Genesis 15:7-21

If you will open your Bibles with me to the

book of Genesis, we're back in chapter 15.

And we're going to look specifically at verses

7 through 21, continuing our look at it from

last time, where we looked at the first seven

verses, six verses.

We're going to read the whole passage today.

So Genesis 15, verse number one, God's words

is 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 Damascus."

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.

And he said to him, "I am the Lord, who

brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give

you

this land to possess it."

He said, "O Lord God, how may I know that I

will possess it?"

So he said to him, "Bring me a three-year-old

heifer and a three-year-old female goat and

a three-year-old ram and a turtledove and a

young pigeon."

Then he brought all these things, all these to

him, and cut them in two, and laid each

half opposite the other, but he did not cut

the birds.

The birds of prey came down upon the carcasses

, and Abram drove them away.

And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep

fell upon Abram, and behold, terror and great

darkness fell upon him.

God said to Abram, "Know for certain that your

descendants will be strangers in a land

that is not theirs, where they will be

enslaved and oppressed for 400 years; but I

will also

judge the nation in whom they serve, and

afterward they will come out with many

possessions.

As for you, you shall go to your fathers in

peace; you will be buried at a good old age.

And in the fourth generation they will return

here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not

yet complete.

It came about when the sun had set, that it

was very dark, and behold, there appeared

a smoking oven, and a flaming torch which

passed between these pieces.

On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abr

am, saying, "To your descendants I have

given this land, from the river of Egypt as

far as the great river, the river Euphrates,

the Kenite and the Kenozite, and the Cadmonite

, and the Hittite and the Parazite, and the

Ruffaim, and the Amorite, and the Kenozite,

and the Gurgusite, and the Jebusite."

Let's pray.

Great to tell you, Father, we love you this

morning, and thank you for the opportunity

to come sing your praises to you, Lord.

What great hymns we have to remind us of all

that you've done to read from Colossians.

What a great passage.

And then to hear your word preached.

I pray that you bless your message in spite of

the messenger, and your truth to our minds

and to our hearts.

In Christ's name, amen.

So we're coming back to Genesis chapter 15 and

following two months ago when we looked

at the first six verses about Abram's

justification by faith alone in God's Word.

And the same way, we'll see how the story of

Abram here, or Abraham as he will become

called later, connects all the way to the New

Testament and to our very lives as believers

today in this church age.

And in chapter 12, the book of Genesis starts

telling us that the saga of Abram's family

and his life, all the way up until Joseph, Abr

am's great grandson, dies in Egypt as

a vice regent to the Pharaoh.

And all these narratives go to show us that

God is working out his ultimate plan, his

perfect plan in history, just like he's

working out today.

We get the bird's eye view in Genesis though.

We don't really know all that's going on today

.

We will one day.

And of course, we see that God is doing this

in order to fulfill his promise to Adam and

Eve.

And I mentioned this almost every time.

I preach from the Old Testament because it is

the start of the gospel.

Back in the very curse, God promises that the

seed of the woman will crush the head of the

serpent, and the serpent will bruise the heel

of the seed of the woman.

And so now we get to see all through the 37

books of the Old Testament how God is working

out that tapestry and that story in his own

sovereign and glorious way to come to Christ.

So in that story, God calls Abram in chapter

12 and makes promises to him right off the

bat.

Genesis 12, 1.

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 from chapter 12 to chapter 25 of Genesis,

God will repeat the promise and expand on

it and then give different details of his

promise to bless all nations through Abraham's

family to Abram.

So starting with the words here in chapter 12

and in chapter 15 that we're looking at

today, God will illustrate his promises.

He gives pictures of his promise to Abraham in

the stars, the number of the stars saying,

"This will be how much children you have.

This will not be how many descendants you have

."

And then he later in Genesis will give a

physical seal and a reminder in the act of

circumcision that Abram is going to circumcise

himself and his children and all the men in

his family and tribe there as a reminder of

God's word to Abram that his promise that

he will have sons and descendants.

He even changed the name of Abram later to

Abraham.

Abram means exalted father; Abraham means a

father of a multitude of peoples.

God is making much of the promises that he

made to Abram and Abraham and he is giving

him very many details about those promises.

Again, I want to drive home how many things

that all these promises that he's making

to Abram, to Abraham are connected with our

faith today in the New Testament, connected

with Christ in the New Testament.

