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July 5/2026 | Genesis 15 | Expository sermon by Shayne Poirier
This is a sermon from Grace Fellowship Church at Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. If you would like to learn more about us, please visit our website at gfcedmonton .ca. You can also find us on Instagram, Grace Church, Y-E-G, all one word, or on Facebook.
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Well, today I get to preach on what I think is the best theme in all of the Bible. I have the preacher's text. I have the text in Genesis today to preach. If there is a passage that one must preach in the book of Genesis, it is Genesis 15.
And that makes my task even harder because I will never preach it the way it needs to be preached. I will never meet the standard that this passage deserves. And yet, with God's help, I will seek to preach it.
And I want to frame our time speaking about this grand theme that is before us, justification by faith alone. I want to frame it historically. I want to show us where we are on the map of our understanding of justification by faith alone.
It was almost 500 years ago when a council of 30 Roman Catholic bishops met in a city called Trent in northern Italy. And initially, Pope Paul III had called this council together to respond to the growing problem that was the Protestant Reformation.
And so this council came together, and for 18 years, from 1545 to 1563, they met to discuss what they saw as a groundswell of heretics and schismatics. And as the Reformation grew, so did the council.
It started in 1545 with 30 bishops. By the time it was concluded, it consisted of 255 bishops. You can almost get a sense of the difficulty they saw. It might have been a growing problem when they first met.
It was a real problem by the time the council was over. And for the Roman Catholic Church, it was their line-in-the-sand kind of moment. It was their occasion to formally denounce all that the Protestant Reformation held dear, and to distinguish themselves from this movement.
And when everything was said and done, the council had accomplished this. They had articulated a host of new decrees and canons, as they called them. They produced a universal catechism, because the church needed to be better insulated.
The church needed to be better insulated from the truths of the gospel, in reality. They had a standardized liturgy, and then they indexed a list of prohibited books. And among all of these publications that they produced, within that list of publications, they produced a list of decrees, of counter-Reformation decrees, in an effort to undo what the Protestant Reformers had started.
And among these decrees is a famous list that was produced in the council's sixth session. This was published in January of 1547, on the 13th day of January, and it dealt with the topic of justification.
And if you were to go, you can go on to the Roman Catholic Encyclical's website and read the Council of Trent for yourself. You can read the decrees and the canons. I did that this week, reading many of the canons that came out of the sixth session.
And noteworthy amongst one of those canons was one in particular, it's Canon 12. And I want to read Canon 12 for you. Council of Trent, Canon 12, reads like this. If anyone shall say that justifying faith is not, is nothing else, but confidence in the divine mercy which remits sin for Christ's sake, or that it is this confidence alone by which we are justified, let them be anathema.
I want to translate that into modern English, it's a bit archaic, it's in archaic English. So let me say it this way. If anyone says that justifying faith consists of trusting alone in God's mercy in Christ for the forgiveness of sins, let him be accursed.
If anyone believes that you can be saved simply by believing in Jesus, you are damned. That is Canon 12 in the sixth session of the Council of Trent. And so what the Roman Catholic Church then did was put forward a wholesale denial of the doctrine of justification by faith alone.
Moreover, they decree that those who believe this doctrine were not only in error, but they were under the curse of Almighty God. That it did not get worse than believing this. And now 500 years later, 500 years, or nearly 500 years has passed since that decree, and yet the doctrine of justification by faith alone is no less spurned than it was then.
If you talk to Roman Catholics today, some will say that they believe in justification alone. I recently had a conversation with someone about this who was Catholic, and they said, no, we believe in justification by faith alone.
And I said, what is faith? And they provided a monstrous definition of some kind of sentimental feelings combined with meritorious works. Meanwhile, if you go to maybe more mainstream Roman Catholic apologists, they will say that the justification by faith alone is nothing more than legal fiction.
They call it this because it's a legal declaration of righteousness where there is no material righteousness. And so in their eyes, justification by faith alone is nothing more than a kind of divine slight of hand where God pronounces righteousness where there is no righteousness.
