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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