Genesis 15:1-6

All right, so we have been going through the

Old Testament and going backwards in order

between the prophetic books, the poetical

books, the historical books with the judges

last month and so now we're back to the books

of Moses, the Pentateuch, and we'll be in

Genesis this month and the next month we'll be

in Genesis as well and we'll go through

those things and I just think it's great and I

think it's amazing and we'll talk about

it in the sermon, how God uses the Old

Testament in so many ways and how he connects

it all

together.

He was talking about that before church.

It really is amazing and hopefully I'll be

able to bring that out today as we learn from

Genesis 15 about Abram who would become

Abraham.

So Genesis 15, 1-6, God's Word says, "After

these things the word of the Lord came to

Abram in a vision saying, 'Do not fear Abram.

I am a shield to you.

Your reward shall be very great.'

Abram said, 'O Lord God, what will you give me

since I am childless?

And the heir of my house is Eleazar of Damas

cus.

And Abram said, 'Since you have given no

offspring to me, one born in my house is my

heir.'

Then behold, the word of the Lord came to him

saying, 'This man will not be your heir,

but one who will come forth from your own body

, he shall be your heir.'

And he took him outside and said, 'Now look

toward the heavens and count the stars, if

you are able to count them.'

And he said to him, 'So shall your descendants

be.'

Then he believed in the Lord and he reckoned

it to him as righteousness."

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we love you and thank you for

your mercy towards us today just as we

learned from Sunday School.

We learned as we worship you today that you

were so worthy that you've given us so many

gifts that we can't even imagine.

But I pray today that you'd bless the

preaching of your word for your people, your

message

inspired by the messenger, that you'd bless

our minds and hearts with your truth.

Thank you for Christ in His name.

Amen.

All right.

One summer, many moons ago, when I was in

Bible College, I worked at a summer camp in

North Port, Florida, which is an hour or two

south of Tampa there, and it's in snowbird

country.

There are a lot of old people there, but I

worked at a summer camp and the kids, the

community would come and we'd teach them and

every day we'd have a chapel.

And in that chapel, all the workers would lead

singing and we would sing the common children

's

church songs, all with the motions and

everything.

After we sang, the preacher would come out,

the pastor of the church, and he would give

a little chapel message before we went on with

the day's activities.

We sang a lot of those songs, but one of the

songs that we were not allowed to sing, he

had a conviction that we couldn't sing, "

Father Abraham had many sons."

I don't know if you're familiar with that.

After this, if you've not ever heard that, go

ahead and YouTube, you can find its very

popular children's church song.

But he said that the kids don't understand it,

it doesn't have, it's not deep enough

for them or whatever, and he just didn't want

to spend the time having a fun song with

motions and stuff like that.

And it's true that the song is pretty simple,

"Father Abraham had many sons, I am one of

them and so are you."

So let's all praise the Lord and then you

would do a motion like the hokey pokey.

I agree with him that it's probably not the

best song to sing when you're trying to teach

kids about the word, but the truth is, "Father

Abraham had many sons and I am one of them

and so are you," if you believe in the Lord,

if you have faith like Abraham had.

And that's what we're going to be talking

today about Abraham's faith.

And before God changed his name, Abraham was

Abram, and Abram is the subject of the second

part of the book of Genesis.

The first 11 chapters talk about the history

of the world up until Abraham, and then the

last section of the book of Genesis is the

history of Abraham's children until they

get to Egypt.

So he is really the centerpiece of the book of

Genesis, and really it's God's call on

Abraham that is the centerpiece.

And so we talked last time about the reason

Genesis was written.

So Moses is called by God to go to Egypt and

release his people after 400 years of slavery.

And so Moses is inspired by the Holy Spirit to

write the book of Genesis to teach the

Hebrew people who they are.

It has been 400 years of Egyptian slavery.

You can kind of forget where you came from.

It's been 240 years, 48 years in America, and

many of us have forgotten where we've

come from.

And so it's not hard to see why the book of

Genesis needed to be written for the immediate

need of the Hebrew people.

But what's so amazing is that in Moses'

writing of that book and with the inspiration

of the

Holy Spirit, he wrote it for that purpose.

Who are you, Hebrew people?

But in that, in the very first 11 chapters,

every major doctrine that is taught throughout

Scripture from Genesis to Revelation has its

beginning and its seed in the first 11

chapters

of Genesis.