And if that weren't enough, within the Protestant church today, there is growing opposition to the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Perhaps you're familiar with the name N .T. Wright, who popularized a theory known as the new perspective on Paul, which says that justification is little more than dealing with the Jewish exclusivism of the first century.
It's not about believing on Christ that you might be saved. It's simply the inclusion of the Gentiles that they might engage in their own sort of covenant faithfulness. In seeker sensitive circles, there's an unwillingness to discuss sin and therefore justification by faith alone is irrelevant.
What is really important in those circles is the meeting of felt needs or within our own hearts, within our own souls. Is it not true that we are all prone to wander from the biblical reality of justification by faith alone in favor of some form of moralistic therapeutic deism where Christ's work is little in my performance as much.
It doesn't matter whether we look from without or from within, that we are surrounded by enemies as it were. Surrounded by those who would wage war and defeat the idea, this understanding of justification by faith alone.
And yet, I want to tell you, that's why this is the text of Genesis. There are few things, I can think of almost nothing more important than the doctrine of justification. And this doctrine of the justification of sinners by faith alone.
John Calvin famously said, justification is the main hinge on which salvation turns. Similarly, Martin Luther famously wrote, justification is the article by which the church stands or falls. And I'm here to tell you that there is almost nothing more important about your deeply held beliefs, your views, your theology, than your view on justification.
It is. This is not me trying to have a dramatic introduction. It is the difference between joy and sorrow. It is the difference between delight and duty. Justification by faith alone is the difference between zeal and apathy, fruit and thistles, happiness and misery, hope and despair, life and death, even heaven and hell.
Hinge on this reality of justification by faith alone. And we've spent a few weeks away from Genesis. As we come back to Genesis 15. Wouldn't you know it? Genesis 15 is all about justification by faith alone.
Here, again, in contrast to the Marcionites, you might remember we spoke about them who tried to put away the Old Testament. In contrast to those claims, Genesis 15 articulates one of the most important Christian doctrines under the sun.
And what we see from this passage is nothing short of a clarion declaration of the gospel itself. That Genesis 15 preaches the gospel. And what we see as we look here is that God saves sinners. But He doesn't just save sinners.
He saves sinners by faith alone in Him. He saves sinners by faith alone according to His covenant faithfulness. And He saves sinners at His own expense. Genesis 15 is one of the best chapters in the Bible.
It's my favorite chapter this week. And it should be yours too. I hope we get to the end of this and you see why. So we're in Genesis 15. We're going to look at all 21 verses. We're going to divide the passage under three headings.
And the first one that I want to show us or bring before us is this. That we are justified by faith alone. We stand or fall before God by nothing else but by faith in Him and in Him alone. And we will look at that with a greater degree of specificity still.
This is what we read in verse 1. After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Fear not, Abram. I am your shield and your reward shall be very great. But Abram said, O Lord God, what will you give me for I continue childless and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?
And Abram said, Behold, you have given me no offspring and a member of my house will be my heir. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him. This man shall not be your heir. Your very own son shall be your heir.
And he brought him outside and said, Look toward heaven and number the stars. And if you are able to number them, if you are able to number them, then he said to him, So shall your offspring be. And he believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness.
As we land back here in Genesis 15, I want to set the scene for us again. You'll remember that Abram has just returned from his heroic rescue of Lot in the chapter that just went before us. You'll remember there were the great four superpowers that were developing northeast of Israel who came down to settle the score when those five kings in the Valley of Sedim said, We're not going to honor that vassal treaty anymore.
11 years we've done it. The 12th year, we're not going to do this. And so the four kings came down. They defeated the five kings that were in the Valley of Sedim, in the Salt Valley. And then they made a fatal mistake, didn't they?
In that they kidnapped Abram's nephew, Lot, and carried him and his family away with the plunder. And you'll remember from Genesis 14 that Abram the Hebrew, as he is called in verse 13, that he was notified of this.