And it is our privilege that our ability is we

get to look back at these stories in the

Old Testament through the lens of the New

Testament and see what God was doing.

It's a great privilege for us to do that.

And one of the things that God wants us to

learn by being able to go back into the Old

Testament and read the stories of Abram and

his family is that he is a God who makes

promises

and he is a God who keeps promises.

And so I think one of the things that we can

learn from this passage is that we as

believers

must rely and trust on God's promises just

like Abram did in his time.

And the first way that Abram does that,

interestingly, is by questioning God.

Second verse number seven and verse number

eight, and he said to him, I am the Lord who

brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give

you this land to possess it.

He said, Oh, Lord God, how may I know that I

will possess it?

Now, there was two parts to the promise that

God made to Abraham that he would be a father

to a great nation and that he would have the

land of Canaan.

And this was hard for the mind of Abram to get

around that he would be the father of

a great nation.

Why was it?

Because he was old and Sarah was old.

They were past the normal time that men and

women are able to have babies.

And so in our last passage that we looked at,

he asked God a question.

He questioned God's promise in verse number

two.

He said, Oh, Lord God, what will you give me

since I am childless?

So how are you going to work it out that I'm

going to be the father of great nations?

If I can't even have a one kid.

And God answered him in his question by taking

him outside as we saw last time and showing

him the multitude of stars and saying your

family is going to be like this.

And then Abram descendants will be numerous

like the stars.

And then Abram believed God and God reckoned

it to him as faith, as righteous, reckoned

his belief to him as righteousness.

And this second part that we're looking at

today is that God said, I'm going to give

your descendants the land of Canaan.

And we see in verse eight, he questions him

again, Oh Lord God, how may I know that I

will possess it?

God answered Abram's first question and we'll

see how he answers the second one in our next

part.

But first I want us to see that that Abram is

questioning God.

He's asking God how this is going to happen.

So how are we to question God and really

question what God says?

Abram, if we notice, has a very certain

attitude.

He has an attitude of faith when he asked God

these questions.

How do we know this?

Because God didn't rebuke him.

God answered him in his faith.

And when we contrast this in the Bible with

others who have asked God, we see what God

would have done if Abram questioned God out of

a lack of faith.

And we see specifically in the Gospel of Luke,

there was a priest named Zacharias and he

was the same as Abram and his wife Elizabeth

was the same as Sarah.

They were old.

They were past the normal time when men and

women were able to have babies.

And so he's in a priest going into the temple

and performing worship, and he's by there

performing his right.

And the angel Gabriel comes before him and he

questions Gabriel, but he questions him

with a spirit of doubt.

Look at Luke 118, Zacharias said to the angel,

"How will I know this for certain?"

The angel told him that he was going to have a

baby.

How will I know for this for certain?

This sounds very similar to Abram's question,

"For I am an old man and my wife is advanced

in years."

And we see that the response of the angel is

very different from God's response to

Abram.

In verse 19, the angel answered and said to

him, "I am Gabriel who stands in the presence

of God, and I have been sent to speak to you

and to bring you this good news.

And behold, you shall be silent and able to

speak until the day when these things take

place because you did not believe my words,

which will be fulfilled in their proper time."

Abram asked in faith because God didn't

respond in the same way that Gabriel responded

to

Zacharias.

And as a side note, we watch the Nativity

movie sometimes during Christmas and their

portrayal of Zacharias is very good.

I'll just say that.

So if you want to go watch that first part and

see exactly what we're talking about,

it's questioning.

But he didn't question him when it was over.

So Abram questioned God in faith.

He wanted to know more about what God was

saying.

He wanted to know more about how God was going

to bring this to pass.

And secondly, he asked God with a sense of

expectation, "How is this going to work?

How are you going to make this promise work?"

He was expecting God to give him an answer.

He was looking for another illustration like

God had just given him with the stars.

God took him outside and he saw the millions

of stars in the sky.

And it answered Abram's question and he

believed.

He was looking for something like that, but he

was going to get much more than he bargained

for as we'll see.

He saw God's hand moving him from his home and

Abram trusted him and he moved all the

way from his home in Ur of the Chaldeans to a

foreign land in Canaan.

And all the way up to the point where God

gives him salvation from his sin for it

because

of his faith.

And all this was building up the faith that

Abram had in what God would say.

And so we're to come to God looking for his

promises, asking questions, studying them out,

looking for how he's going to work those out

as much as he has given us in his word.