And then it is expounded in the rest of it and

it goes on.

So it's just really, I just want you to grasp

that as much as I have trouble getting stuff

across sometimes, really understand that, that

thousands of years before Christ and before

the New Testament was written, all the doctr

ines that we studied, that we spent years going

through the epistles of Paul and the Gospels

of John and Matthew, all those doctrines had

their start in Genesis and how really amazing

that is.

We saw this week at the conference, the first

two messages came out of Genesis and they

connected with the next two messages that were

the state of man before the fall connected

with the eternal state of man is very clear,

it really blows my mind.

So that last chapter of the first section,

chapter 11, the end of it is a genealogy of

a man named Shem.

Shem was one of the three sons of Noah.

And so the chapter 11 goes through the geneal

ogy, Shem had this son and then he had this son

and they had this son and so it's several

generations and the very last part, the last

generation that Moses talks about is Tara and

Tara is the father of Abram.

And so we get, we get, there's a connection

between Abram and the son of Noah, Shem.

And then right when we get into chapter 12, it

goes right in to God, just out of nowhere

calling Abram to leave his nation and follow

God.

And so there was no, no explanation about Abr

am's character, no explanation about who

he was or what he had, what his job was.

It was just, was God said, look, you move from

where you're at and go to a place where

I'm going to call you and I'm going to give

you, he made a bunch of promises, what we'll

get into.

And the reason that I want this to be brought

out before we get into some of Abram's life

is that God is the one who had the plan.

And Moses is bringing out that right from the

beginning of Genesis, there's a weaving

of a tapestry of God's hand in history.

And he has a purpose that goes all the way

through and to a man named Abram who had,

he changed his name to Abraham and his family

would go all the way and, and eventually end

up into a man named Jesus Christ, who would

start the church.

So this is, this is the history of the Hebrew

people, but it's also a history of, of God's

people and God in his sovereignty is working

all this out and it really is amazing.

So according to God's will, he picks this man

out of a sea of other men in, in a place

called Ur of the Chaldeans.

And he picks this man for his own purposes to

be the father of a mighty nation.

And that nation would later birth Jesus Christ

and, and Jesus Christ would be our savior

and the savior of all, whether they're Jew or

Gentile, who would believe it.

And so this is who Abram was.

He was the one that God picked.

And so I want to go to Genesis 12 and the

first three verses is where out of nowhere,

God calls this man named Abram seemingly out

of nowhere.

It says, now the Lord said to Abram, go forth

from your country and from your relatives

and from your father's house to the land,

which I will show you.

And I will make you a great nation and I will

bless you and make your name great.

And so you shall be a blessing.

And I will bless those who bless you.

And the one who curses you, I will curse.

And in you, all the families of the earth will

be blessed.

And so Abram did.

He picked up his family and left everything he

knew in the land of Ur and moved to Canaan.

He settled there in a place called the Negev

in Canaan, where God would eventually give

him the land.

But it wasn't all roses.

There was a famine in the land of Canaan.

So he went to Egypt and he moves down to Egypt

to find food.

And there was a famine and the famine ended

and Pharaoh kicked him out of Egypt.

So he goes back to Canaan and while he's there

, God is just blessing him and just giving him

so many things.

And he has servants and a big cadre of people

and cattle.

And he gets so big that he actually is like

his own little nation there, his own little

nation state where he goes and wars against

other kings and and prospers there.

And so it's after all this, all this section

where Abram is already following the word

of the God, he's obeying him and doing all

these things that Moses shows us here in our

passage today in chapter 15, that Abram is not

just the father of the physical nation

of the Hebrews, the Jews.

He's also the father of a spiritual nation,

which includes us.

And Paul would later call him in Romans 4, the

father of all who believe, all who have

true faith.

And so that's what we're going to look at

today in chapter 15 is that Abram does have

many sons and we are some of those sons and

how that all works out.

So in our passage here in Genesis 15, verses

one through five, I want to show us that the

promises of God precede faith 15, one through

five.

After these things, the word of the Lord came

to Abram in a vision saying, do not fear Abram

.

I am a shield to you.

Your reward shall be very great.

Abram said, Oh Lord, God, what will you give

me since I am childless in the air of my house

is Eleazar of Damascus.

And Abram said, since you have given no

offspring to me, one born in my house is my

heir.

And behold, the word of the Lord came to him

saying, this man will not be your heir, but

one who will come forth from your own body.