And so he gathered his 318 fighting men and they went in hot pursuit of these four kings and their captives. They went as far as Dan and then even further beyond Damascus, pursuing them some 280 kilometers.
And of course we know that they defeated these kings. They gained all of the spoil back. And of course they rescued Lot from his captors. And then what happened? You'll remember in the latter part of Genesis 14 that Abram went outside of Salem, a place we know now to be Jerusalem.
And there he was met by Melchizedek, the priest king of Salem, who proved to be a type of Christ, who met Abram and who blessed him. And informs one of the important points on the royal priesthood, the lineage of royal priests that finally bring us to Christ.
Now, as we land in Genesis 15, Abram is now enjoying maybe, I'm not sure, maybe some peace and quiet after the events of verse 14 or chapter 14. And as he does this, we read in verse 1 that the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.
Now it's an interesting word, that word vision. It's used often in the Bible to describe prophetic visions. So here we see Abram engaged now in a prophetic vision of sorts. And God tells Abram that he is his shield and that Abram's reward shall be very great.
And some might look at that and go, well, what is the point of that? Well, you might remember that Abram had just returned from battle. And we see here that it was not Abram's victory, but it was God's victory.
That God was the shield. And you'll remember that Abram received a blessing. He received food from Melchizedek, but he declined the gifts of Bera, the king of Sodom. Remember, king evil of Sodom. But what do we see here?
Not only was God with Abram in the battle, he was his shield, but he is going to provide the reward. Abram doesn't need the reward of the king of Sodom. He needs God's reward, and God will provide it.
But as the Lord speaks to Abram in verse one, we see something that's altogether new in this passage. And that is that up until this point, Abram has always remained silent in these exchanges. That God speaks to Abram, and Abram, he's mum.
His lips are zipped. And he simply does what it is that God would have him to do. If we look in Genesis chapter 12, in verses one through four, we see it for ourselves. That the Lord said, go from your country to the land that I will show you.
He continues on, and what does Abram do? Abram doesn't say, well, when should I go? Where should I go? How should I? Not at all, but verse four. We read, Abram went. There's no dialogue. There's no questions.
There's a command and then unquestioning obedience. But as we come to Genesis 15, something changes. We go from a monologue to a balanced dialogue, where God speaks and Abram responds, and God speaks and Abram responds.
And this is what we see. Here, the word of the Lord comes to Abram in verse one. And for the first time, we hear Abram's voice in this exchange with God. And he says, oh Lord God, what will you give me?
For I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus. There is something that has been nagging Abram as he has wandered up and down through the land of Canaan. If you'll recall, what is Abram's name?
What does Abram's name mean? It means exalted father, that it's in his name, that he will be the father of many descendants. And we remember from Genesis chapter 12 and verse seven, that as Abram was called out of Ur of the Chaldees, that God promised him, not only that he would inherit a land, but that his offspring would inherit a land.
And so here Abram is, he just wants to be like all of his ancestors up until this point. He wants to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. He wants the glory, the joy of a family and of a lineage that comes after him.
God has promised this very thing. And yet years have passed and Abram and Sarai are still wandering the land without children. And so we see here, Abram bring this appeal to the Lord God. And it helps us when we appreciate the historical context of it, that if you lived in the days of Abram and Sarai and you did not have children, what did that mean?
But it meant you weren't under the divine blessing, you were under the divine curse. That whatever deity it was who you served, well, you were not in good graces with that deity. And so here Abram is, God says to him, I am your shield.
I'm the one that took you through that battle and your reward is going to be very great. And Abram says, but what about the promise? What about this expectation that I've had since I left Ur of the Chaldees?
I have no children and I'm gonna give all of my possessions. We've heard all about Abram's possessions. I'm gonna give all of these possessions to my chief servant, to the servant that lives in my house, which was a common thing.
It was a tragic thing in Abram's day. If you were childless, you had great possessions and at the end of the day, you just gave them to your servant because there was no one else to give them to. God was promising protection.