And we're to come with an expectation that God

is going to teach us and reveal himself

to us in his word, just like Abram did.

We come to him in faith and we come to him

expecting that he will answer.

He's graciously given us his word.

He's given us so many resources today that we

have in books.

He's given us friends.

He's given us the ability to listen to sermons

at church and then all the rest of the week

online.

He's given us Godly counselors, all these ways

that we can ask in faith about how God

works in the world and how God's promises have

been kept, are being kept, and will be

kept in the future.

So we rely on God's promises like Abram by

asking questions in faith.

And also in the second part of our passage, we

learn that we can do that by resting in

God's answers.

Verse 19, excuse me, verse nine through 17.

It's as though he said to him, "Bring me a

three-year-old heifer and a three-year-old

female goat and a three-year-old ram and a

turtle dove and a young pigeon."

Then he brought all these to him and cut them

in two and laid each half opposite the other,

but he did not cut the birds.

The birds of prey came down upon the carcasses

and Abram drove them away.

Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep

fell upon Abram and, behold, terror and great

darkness fell upon him.

God said to Abram, "Know for certain that your

descendants will be strangers in the

land that is not theirs, where they will be

enslaved and oppressed four hundred years,

but I will also judge the nation whom they

serve, and afterward they will come out with

many possessions.

As for you, you shall go to your fathers in

peace, you will be buried at a good old age,

then in the fourth generation they will return

here, for the iniquity of the amrite is not

yet complete."

It came about when the sun had set, that it

was very dark and behold, there appeared

a smoking oven and a flaming torch which

passed between these pieces.

So Abram asked God to answer his question, "

How do I know that you are going to give

me all this land?"

And look at the answer that he got.

So just imagine yourself in his position, he

says, "Abram, go get these animals and

cut them in half, and make a pathway between

them that we're going to walk through them."

So this is very strange to us, we don't know

what's going on, we don't understand what's

going on.

But Abram did, because when God asked him to

get the animals, he knew what to do.

He knew to cut them in half, and he knew to

make a pathway between them.

So Abram lived in a very different time than

ours, and a very different culture than ours.

You don't really have what we would call

nations at the time, there wasn't very many

of that at his time.

You had little kingdoms, and when I say little

, I mean little, in the previous chapter, in

chapter number 14, there's nine kings that

begin warring with each other.

Chapter 14, verse 1, "And it came about in the

days of Amrafel, King of Shinar, Eriach,

King of Al-Assar, Chetrolomer, King of Elam,

and Tidal, King of Goim, that they made war

with Barra, King of Sodom, and with Bersha,

King of Gomorrah, Shinab, King of Adma, Sheme

ber,

King of Zeboim, and of the King of Balo, that

is Zor."

Now besides all their crazy names, that sounds

to us like it's a world war.

It's like all the nations of Europe fighting

with each other.

The four kings made war with five other kings,

and in the end of this war, Abram comes with

his service and is able by himself to turn the

tide of the war.

But we have to understand that these aren't

big nations and kingdoms.

These are more like villages and bigger towns,

and some of them are big like cities.

Sodom and Gomorrah were what we would call

like a city with a lot of people.

They put a wall around it, they work for each

other, they share their resources, and so

when they would get together to make treaties,

it wasn't a treaty like NATO, it was like

Sorrento making a treaty with Gonzalez, or,

you know, then I'm making a treaty with

Central,

with the mayor of Central for their protection

and for them to share resources.

And I grew up in Sorrento, I used Gonzalez and

Sorrento because Sorrento was so much

lower than Gonzalez was, you know, especially

in the Gonzalez's mind.

But they would get together and make what we

would call a treaty with each other, so

they would protect each other and go to battle

with each other and share resources.

But they didn't get together and have a

signing ceremony for these treaties like we

would,

where you get it out on the scroll and you get

the quill and you sign your name to it.

That would be too wimpy for them, that would

be too unserious.

They would cut a covenant, and it's called cut

a covenant for a reason.

You would take an animal or several animals

and you would divide them in half, and then

you would separate them, guts and all, and

make a path between them.

And then they would give the terms of the

covenant.

We promised to do this, we promised to do that

, and then but one of the parties or both

of the parties would walk through the severed

animal.

Why?

Because he's saying if I don't keep my word,

if I don't keep to the terms of this agreement

,

you're going to do exactly to me what we did

to this animal.