He shall be your heir.

And he took him outside and said, now look

toward the heavens and count the stars.

If you are able to count them and he said to

him, so shall your descendants be.

So he followed God's word and left his home.

He listened to him as he moved him from the Ne

gev to Egypt and then back to the Negev

and Canaan.

And he experienced the blessing of God as he

grew in wealth and cattle.

And so he goes in the last chapter.

So this is after the last chapter.

This happens with Abram.

In the last chapter, he battles with some

other king states.

These kings had came in and battled against

other kings, just his neighbors.

They were just, you know, fighting because

that's how they gained land.

That's how they gained their wealth.

And in that they kidnapped Lot.

Lot was Abram's nephew.

And so Abram got wind that they kidnapped Lot

and plundered his good.

So he went at night and he rescued Lot.

So he was big enough to have his own army, if

you will.

And so he rescues Lot and he takes the loot

that the people had plundered.

And then God sends a priest named Melchizedek,

the king of Salem or the king of peace to

Abram.

And so Abram worships with the priest and

gives him a tithe.

And then the kings, after that, the kings come

and say, hey, look, we were losing, obviously,

and you came and won the battle for us.

We're going to give you a share of the loot

because this is the normal way that they

gained

in that time.

But Abram declined their offer.

Look at Genesis 14-22.

Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have sworn

to the Lord God most high, possessor of heaven

and earth, that I will not take a thread or a

sandal thong or anything that is yours.

For fear, you would say, I have made Abram

rich.

I will take nothing except what the young men

have eaten and the share of the men who

went with me, Aner, Eschel and Mamre, let them

take their share.

So Abram said, no, I'm not going to, I'm not

like you guys.

I'm not going to build my kingdom like the

other kings around me, like an earthly way.

I'm going to follow what God has told me and

he has blessed me so far.

Everything that I have is due to him, not

because of some earthly king.

So he was showing those around him that he was

different and he was.

There was nothing in him that would be the

reason for God to pick him or bless him.

There was nothing that he did.

It was solely based on God's choice.

And so now we get to our passage in chapter 15

and verse number one.

It says, after these things, the word of the

Lord came to Abram in a vision saying, do

not fear Abram.

I am a shield to you.

Your reward shall be very great.

So Abram denied the normal way that men of

that time would get stuff.

And God says, look, don't worry.

I'm going to be your shield.

Your reward is going to be very great.

God said, look, trust in me and all this stuff

will come to pass.

So this is the pattern that we see in

scriptures that God makes promises and his

people trust

in the promises of God.

But when God makes promises, they're not in a

vacuum.

It's not just something like we don't know who

God is or how he operates.

We have a sure hope when the Christians have

hope it's in God that it's not in a vacuum.

It's God who makes those promises is a

trustworthy God.

He promises to be the shield for Abram.

Abram has experienced in the past since God

has called him that he keeps his word,

therefore

hoping Abram's hope in what God had said was

not in vain.

That's the logical progression of biblical

hope.

The world changes the definition of hope and

faith and calls it something blind.

Like there's nothing behind it like we like

look there we have science over here and we

can test this and whatever we have there are

priests and lab coats, but you can have

religion

over here.

You can have faith is just blind.

You don't believe in anything that makes any

sense.

But that's not what biblical hope or faith is.

God is not calling Abram to have blind faith.

He's already proved in the past that he does

what he says.

So he says I will be your shield and your

reward will be very great.

And Abram has every reason to hope to believe

that God's word will come true because of

the past that God has done.

So when Abram believes that the promise that

God makes and he acts on it, he is exhibiting

true faith in what God, the God who's making

the promises.

It's not out of the ordinary.

When we explain to people, the gospel, when we

give them the promises of God that he will

save them from their sin because of what

Christ has done for them to have question

evangelism

does not just go and say, Hey, here's the plan

of the gospel.

Okay.

I just believe it.

Generally there's there's conversation.

There's apologetics.

There's defenses that have to be made.

Generally people have questions and we all

probably had the same things happen before

we became we came to Christ and Abram was no

different.

He had gone through two or three chapters of

things where God tell him, do this, do that.

And he did it.

And he'd never questioned God and any of those

things.

But now God is telling him, I'm going to be

your shield and your reward is going to be

very great.

And so now Abram first, first time mentions

questions that he has about God's word, about

what he's telling him.