He was promising a great reward, but Abram was waiting for the fulfillment of these promises. And surely this was growing heavy, weighty in Abram's soul. But I want you to see something here. That in verses two and three, Abram doesn't grumble.
He doesn't complain. Instead, he does something remarkable in that he faithfully appeals to God in the most reverential way possible. When he says, Oh Lord God, he uses an expression. If you look in the Hebrew, it is Adonai Yahweh.
Abram only uses this expression twice in all of the accounts in scripture. We see it in verse two and then we see it again in verse eight when he makes his second appeal that we'll look at in a little bit.
It's an expression that's used four times in total in the Pentateuch. And what scholars see Abram doing as he uses this expression, Adonai Yahweh, Oh Lord God, is that he is addressing God in the most reverential of terms.
He's coming to God as a servant would come to his master. It reminds me of raising children. And one of the things that we did, I just gave a book to our brother and sister as they seek to parent Alan.
And one of the things that we read in that book that was very helpful was as often as you can say yes to your kids, you should. But when you say no to your kids, knows the law, right? No means no. And one of the things that we sought to do in our children is when we say no, for them to bring a polite appeal.
Sometimes we say no and the kids say, but, but, but, and we would say no, you need to make a polite appeal. Well, here we see Abram making a polite appeal to God. He appeals to God in a posture of a faithful and humble submission.
And we see that God does not look down on this appeal for in verses four and five, we see the promise reiterated by God that he would not only have offspring, but that Abram would have a son and that from this son would come offspring that are as numerous as the stars in heaven.
And so what you see here then is a picture of a faithful man and then even more a picture of a more faithful God who will always keep his word. I like what one commentator says on this point, maybe it's tangential, but I think that some of us need to hear it, that Abram was learning the basic lesson that every believer in turn has to learn, namely that God's delays are not God's denials.
There are times when we will experience a delay, it is not a denial. We must patiently wait for the promise to be fulfilled. And then comes one of the most important, not only one of the most important chapters in scripture, but now one of the most important verses in one of the most important chapters in all of scripture.
In verse six, we read this, he that is Abram believed the Lord and he that is God counted it to him as righteousness. Now this is a truly remarkable statement that Abram believed the Lord and that God counted it to him as righteousness.
Maybe we take this for granted because we've heard it quoted in Galatians and in the book of Romans, but I wanna just frame this for a moment, how extraordinary this verse is that in a world filled with man-made religions, we would expect God to say something like this and Abram engaged in works of faithfulness and thus God acknowledged his righteousness or we might expect to read and Abram continued to be righteous, thus securing God's favor.
But no, that's not what we read. It does not say that. In fact, we know, don't we, that Abram was not righteous. We've seen Abram's life up until this point. Where did he come from? He came from Ur of the Chaldees where they worshiped pagan idols.
Then what? He was called to the land of Canaan and we all know about the Egypt fiasco where the famine came and he took his wife down into Egypt and what did they do in Egypt? He said, she's my sister.
He allowed his own wife to go into the Pharaoh's harem so that he might preserve himself. In the coming chapters, in the coming weeks, we are gonna hear more about Abram's sinfulness and yet God saw not Abram's performance, not his meritorious works, not his righteous deeds, but God saw Abram's faith, weak and wavering as it might have been and he counted that faith as righteousness.
Now thus far, we have heard a great deal of the gospel in the book of Genesis. We heard the Proto-Ewangelion. You'll remember that in Genesis 3 .15, the first gospel, that there was going to be a serpent who was going to crush, sorry, an offspring who was going to crush the head of the serpent.
We heard how God saved a people through the flood in the ark in Noah's lineage. We saw how God effectually called Abram out of his sinful life to come after him and follow him and now we discover how it is that a sinful man can be made right with a holy God.
It is by faith. It is by faith and faith alone. It's not meritorious works. It's not religious rituals. It is by faith in God and his perfect promises. Now I want, I need to arm you with something here.