You're going to cut me off and leave me out

there for the birds and animals to eat up.

There was no civil litigation like we had now

to the same degree.

There was no credit bureau that vouched on

your previous ability to keep contracts like

we have now.

They had a sword and they had severed animals

and they cut covenants with one another.

And so Abram knew when God asked to get the he

ifer and to get the ram, to get the goat

and the birds, exactly what was going on.

And his mind is like, okay, we're going to

have a covenant ratification ceremony.

So he waited there during the day after the

animals were put out and he shoot away the

birds and the animals that would come on the

carcasses.

He protected them from that.

Now he didn't exactly know what was going down

.

I'm sure in his mind, he would be the one that

would be going through the covenant cutting

ceremony.

He had no idea, he couldn't imagine what God

had in his mind.

Look at verse number 12, now that when the sun

was going down, a deep sleep fell upon

Abram and behold terror and great darkness

fell upon him.

So in the evening around dusk, when the sun

started to go down, God causes Abram to fall

into a deep sleep and it says that terror and

great darkness fell on him.

Can you imagine that you go into a deep sleep

and then you come before the presence of God?

The proper feeling is terror and great

darkness.

There's a serious gravity to what's going on.

You're going before the tri-holy God of the

universe, not some other mayor king for

another

podunk town making a deal.

You're making a deal with the ultimate God,

Almighty God of all of the universe.

This sounds very similar to the way that

Isaiah felt.

In the first five chapters of Isaiah, Isaiah

just can't believe that his fellow countrymen

are just acting so bad and so unholy and so

sinful.

And then it comes to chapter six and he's

taken up into the throne room of God.

And this is what it says, starting in verse

three, "The angels are one called out to

another

and said, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of

hosts.

The whole earth is full of his glory and the

foundations of the thresholds trembled at the

voice of him who called out while the temple

was filling with smoke.

Then I said, 'Woe is me, for I am ruined

because I am a man of unclean lips and I live

among

a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have

seen the king, the Lord of hosts.'"

So his attitude changed rightly as he stood

before the presence of the holy, holy, holy

God of the universe.

So Abram thought that, okay, I'm coming before

the holy God, he's coming and trembling and

great seriousness and I'm going to have to

pass through these animals and make a covenant

with him, but I won't be able to keep it.

I won't be able to keep the covenant.

So God wasn't setting Abram up to fail.

God wasn't asking him to cut the covenant.

God himself would cut the covenant with

himself and by himself.

He lays out the terms of the covenant in

verses 13 through 16.

Verse 13, "God said to Abram, 'Know for

certain that your descendants will be

strangers in

the land that is not theirs, which they will

be enslaved and oppressed 400 years.'"

Then verse 16, "Then in the fourth generation

they will return here for the iniquity of the

amrite is not yet complete."

He reads the terms of the covenant, of the

contract, of the treaty, and then he promises

for certain that this is going to happen.

You're going to go out, you're a descendants.

Your multitude of descendants will be slaves

in Egypt for 400 years, that he's going to

bring them out and they're going to take the

land of Canaan.

And then the next thing that happened was

amazing to us and it's amazing to Abram

himself.

Just imagine yourself being in his position.

Verse 17, "It came about when the sun had set

that it was very dark and behold, there

appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch

which passed between these pieces."

Instead of Abram going through the ceremony, a

flaming torch and a smoking oven go through.

And of course, the flaming torch and smoking

oven represent God's presence.

God himself walking through.

Just like it did in Exodus 19 on Mount Sinai,

verse 16, "So it came about a third day when

it was morning, that there were thunder and

lightning flashes and a thick cloud upon the

mountain and a very loud trumpet sound so that

all the people who were in the camp trembled.

And Moses brought the people out of the camp

to meet God and they stood at the foot of

the mountain.

Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke because the

Lord descended upon it in fire and it smoke

ascended like the smoke of a furnace and the

whole mountain quaked violently.

When the sound of the trumpet grew louder and

louder, Moses spoke and God answered him

with thunder.

God is represented by a fire and by smoke, by

a fire by night and a cloud by day."

This is how God's presence was represented to

Abram and to his people.

Abram is in the presence of God and God is

doing something amazing.

God has given Abram the gospel.

This is the gospel in this covenant rat

ification ceremony.

God is saying that I'm going to bless you.