And he says in verse two, Abram said, Oh, Lord

God, what will you give me since I am

childless and the air of my house is a laser

of Damascus.

Abram said, since you have given no offspring

to me, one born in my house is my air.

So Abram was an old man.

He was, it was a hundred years old and his

wife was old too.

They were passed the time where normal childbe

aring can happen.

Their bodies were already past that.

And so now God is telling him, look, I'm going

to give you all of this, this great reward

and all these descendants and all this is

going to happen.

I promise you, I give you my word, this is

going to happen.

And Abram saying, well, how I'm an old man, I

'm nobody, how is this going to work?

So you're going to give me all of these

rewards and it's going to die off of me

because there's

no one to inherit all these rewards.

I'm going to have to give it to my servant,

Eleazar.

So in that time, if you want it, if you didn't

have a child, you would pass on your stuff

to one of your servants.

You would actually adopt your servant as a son

so that he could inherit all of your

possessions and he would take care of what you

had and your burial and stuff like that.

And Eleazar was the one who was queued up, but

he wasn't of Abraham.

He was of Damascus.

But here's what God said to Abram, verse four,

"Then behold, the word of the Lord came

to him saying, 'This man will not be your heir

, but one who will come forth from your

own body, he shall be your heir.'

The Lord said, 'No, that's not what's going to

take place, Abram.

He is not going to be your heir.

Someone from your own body, which the word

actually means your bowels from the inside

of you.

It's going to be your son that's going to be

your heir."

And so God promises, he gives his word to Abr

am that your descendants will come from

you.

He won't be someone you have to adopt from

somewhere else.

So of course, we, thousands of years later,

with the word of God, get to look back and

see how it all worked out.

We could read in the next couple of chapters

how God works that out in his life and how

he gives him Ishmael and he gives him Isaac.

And we can look back and see that we have a

Jewish people now, and Ishmael's descendants

are the Arabs, and they're fighting still

today, just like it was told back then.

And we can see the history of thousands of

years of the Jewish people.

But Abram didn't get that benefit.

He was looking at, "Hey, I'm a hundred years

old.

It doesn't work anymore.

Hers doesn't work anymore.

How are we going to have a baby, right?

How is it going to happen?

How are we going to have descendants?"

But God says, "No, you will have descendants.

I will keep every one of my promises to you,

Abram."

Abram asked a question and it was okay.

It's okay to ask questions.

And so God graciously takes him outside and

gives him an illustration of how he's going

to keep his promise.

Look at verse five.

And he took him outside and said, "Now look

toward the heavens and count the stars if

you are able to count them."

And he said to him, "So show your descendants

be."

Five years ago, Rachel and I and Josh went to

Arizona and we traveled from Phoenix to

Grand Canyon and back and we made a bunch of

stops in Sedona, Route 66.

I love Arizona.

The weather, I like the heat without the

humidity.

It's great.

All everything.

The Grand Canyon is absolutely amazing.

But on the east side of where the Grand Canyon

is, there's the Navajo Reservation.

And we used Airbnb and we were actually able

to stay in the Navajo Reservation in what

they call a Hogan, which is an old Indian clay

house structure.

And where we were at in the reservation, there

was zero electricity and zero running water.

We had to use an outhouse.

It was interesting.

But one of the, my, it's not, it was for me.

Oh, one of the favorite memories that I have

from that whole trip is it taking the clots

out of that Hogan, dragging them outside and

laying down on the cot, looking up at the

stars.

Because there was no light pollution.

I saw hundreds of thousands of more stars.

Not that I counted them, but then you could,

even in country, Louisiana, and it, it was

very memorable.

So I can see, I mean, just imagine, put

yourself in the sandals of Abram as he is

walked outside

of his tent and looks up at the sky and says,

look, God says, look, count the stars.

That's how many descendants you're going to

have.

And I want you to think about this.

Yahweh, the creator of the whole universe, is

giving Abram a personal illustration of

his power to keep his words.

He created every one of those stars, Psalm 147

verse four, since he counts the number

of the stars.

He gives names to all of them.

He knows exactly how many stars they are

because he's the one that puts them there and

exactly

where he wanted them.

And he's maintaining their, their path

throughout the universe as we speak.

And we are just seeing millions and millions

of stars that we've never before in the

history

of mankind seen because of new technology, a

new telescope that we put out there.

And you know what?

There's millions and millions more that we don

't have the ability to see and will probably

never see until Christ comes back.

