. Now, what was the word that the Lord spoke to Abram? Well, understand again the context. After the defeat of Kedorlaomer, after the military conquest of the kings in Genesis 14, there were two issues on Abram’s mind. First of all, Abram’s need for protection. And, second of all, Abram’s desire for reward. Let’s look at the first one, Abram’s need for protection.
Abram’s Need for Protection
Now, Kedorlaomer was an awesomely powerful king from hundreds of miles away in Babylonia. He had been ruling over that area, and he came with his allies and defeated the Rephaites and the Zuzites and the Emites and the Horites and the Amalekites. And then he defeated a powerful coalition of five kings. It seemed nothing could stop this man, Kedorlaomer, a minor tyrant. That is, until he took one person too many. He took Lot. And Abram saddled up 318 night raiders and they went and attacked Kedorlaomer and crushed him, destroyed him and defeated him. But here’s the problem. After doing that, Abram could very well be afraid. He’s now made some very powerful enemies. He doesn’t have a very big force. Three hundred eighteen men is pretty small. And so, he could be wondering, “Gee, what have I done? What have I done? What’s my life going to be like? Are all these surrounding people going to be afraid of me? Are they going to come after me? Am I safe?” And so, God comes to him in a vision and speaks right to that fear.
“Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield.” And when we think of a shield, we think of something powerful and strong that a soldier would carry out onto the battlefield and with it, he can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the enemy, or he can block the attack or the strike, the blow of a sword. It can save his life. And so, that’s one sense of the word shield, that God stands between Abram and his enemies. Nothing is going to hurt you. I’m going to protect you. Don’t be afraid. The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous run to it and are kept safe. We are such fearful beings, aren’t we? Do you have anything you are afraid of this morning? Do you have anything outside of you that you wonder if it’s going to come and attack you and harm you? “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield. I stand between you and what can do you eternal damage.” He is the Good Shepherd who goes out and meets the wolf and is willing to lay down His life, less the sheep be harmed or damaged in any way. He is your shield.
But the word shield can also mean something else. In the ancient Near East, it can mean a benefactor king. And the way it would work is a powerful king like Kedorlaomer would come and take over an area and all the minor kings will be under his authority. And the major king would say, “Look, I’m going to protect you and provide for you. I’m going to be your benefactor.” Well, if he’s a good king, you’re in good shape, you never need to be afraid again, you have it made. And so it is. I am your benefactor king, Abram. I stand over you and I provide for you. I keep you safe from all your foes, and I will bless everything that you do. And so that’s Abram’s need for protection.
Abram’s Desire for Reward
We also have Abram’s need or desire for a reward. Abram had refused to share in the plunder. This is pretty much unheard of. When you saddle up and go out to win a military conquest, there is an old saying, to the victor goes, what? The spoils. You get the plunder. That’s what you get. That’s your pay. But Abram had made a solemn vow. In Genesis 14, you can just look back a few verses, in Verses 22 and 23, Abram said to the king of Sodom, “I have raised my hand to the Lord, to God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth,” that’s an oath, I “have taken an oath,” Verse 23, “that I will accept nothing belonging to you, not even a thread or the thong of a sandal, so that you will never be able to say, ‘I made Abram rich.’” I don’t want anything from you, King of Sodom. I don’t want anything; I want nothing earthly from you.
Now God is strongly motivated to come and make a promise to Abram. In Verse 1, he says, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” Now, other translations will turn it around and say, “Your reward will be very great.” If you have the NAS open on your lap or the ESV, you’re going to see that kind of translation. But I think the NIV and the KJV, King James Version, both have it right. “I am your very great reward.” It’s also theologically accurate, isn’t it? Isn’t that what we get? Don’t we get God after all of this? What higher or better reward could there be? Psalm 73:25 says, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.” Is that not Abram? I don’t want anything on earth. I’m an alien and a stranger here just moving through. Naked, I came into the world and naked, I will leave it. I can’t bring any of these things with me. And all of them are under an earthly curse, all of them are going to get rolled up and thrown away like an old garment when Jesus remakes the heavens and the earth. Amen and amen.