That some people will come to you and say that this passage doesn't say what you think it says. It doesn't mean what you think it means. But I want to show you that no matter how you look at this, if you do not come away from this text understanding that it is teaching the reality of justification by faith alone, then you've got the passage all wrong.
It is not legal fiction. This is biblical truth. So let's look in verse 6 for a moment. I don't want anyone coming here shaking you saying no, no, no. It's not justification by faith. It's justification by faithfulness.
Whatever it might be. In verse 6 it says this. He believed the Lord. Now what does it mean that he believed the Lord? That word believed, it has the same, the Hebrew word has the same root as the word amen.
It is as if Abram heard the promise and in his soul he uttered an amen to God. And this is how we translate that Hebrew word. It means to have trust, to have faith, or to have confidence in something.
It's the exact faith that we read about in Hebrews 11 .1 when we read that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Abram was assured, he was convicted that God's promises were true even though they were not yet realized.
He had faith as we would define faith. But more than that, because he believed the Lord, we read that God counted it to him as righteousness. Counted. What does it mean that he counted it to him as righteousness?
Some would say, well, he's simply recognizing Abram's righteousness. He sees his faith and he recognizes righteousness. But is that what Genesis 15 .6 says? The term here that God uses for counted is the Hebrew word hashav, which means to credit, to reckon, or to impute.
It is a word that is used not to speak of someone who internally possesses something for themselves, but of someone who is regarded as having something that isn't theirs. So we count, we credit, we impute.
It's not a recognition of something. It's the giving of something that you do not have. And then righteousness. What does it mean here to be righteous? When Moses used this word righteousness as he authored the book, it is just the word that we would expect to find.
It speaks to the state of being just or right. It conveys the concept of innocence. Sometimes it even conveys the concept of prosperity, of having an abundance of something. And so what we find in this passage is truly extraordinary.
That this is the first text in all of the Bible that explicitly teaches the justification, the imputation of righteousness by faith alone. The first mention of justification by faith alone is not in John.
It's not in Romans. It's in Genesis. And we find it here in Genesis 15. And it is the same justification then that is preached all throughout the New Testament. I'm gonna take you a couple of places just in case you're falling asleep.
I want you with me. Let's go to Galatians chapter 3 and verse 6. In Galatians chapter 3, Paul the apostle takes Genesis 15 and he doesn't just apply it to Abram, but he applies it to all the people who are Abram's descendants by faith.
Galatians 3, 6. Just as Abram believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness, know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abram. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, In you shall all the nations be blessed.
So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the law and do them.
Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law. What? For the righteous shall live by faith. If you go another place with me, let's go together to Romans chapter 4. I want you to see how the apostle Paul uses Genesis 15 there.
In Romans 4 and verse 1. As Paul is speaking to this mixed church, maybe I'll, just as you turn there, I'll go on a brief tangent. But as Paul is dealing with the church in Rome, do you know what he is doing?
See what happened was, as the church was formed in Rome, it's very likely that some of the proselytes from Pentecost returned to Rome. It was largely Jewish in its constitution. But in AD 49, Claudius excommunicated, he cast out all of the Jews and it became almost overnight completely Gentile.
Five years later he died and eventually all of the Jews began to make their way back to Rome. And so you had a church that was exclusively Jewish, exclusively Gentile, and now mixed Jew and Gentile. Hence why we read so much about the distinctions between Israel and the Gentiles, right?
Hebrews, or sorry, Romans chapter 9 through 11. Well, in chapter 4, as Paul is dealing now with Abraham, he says, what shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? 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 counted to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. And to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.
And if we go just a few verses over to verses 22 through 25, just so you know, it's not speaking only about the Romans in the first century. That is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness. But the words, it was counted to him, were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also.
It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead, Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. One of the things that we see here is that Abraham not only believed the promise that God was going to provide him children, but he believed still in a future promise.