He created them specifically for his own glory

.

That is his power.

And so he takes this old, childless man that

had nothing in him that would be, cause him

to be chosen.

He wasn't a great king or anything.

He takes them outside and with patience and

with grace says, Hey, you don't believe me?

Look what I can do.

I created these.

Count them.

That's how many descendants you're going to

have.

What an amazing God.

Philip's been going through Ephesians.

We're just talking about it, but when he went

through Ephesians three, one of the things

that stuck out in my mind is that God was able

to do far more abundantly beyond all that

we ask or think according to the power that

works within us.

And then Paul says that again later or earlier

in the chapter, he says Paul was made a

minister

according to the gift of God's grace, which

was given to Paul according to the working

of his power.

And Philip explained that it wasn't that God

had the store of power and he was pulling

it out and divvying it up to all the different

ministers of the gospel.

No, it was according to.

It was in proportion.

So God's infinite power.

He was blessing us and blessing Paul in

proportion to that power and to that grace

that he was

doing it according.

So now God is showing, Hey, Abram, this is a,

I can bless you with descendants.

I have the power to give you descendants

according to the same power that I created all

of this.

I created your, your body.

That's old.

Whatever I want, we're like, wow, God.

And he's like, I just spoke it.

I just said it and all the stars appeared.

He did.

God could have said, Hey, Abram, he could have

set thunder and lightning and tornadoes and

shook the earth and an allowed booming voice.

He could have said, trust me.

Just why are you asking questions?

But he didn't.

He was grace and with patience.

He took Abram outside and showed him the stars

.

He showed compassion on Abram and he shows

that same to us.

Psalm 103, 13.

So just as a father has compassion on his

children, so the Lord has compassion on those

who fear him for he himself knows our frame.

He is mindful that we are but dust.

And this is exactly how he treats us.

So, so if you have a question about God's

promises, if you have find your faith, wait

and you're favoring, then go and ask him, read

the word and and he will show you that

he keeps his promises and that he is worthy of

your faith.

He calls us to test him.

He says, taste and see that the Lord is good.

How blessed is the man who takes refuge in him

?

And that's not a testing of a cynic.

He takes honest questions from hundred year

old childless men who were promised great

rewards like no one's ever been promised

before.

They had no frame of reference, but God showed

him God, God promised him and God's promises

precede faith because we are creatures of

doubt.

And we learn when we experience God's faithful

ness that he is worthy of our trust and he's

worthy

of our faith, that our hope will be well

placed when we place it in God.

Paul explains this in Romans chapter five,

verses one and two says, Therefore, having

been justified by faith, we have peace with

God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through

whom also we have obtained our introduction by

faith into this grace in which we stand

and we exalt in hope of the glory of God.

Now we're getting slightly ahead of ourselves,

we're going to talk about this concept in

our next verse.

But I want you to see that God works this way

on purpose.

This is how God works.

He makes promises and that is what our faith

is based on.

So we're justified by faith in Christ.

And because we are justified by faith, we have

peace with God.

Now we take that for granted, we take that

easy, but we have the holy God of the universe

,

the creator of each one of those stars and we

've broken every single one of his loss.

But because of what Christ has done and the

faith that he's given us, we're able to come

before him in peace.

We're able to come before him with boldness,

Hebrews says, not with knee shaking, but as

a father and make our requests.

And then it says we exalt before him, we exalt

in glory.

That means we revel.

We boast in the glory that we have, not

because of ourselves, but because of what

Christ has

introduced us to in God.

But then the next part of these verses, we ex

alt, we revel, we boast in what God has

given us and glory that we'll have in that

final state.

But the next part of the next passage, verse

three says, not only this, not just that we

boast in the glory, but we also exalt or boast

or revel in our tribulations, knowing that

tribulation brings about perseverance and

perseverance, proven character and proven

character hope and hope does not disappoint

because the love of God has been poured out

within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who

was given to us.

So we boast and revel and exalt and trib

ulation and pain and suffering, knowing because

of

the past, because we have experience with God

that he keeps his promises.

So as we go through this tribulation and this

problem today, we remember, hey, I had a

problems before I had tribulations before and

look what God did.

He brought me through those.

So now that I'm facing this tribulation, I can

face it with hope.

And in the end of it, I won't be ashamed

because I know how God takes care of me

because he's

done it in the past.

Does that make sense?

That's the that's the we exalt in those we

because we learn about God's graciousness.