And so, there’s nothing here on earth I really want. It says in Hebrews 11:13-16, “All these people” including Abraham, “were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they’re looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country−a heavenly one.” So, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them. It’s the city of the living God, where God will be with His people and they will see him with unveiled face. Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your very great reward. Do you realize that you need to yearn for a reward if you want to be pleasing to God? Oh Lord, I don’t want anything for my life of service to you, I really don’t want anything just that you would get all that you need. You know, that sounds so pious, doesn’t it? As though God were the needy one and we are fine, we have all of our needs. Don’t come to God that way. Because it says in Hebrews 11:6, “Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”
So, within Verse 6, you have the reward, don’t you? What is the reward? Him, because you’re earnestly seeking Him your whole life. And what do you get after a life of earnestly seeking God, what do you get? You get Him, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your very great reward.” Steve Green and his beautiful song, “God and God Alone” put it this way,
“God and God alone will be the joy of our eternal home. He will be our one desire, our hearts will never tire, of God and God alone.”
And earlier you sang this, didn’t you? In “Be Thou My Vision,” I took the time to write it down while I was singing it. Didn’t sing the fourth verse, sorry, but I wanted to take the time and write it down. The third verse of “Be Thou My Vision:”
“Riches I heed not, nor vain, empty praise. Thou mine inheritance, now and always. Thou and thou only first in my heart. High king of heaven, my treasure thou art.”
That’s what God is saying to him here, “I’m your reward, Abram,” and there’s nothing the king of Sodom can offer that compares with that, amen? And so, that is the reward that he gets, God Himself.
God’s Promise in the Stars and Abram’s Glorious Offspring
Secondly, God’s promise in the stars. Pagan astrologers, from time immemorial, have sought to look up at the celestial, the skies, the starry host, and to discern the future. Millions of Americans read their horoscopes everyday thinking that the future can be predicted in the stars. Please don’t tell me you do, okay? I don’t want to know what your sign is, I don’t really care because there is no information like that up in the stars, nothing. But it’s interesting to me. And, by the way, the center of it all was Babylonia, those Babylonians, they could look at the Chaldeans, they could look at the stars, and they had whole elaborate systems of interpretation of the future based on the starry alignments. And it was out of that, that Abram came. And yet, it’s interesting when Abram wants to know about the future, what does God do but bring him out and say, “Let’s look up at the stars.” Isn’t that an interesting thing, but it’s different, okay? The stars don’t represent Pagan deities that we are going to bow down and worship. Oh no, the stars were created by the God who’s about to interpret them to Abram.
So, He said let’s come out and look at the stars and He makes him a promise. Look at Verses 2-6, it says, “But Abram said, ‘Oh, Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus.’ And Abram said, ‘You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.’ Then the word of the Lord came to him: ‘This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.’ He took him outside and said, ‘Look up at the heavens and count the stars−if indeed you can count them.’” And then He said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Verse 6, “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.”
Abram Turns His Sorrow Over to God
Now, first we see Abram turning his sorrow and his grief over to the Lord. He said, “Okay, Lord, you are my shield and my very great reward but what can you give me? Because I’ve got a problem. Okay, you told me that my descendants, through my offspring, all peoples on earth will be blessed. Well, right now, I don’t have any offspring. Okay, I’ve got Eliezer of Damascus, and he’s a good guy. But how far is Eliezer going to take me? Did you really have Eliezer in mind when you made that great promise to me? Is that what’s going on here, he’s going to be kind of my adopted son, and then he’s going to be fruitful and multiply? Is that what’s going to happen here?” And so, God in a progressive revelation, clarifies very strongly what is going to happen.