I'm not only going to bless you, but I'm going

to make your family a blessing on every nation

.

All peoples will be blessed by you and I'm

going to create a nation.

He took Abram out of a multitude of people in

Ur of Chaldeans and separated him by himself

for his purposes alone.

He created the Hebrew people out of nothing,

out of just Abram for no reason in Abram

himself.

All of your descendants, all these Hebrew

people, they're going to live lives.

They're going to write down a book or several

books and they're going to point to what I'm

going to do in the future.

One day your children, one of your children's

children's children's children is going to

do my work, is going to be the ultimate

blessing to all the peoples of the world.

God was walking through the covenant ceremony

of animals by himself, saying, "I will keep

my promise.

If I don't keep my promise, if I don't keep it

, then do to me like these animals."

But that'll never happen because God always

keeps his promise and he cannot help but

be truthful.

He is the truth.

He said, "I'm going to take the curse of

broken promises that you've made on myself.

I will be cut down in your place."

He didn't ask Abram to go with him.

He didn't ask for Abram's cooperation.

He didn't say, "God helps those who helps

themselves or cooperate with me for your

blessing,

for your breakthrough."

He walked through and he took the curse of the

covenant on himself, by himself alone,

with no help from mankind.

One of the best passages, the Old Testament,

the Bible is just so amazing.

The details of the prophecies about our Lord

and Savior, Jesus Christ, are so amazing.

Isaiah 53, "He was despised and forsaken of

men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with

grief, and like one from whom men hide their

face, he was despised and he did not esteem

him.

Surely our griefs he himself bore, and our sor

rows he carried, yet we ourselves esteemed

him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted.

But he was pierced through for our transgress

ions, he was crushed for our iniquities.

The chastening of our well-being fell upon him

, and by his scourging we are healed.

All of us like sheep have gone astray.

Each of us has turned to his own way, but the

Lord has caused the iniquity of us all

to fall on him."

And then verse 8, "By oppression and judgment

he was taken away, and as for his generation,

who considered that he was cut off out of the

land of the living, for the transgression

of my people to whom the stroke was due.

Our Lord took our curse on himself without any

help, because we couldn't help, we couldn't

take it on ourselves.

He took it all on himself.

He was cut off like the heifer, like the ram,

like the goat in our place."

And this is the gospel that Abram is given by

God in sprout form.

And as you read the Old Testament, as you read

through Isaiah and all those prophecies,

and as you read the New Testament, the Gospels

, and then acts into the epistles and into

Revelation,

you see that gospel take full form and grow

into the fullness that we know today, that

we are so blessed, like 1 Peter said, that we

have so much that God has given us.

Emmanuel, God with us, his presence with us in

the flesh, Abram asked God, how could

he know that I'm going to possess the land?

He had no idea that God would answer in such a

way.

Trust God's promises, brothers and sisters,

and we'll, every single time, just this week

with the answer to prayer from Ms. Rita, for

Brother Charlie, just for the simple physical

practical issues at your house, Claudia and

Tim, God answers and he takes care of us.

But if all that stuff would have gone forth,

we have been given Christ who walked through

death in our place and took its sting and took

the victory of the grave.

And lastly, we can rest and rely on the

promises of God, like Abraham did, by living

in light

of his faithfulness, the last verses 18

through 21.

On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abr

am, saying, "To your descendants I have

given this land from the river of Egypt as far

as the great river of the river Euphrates,

the Kennight, and the Kenezite, and the Cadmon

ite, and the Hittite, and the Parazite, and the

Refi'im, and the Amorite, and the Canaanite,

and the Gurgersite, and the Jebusite."

Abram's story is much like ours.

I don't mean that we're all, when we become

Christians, have a vision of a covenant rat

ification

ceremony and split animals and all that stuff.

It did happen, but we don't all experience

that.

And what we do experience, like Abram and

Abraham, is a life of ups and a life of downs.

Abram, in verse 6, God says that he was

justified, he was reckoned righteous because

of his faith,

and then right the next chapter, right after

this great experience and vision of this

covenant

that God gives him, he falls back into sin.

The right before this, right before 14, where

the battle, the world war of the kings, Abram

has to take his family down to Egypt because

there's a famine in Canaan where he's at.

And when he gets there, he tells, he causes

Sarai to lie to the pharaoh because she was

beautiful and he didn't want the pharaoh to

kill him and then take her into his harem.