God's faithfulness, his trustworthiness.

And so the more we go through, the less our

faith waivers the next time.

And one day we'll see his face and our faith

will become site.

And then we'll have all those experiences to

exalt in in the future.

May God give us the grace to go through the

trials and tribulations of his life with true

hope in him and all those promises that preced

e faith.

True faith in us and here in the next part, we

're going to learn how the faith brings

a reckoning of righteousness, the imputation

of righteousness by faith alone in verse

number

six.

Then he believed in the Lord and he reckoned

it to him as righteousness.

We believe that verse by verse preaching, exp

osition is the proper way to do this.

And we believe that because we are commanded

by Paul to to preach the whole counsel of

the word, the word of God and skipping over

verses are obviously not the way you follow

that command.

Sometimes it takes a long time to fill up

several years and two churches to get through

the book of Matthew.

Remember that?

You remember, we threw you a little party

afterwards?

Great cake.

I actually have a picture of the cake that

Rachel made at Larry Creasy's house.

Verse by verse, just line upon line, five

years to get through it.

But some preachers, and I'm not usually one of

them, can take several sermons to get

through one verse.

Right? I know Martin Lloyd-Jones would just go

and dissect every word and I have a hard

time with that.

I like to see the big picture and I'm not

usually as verbose as others.

But if you were to spend several sermons on

one verse, this verse would be one of them.

And this verse has inspired several New

Testament authors, Paul and James, to explain

the reality

of justification by faith alone.

This verse sets the foundation, the bottom

layer of the exposition of the New Testament

into what faith is and how faith works in

salvation.

So back in Genesis 3.15, what is what we call

the prototype gospel.

So Adam and Eve had fallen in the sin and

because of that sin, God gave them curses.

And in one of those curses, he gave to Eve, he

said that the seed of Eve would have his

heel bruised by the serpent and that the seed

of Eve would crush the head of the serpent.

And we know now that that was Christ.

And we learned all about those curses that

happened at the Here We Stand conference on

Friday night from Brother Brian.

So how will a holy God be able to accept

sinners like us, those who break the law into

his holy

kingdom and still maintain his own justice?

What could be done for us being so far past

the mark of unrighteousness to be put back

into good standing with that holy God?

So what this verse is explaining is how God

does that.

God puts us back into his good graces by his

grace through faith alone.

And when we believe, as Abraham did, God reck

ons us as righteous.

So let's unpack this verse number six.

Let's read it again.

He believed in the Lord and he reckoned it to

him as righteousness.

The very first part of this verse says that he

believed in the Lord.

So what did Abram believe?

He believed more than just that God would give

him a bunch of sons.

He believed all of the promises of God so far

that the very first promises that God

gave him when he called him out of Ur of the

Chaldeans in Genesis 12 one.

This is what he believed.

He believed all of it.

Now the Lord said to Abram, go forth from your

country and from your relatives and from

your father's house to the land which I will

show you.

And I will make you a great nation and I will

bless you and make your name great.

And so you shall be a blessing.

And I will bless those who bless you and the

one who curses you, I will curse and in

you all the families of the earth will be

blessed.

God brought him to Canaan and told him that

his descendants would inherit the land there.

But he also told him that that his descendants

would be the ones that all the families of

the earth will be blessed in.

And that descendant, I should have said, that

descendant would be Christ, the seed that

would crush the head of the serpent.

So the great nation that Abram's descendants

would become would be the great blessing to

all the world, which is us now.

So God brings him outside at night.

He shows him the great power that he had.

And Abram believes God, not just about the

stuff that he would get, the blessings of

the cattle and the servants and the land, but

all of it.

Abram believed and had faith that God was

trustworthy.

And look at the next part of that verse, verse

six, then he believed in the Lord.

It says that he believed in the Lord, not just

that he believed the Lord.

He believed the person of the Lord.

He believed everything that God had said and

that he believed that God was trustworthy.

He placed all of his trust in God.

And then the last part of that verse says, and

he reckoned it to him as righteousness.

God reckoned it.

He reckoned Abram's faith as righteousness.

Now we as Southerners understand the word reck

oned, right?

I reckon so.

But where does it come from?

Well, if you read the ESV and the LSB, they

use the word count there.

And so God saw that Abram trusted in him, that

Abram believed in him.

And when he saw that, he counted that faith as

righteousness.

And maybe you've heard the word imputation

before.