And I think this is a good example for us, isn’t it? There is a grief in Abram’s heart, there is a grief in Sarai’s heart, it’s the grief of childlessness. You know, Americans don’t look on that as a major tragedy, but we should because children are a blessing. And you know, there are perhaps some in our midst that are yearning for children and they can’t have them, there is some kind of physical problem, and that is the way it was for Abram and Sarai. It was a great grief to them, a great sorrow. And what does Abram do here, but bring that grief back to the sovereign God and say, “You have chosen not to give us any children,” and he’s not being disrespectful, he’s being theological. “You are the creator of the ends of the Earth. You can easily open my wife’s womb and give us a child, but you’ve chosen not to do it.” I think this is right and respectful, bring your grief to God.
Can I just stop for a moment and give you a word of application? If you’re facing some kind of grief today, it may be a chronic illness, or the chronic illness of a loved one, it may be a broken relationship, it may be joblessness, it may be some other bitter struggle that you are going through in your life, bring it back to the sovereign God. Bring it to Him in prayer as Abram does here. Ask Him for help, ask Him for insight. And that’s exactly what he does. “What can you give me since I have no heir?” And then God makes a very plain promise to him in Verse 4. He states it directly.
God’s Promise Stated
The word of the Lord came to him, “This man, Eliezer, will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.” What could be plainer than that, you are not going to have an adopted son is the first link in this chain of faith and promise, I’m going to give you your own son, a child coming from your own body, even at your old age, Abram. I can do this. And so, he unfolds in a progressive revelation, little by little, the plan of God. This was God’s original intent in the first promise in Genesis 12, in which he said, “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.” In Verse 7 of Chapter 12, “The Lord appeared to Abram and said, ‘to your offspring, I will give this land.’”
Well, this is what he had in mind. You are going to have a physical child, a son, coming from your own body. But that’s not enough for God, is it? He doesn’t just say it. He says, “Come, let’s go for a walk. Let’s go for a walk.” Now, I imagine that he was just reading between the lines, he was in his tent, it was night. It was late at night. Maybe Sarai was sleeping, I don’t know. And Abram’s brain was filled with glorious light, a vision from God as God was speaking to him. And he said, “Get up and come out of the tent.” That’s a beautiful thing when you think about it.
God’s Promise Displayed and Restated
This is one of the most significant moments in the entire Bible. Now, how much we miss by not seeing with spiritual eyes. If you lived back then, you would have said the defeat of Kedorlaomer, the big splashy events of Genesis 14, now, that’s bigtime stuff and if there had been a Time magazine or New York Times back then, they would have covered the Kedorlaomer thing. Alright, thank God there weren’t. But anyway, it would have covered those events, but Genesis 15, a man out looking up at the stars, hearing voices in his mind, no coverage on that one, no photographer, and yet, which of the two is more significant for Abraham and for all who have followed after the quietness of God, you see. God’s ways are not our ways. Yes, He cares about the big splashy events, Kedorlaomer and the defeat, World War II, all these big events. Yes, he cares and he uses them. But here it is, one man and his God, and God speaking to him in his heart. He took him outside and said, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars−if indeed you can count them.” And then He said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Note the intense personal love relationship between Abram and God, He took him outside. What did that look like?
What did that look like? I think it’s a lot like Enoch. You know how it says of Enoch in Genesis 5:24, “Enoch walked with God; and then he was no more, for God took him away.” You know, there’s just that intimacy. Are you walking with God today? Are you walking with him today? Is he your friend, is he the lover of your soul? When he leads and says, “Come out here, I want to show you something.” Do you follow or do you miss it? Abram got up and followed, he got out of the tent. And so, it was said of him in James 2:23, “Abraham was called God’s friend.” There’s an intimacy in this relationship, and so he goes out and he looks at the night sky, and what did Abram see as he looked up in the sky? Well, he saw what he had seen countless times before, but it would never look the same again after that night. The stars would never just be stars anymore, from now on, the stars would be promise, the stars would be prophecy, not the way the Babylonians, the Chaldeans saw it. But in a whole different way, because God had assigned meaning to the quantity and the glory of the stars.