And so he lies to the pharaoh.

This is before his justification.

Well then, in chapter 17, the same thing

happens.

This is after his justification.

He lies to Abimelech, the king of Korea, that

Sarai is just his sister and Abimelech doesn't

kill him either.

So he lied before and he lied after.

Just like us, Abram is simultaneously

justified and a sinner.

Just like us, he goes through ups and downs in

his spiritual lives.

In the next chapter, in chapter 16, he goes to

his wife's servant, Hagar, and says, "God's

promised me a child.

I'm going to take it in my own hands and do it

my way."

Well, that wasn't what God had told him to do.

So just like us, he falls into sin.

He has these high moments in his life and he

has these low moments in his life.

And no matter what happened in his life, he

held on to the promise that God made to him.

And the last part of this chapter shows that

he was looking forward to a future promise.

None of these things happened, none of these

peoples were taken over in his lifetime.

It was all going to be in the future by this

great multitude of people that were going

to be his family that he didn't see yet.

And it was going to be in the land that he

didn't have ownership of yet, that all these

people that he didn't see yet that were going

to be his family, were going to take and

conquer

this land.

And this would happen hundreds of years later

in the book of Joshua.

And by David and Solomon, finally taking over

and making conquest, fulfilling this promise

that God made to him.

And then he also looked forward to his family

being a blessing to all peoples, as we have

said, seen.

And we get to live on the other side of this

promise.

We get to look back and read about what

happened to Abram and his family, what

happened in

Joshua as they were conquering the land, what

happened in kings and chronicles with David

and Solomon and his family, all the way to the

return from the exile, and then John the

Baptist being born and making straight the way

of the promised seed in Christ and his

life and death and burial resurrection that we

get the blessing of.

We get to look back and see how God worked

that out.

And so that should encourage us that when God

makes a promise for us to know with all

of our hearts that he is going to keep that

promise.

But sometimes that promise is misunderstood,

and especially by the Jews of Christ's day.

We've been through John and we've been through

Matthew, and there's many times for the Jews

misunderstood what the promise was going to be

about.

They were confused.

They thought that just because they were the

physical children of Abraham, that they were

okay, that the promises that God made to Abram

applied to them.

John chapter 8, Christ is talking with the

Jews, and they made the same mistake.

Look at verse 31, "So Jesus was saying to

those Jews who had believed him, 'If you

continue

in my word, then you are truly disciples of

mine, and you will know the truth, and the

truth will make you free.'

They answered him, 'We are Abraham's

descendants, and have never yet been enslaved

to anyone

while they're slaves to the Romans.'

How is it that you say, 'You will become free

?'

Jesus answered them, 'Truly, truly I say to

you, everyone who commits sin is the slave

of sin.

The slave does not remain in the house forever

.

The Son does remain forever.

So if the Son makes you free, you will be free

indeed.

I know that you are Abraham's descendants, yet

you seek to kill me, because my word has

no place in you.

I speak the things which I have seen with my

Father, therefore you also do the things

which you heard from your Father.'

They answered and said to him, 'Abraham is our

Father.'

Jesus said to them, 'If you are Abraham's

children, do the deeds of Abraham.

But as it is you are seeking to kill me, a man

who has told you the truth, which I heard

from God, this Abraham did not do.'

What are the deeds of Abraham?

The deeds of Abraham are to have faith in the

promises of God, and this is what they

did not do, as the fulfillment of the promises

of God was in their face.

Slave makes you a slave.

Sin makes you in the face of the almighty

fulfillment of the promise made to you to

deny it and lack faith.

So that when Abraham died, he had faith in the

promise of God, so that when he died,

he died as God promised him in chapter 15,

satisfied.

Genesis 25-7, these are all the years of

Abraham's life that he lived, 175 years.

Abraham breathed his last and died in a ripe

old age, an old man, and satisfied with life,

and he was gathered to his people.

So God did answer his promise in there, and

then, as we know, as we see from the rest

of scripture, God fulfilled his promises

throughout the Old Testament and in the New

Testament with his son, Jesus Christ.

He took our curse for us.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we love you, and thank you

for your mercy.

Lord, I thank you for your word, for the

promises that you kept to Abraham that we get

to read

it and trust in today.

I pray that you would continue to bless us as

we go out to trust you more, to rely on

your promises, and to have greater faith in

your truth.

In Christ's name, amen.

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