This is such an important concept.

Imputation is a financial term.

If I write you a check from my my bank account

and I hand it to you, you go to your bank

and you cash that check and you have them

apply it to your account.

So they impute the funds from my bank account

onto your bank account.

Now sometimes the funds may not be there, but

with an infinitely righteous God, he will

always be able to back up his accounting, his

imputation, his credits.

So in Adam's fall, we send all.

So this is what original sin is.

The fact that Adam's sin was imputed to each

one of us.

It was transferred from from his life to our

life.

We all are sinners because of Adam's sin,

Romans 512.

Therefore justice through one man, sin entered

into the world and death through sin.

And so death spread to all men because all sin

ned.

But through faith, God imputes the

righteousness of Christ to every one of us.

He reckons his righteousness to our account.

He counts us as righteous because of the

righteousness of Christ.

Romans 517, for if by the transgression of the

one death rain through the one, much more

those who receive the abundance of grace and

of the gift of righteousness will reign in

life through the one Jesus Christ.

So then as though through one transgression,

there resulted condemnation to all men, even

so through one act of righteousness, there

resulted justification of life to all men.

And Abrams justification, his being made right

in the sight of God justified was a result

of his faith alone.

Now he had followed God for a while before

this point.

He listened to God, he moved from his land to

a new land.

He obeyed, but it wasn't until this point that

he had true, justifying faith.

Calvin said the sequence of time must now be

noted.

Abram was justified by faith many years after

he had been called by God, after he had left

his native land and had become a voluntary

exile, after he had been a conspicuous mirror

of endurance and self control, after he had

devoted himself wholly to holiness, after he

had practiced himself in the spiritual and the

external worship of God and had led an

almost angelic life.

So it follows that even at the end of life, we

are brought into God's eternal kingdom

by justification by faith.

Then he says, "The truth holds.

Men are justified by believing, not by what

they do.

It is by faith they obtain grace, and grace

cannot be earned as a payment for works, since

Abram, with all his preeminence and virtue,

after a long life of unique service of God,

was yet justified by faith.

The righteousness of each perfected man

consists in faith alone."

And that is the same way that we are saved

today.

Abram, thousands of years ago, was justified

by faith alone, and us, thousands of years

after Abram, and thousands of years after

Jesus Christ, we are justified by faith alone.

Nothing that we do can earn that justification

.

All the good works that we do, all the charity

, all every act of religion that we do, done

outside of true faith in God, by grace alone,

will do nothing to make your standing before

God better.

There is no Peter before the pearly gates

going through the checks and balances of how

good

or how bad you were.

You will only enter the glory of Christ in

heaven forever by an external righteousness,

the righteousness of Christ himself imputed to

you, and that is it.

Romans 4, Paul exposited this verse that we

read today.

He started off like this, Romans 4-1, "What

then shall we say, that Abraham our forefather

,

according to the flesh, has found?

For if Abraham was justified by works, he has

something to boast about, but not before

God.

For what does the Scripture say, Abraham

believed God, and it was credited to him as

righteousness?

Now to the one who works, his wage is not

credited his favor, but as what is due, but

the one

who does not work, but believes in him who

justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited

as righteousness."

So my question to you today is, are you

resting in Christ alone for your salvation?

Are you resting in the justification of Christ

's righteousness alone in your life?

Just by grace alone, by faith alone, in Christ

alone?

Anything else is a miss of the mark.

Are you relying on your church attendance,

relying on some church sacrament or ordinance

that we do, the ceremonies, the singing, any

of it?

If you are, then you need to reckon, count all

of that as rubbish before God and trust

in him alone, outside of anything else.

Put your faith in him, in his person, like

Abraham did, the father of the faithful.

And if you do that, if you are trusting in him

, remember, he is worthy of that trust.

He has never let us down, he has never gone

back on his word, and he will never do that

until the end of time.

He is infinitely good, and he is infinitely

powerful, and he can do everything he says.

So go forth in this life in faith in him.

Next part of this chapter is the Abrahamic Co

venant, which we'll go into next month.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we love you, and thank you

for your faithfulness to us, that you are

worthy of our trust, that you have created all

things.

Because of that, you are worthy of our worship

, just for who you are, like Philip said.

I pray that you bless us today, may our faith

and never waver in who you are.

But when it does, we praise you that you are

gracious and that you are good and patient

with us.

Thank you, Lord.