Now, if you went out and looked at the stars, if you got away from the city and got up to a mountain, maybe in the western part of the state, how many stars do you think you could count? Well, I know it depends on your character, doesn’t it? Some of you have a long attention span and some of you a little bit shorter. Alright. So, you’d get to about 100 and say, “Gee, that was fun. What are we doing next?” Okay, but others would stick with it, and they tell me I’ve never done it, being of the shorter attention span in this matter. Okay, but they say you can count several thousand stars with the unaided eye. Now, if you were looking and you could see the Milky Way, you would have a sense that there was more here than met the eye, right?
I mean, yeah, I can see these distinct points of light, but there’s more here, isn’t there? And, suppose your friend Galileo was standing next to you and said, “Here, try this,” and hands you, his telescope. Oh boy, all of a sudden, a lot more stars, and you count and count and count and count, and you get up to the tens of thousands now. But then there’s this same phenomenon, again, there are these hazy areas and you just can’t make it out, and so it goes, and so it goes, Mount Palomar, Hubble Space and we keep seeing the same thing. It never ends. We have no idea how many stars there are. You know there is a lot, but you feel there might be more, and so it is also with the promises of God, “I don’t have any idea, God, what are you going to do in my life but I know it’s going to be glorious.” And so, God used the stars to display His promise to Abram, “So shall your offspring be.”
Abram’s Justification by Faith Alone
Central Question of Our Existence: How Can I be Saved?
And now, in Verse 6, we come to the pivotal moment of his eternal existence. I’m talking about Abram. It says, “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” The central question of your existence is this. You may not know it is, but it is, how can a wicked sinner stand righteous before a holy God? That’s it. Now, there are different ways to phrase it, but bottom line is, how can a sinner stand righteous before God on Judgment Day? Does that question matter to you, does it make a difference to you how a sinner can stand holy and righteous before God on Judgment Day; if you’re a Christian, you better believe it matters to you.
Simple Statement in Genesis Text . . . Easily Missed
And the answer is in this one verse, a simple statement in Genesis, and frankly, I have to tell you, I’m not so great a Bible scholar that if Paul hadn’t given me a commentary on this, I would not have noticed how significant it was, I would have read right over it. “Abraham believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.”
Justification by Faith
This is the doctrine of justification by faith alone, apart from works of the law. Justification is the doctrine of a perfect righteousness being credited to your account, and in that perfect righteousness, you will stand on Judgment Day and not your own filthy rags. Think if you’re traveling in Europe and you are a college student and you run out of money, you know it’s been known to happen. And let’s say you had a wealthy father, and so you go to the bank in Zurich and you make a call and you say, “Dad I’m just plumb out of money.” “Well, what happened to the $20,000 I wired you last week?” “Well, you know, it’s gone. I need some more.” He is able to wire some more money to your account if he wants to. Alright. And so, he would make a call to his bank and they would credit to your account there in Zurich, another $20,000. And so, it is also, Abraham believed the Lord and it was credited to him as righteousness. Now, where did that righteousness come from? Well, it came from the perfect life of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten son, lived a holy and blameless life. Every moment He did the will of His Father. He never sinned, he turned back every single temptation that came His way, and He could say rightly at the end of His life, not at the end of one hour or at the end of one day, but at the end of His life, “Father, I have brought you glory on Earth by doing everything you told me to do.”
“I always please Him,” He said another place. That righteousness was consummated and made perfect on the cross, when He obeyed his father even to death, death on a cross. That righteousness can be credited to your account. Isn’t that incredible? And He will see you on Judgment Day as perfect and holy and blameless as His own son, or He will send you to hell. Those are the two options, there is no third option. And so, we will stand in Christ’s righteousness alone on judgment day, or we will be spending eternity in hell. And the scripture says, “The smoke of their torment rises forever and ever. There is no rest, day or night, for those who cling to their own righteousness.” This is the doctrine of justification.
Now, if you had been there with Abram watching, what would you have seen Abram do that night? What muscles would he have moved? Answer, none. What works did he do to get this gift of righteousness? None. What sinner’s prayer did he pray? None. How then was it credited to him as righteousness? Inside his mind, he heard the word of God, the promise of God, and he believed it. That was the work. And it is no work. Frankly, I believe that faith is the eyesight of the soul by which we receive from God what He’s wanting to give. Just like the eyeballs can look up at the stars and see distant starlight coming into our eyes, and we see it, and we receive. The eyes, don’t make the stars be there, the eyes don’t make the light be there, they just receive what’s emanating out from what God has created, and so it is with faith.
You don’t make anything be there that God isn’t giving, but when God opens up your blind soul and gives you sight like He did to the man born blind, all of a sudden, “Wow, God is giving me something,” and you receive it. And Abram that night, the eyesight of the soul was opened up, and he saw and believed, he heard and believed. It was credited to him as righteousness. And he stood holy and blameless at that moment.
Paul’s Main Point: Everyone Gets Saved the Same Way
Romans 4, Verses 1-5 says, “What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather, discovered in this matter? If in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about−but not before God. What does the scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. Now, when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation. However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.” It’s a gift of righteousness, folks. It’s our only hope. It’s our only hope. And it saved Abram that night.
Hadn’t Abram Already Displayed Faith?
Now, you may ask, “Didn’t Abram show faith before that night?” Yeah, he did, he did. It took faith for him to get up out of Ur of the Chaldeans and follow, it took faith for him to build altars to the Lord, it took faith for him to call on the name of the Lord. But I think that this was his justifying night, others disagree, but I think it was this night. That he saw by faith the Son of God. I think that’s what happened this night, he saw by faith, the Son of God. Why do I say that? Well, in Galatians 3:16, it says, “The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.” The scripture does not say, unto seeds, meaning many people, but, unto your seed, meaning one person who is Christ.
And so, Jesus stated openly that Abraham’s joy was focused on the person of Christ, whom he saw by faith, I believe, that starry night, it says in John 8:56, “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.” I think that happened, that starry night, God spoke to Abraham in a vision and showed him Christ, and he believed, and he was justified. Now, next week, God willing, we’ll talk about the covenant and blood. I want to apply, however, just these first six verses.
Application
First application, trust in Christ alone to make you righteous, give up on any works, give up in trusting your good things, they will get you nowhere. If you are sitting here today thinking, “I’m basically a good person and in that basic goodness, I will stand before God,” you are lost. But if, on the other hand, you say it is because of Christ and what He did on the cross, that I have any hope of salvation, you have eternal life.
Second, feed your faith in God’s promises. Read the promise. You know what? You have better promises than Abram got that night. He got, “So shall your offspring be.” “Look up at the heavens and count the stars, so shall. . .” We have got “all your sins will be forgiven.” “The Holy Spirit will come live within you.” “I will take you to be with me so that you also may be where I am.” “My father will come and eat and dine with you.” We’ve got John 5:24, which says, “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.” We’ve got John 11:25 and 26, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” We have so many good promises from God, feed your faith on those good promises.
Third, marvel at God’s amazing track record. He is faithful. When Israel took the Promised Land, it was said that they were as numerous as the stars in the sky. God fulfilled his promise to Abram that night, didn’t He? And He is going to fulfill every one of His very great and precious promises to you in Christ.
Fourth, focus on God and God alone as your eternal reward, give up on earthly idols, they don’t mean a thing, they are not going to bring you any eternal joy. Focus on God, and on God alone.
And finally, fifth, bring your griefs to Him in prayer, as we’ve already talked about. It may not be childlessness, it may be something else, bring it to Him in prayer, say, “Sovereign Lord, you have chosen that I not get a job yet,” or, “You have chosen that I have this illness that just won’t go away,” or, “You have chosen that I have this relational difficulty in my family, help me with this.”