Jesus himself said in John 6, no, he didn't say that. Maybe I removed it from my notes. I think I did. But he said that, it's in John chapter eight, he said that Abraham saw my day. That he looked forward to the day that Christ was coming.
And for those of us who place our faith in this Christ, not by works, but by faith, that faith is counted to us as righteousness. This has always been the way that God has saved his people. God has never saved his people by the works of the law.
God has never saved his people by covenant faithfulness. God has only ever saved his people by faith. And what a glorious gospel this is. Like Abraham, our record is tarnished. Psalm 51 tells us that we were conceived in sin.
We come out of the womb with debt. We come out of the womb with a sin debt, not our own, as descendants of Adam. What we have accrued, I was thinking about it this week. I remember when I was going through my law enforcement training, thinking about how terrible it would be to have a criminal record.
Right? To have a criminal record, it might hinder your ability to travel. It might hinder your ability to have certain jobs. Certainly would have hindered my ability in that way. And I thought, what an interesting thing that everyone in this room has a criminal record.
It's not something as insignificant as a criminal record that's kept in the CPIC database in Canada so that you can run my name and determine if I have a criminal record. No, you have a criminal record and that record is kept in heaven.
It's a criminal record, a record of treason against almighty God. That we, like Abraham, have all sinned and yet, what a marvel, God justifies us, not by our sinlessness, but by our faith. If he were to require one pure, just one pure, one undefiled meritorious work, if you were to say, I will set the bar low, just do one good thing, we would be damned.
Because even our motives would ruin us. But God justifies the ungodly by faith. He set the standard, the only standard that we could meet. That is by looking to him and trusting in him alone. We talked about it in our Bible study this past week in John chapter 6.
No, it wasn't our Bible study. It was when we did evangelism on Wednesday. What must we do to be doing the works of God? The people came across the lake from Tiberias. They wanted food and they asked Jesus, what must we do to be doing the works of God?
Jesus answered them, this is the work of God that you believe in him whom he has sent. The work that God requires of his people is faith. It is belief and nothing more. I like what Spurgeon says on this.
He says, look through the Hebrews list of the heroes of faith. Some of them are exceedingly imperfect characters. Some we would hardly have thought of mentioning. But they had faith. And although men in their faulty judgment think faith to be an inferior virtue and often scarcely look on it as a virtue at all, yet in the judgment of God, faith is the supreme virtue.
This, said Christ, is the work of God, the greatest of all works, that you believe on him whom he has sent, to trust, to believe. This will be counted to us for righteousness even as it was to Abram. And what a righteousness it is that in one of my, you've heard me quote it several times, it is increasingly becoming one of my favorite texts in scripture from Hebrews 10, 14, for by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
That we exist in this room, if you have faith in the Lord Jesus, we exist, as the reformers would say, with this experience of simul justus a peccator. We are simultaneously sinners, it is true, we are being sanctified and yet in the sight of God by faith we are just so that he sees us, not for who we are, but for who Christ is in our stead.
In Romans chapter 10, as Paul was dealing with this debate between the Jews and the Gentiles, he's speaking about how it is that people are made right with God. And in Romans 10, 2 he says, for I bear them witness, speaking of the Jews, that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.
For being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
What a righteousness it is that we receive that is imputed to us by faith. John Flable says of it, Oh what a complete, finished, perfect thing is the righteousness of Christ. The searching eye of the holy and jealous God cannot find the least flaw or defect in it.
And if you have believed, the gospel, that righteousness is yours. Now I had to set, as I always do, a big foundation. I want to look now at how this justification by faith is confirmed, is further secured.
And there's a second truth that we see here. That not only are we justified by faith alone, but that we are justified by faith alone in covenant with God. We see this in verse 7. And he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.
But he said, that's Abram, Oh Lord God, Adonai Yahweh, how am I to know that I shall possess it? He said to him, Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon.
And he brought him all these things, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. And when the birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. Then the Lord said to Abram, Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs.
And will be servants there. And they will be afflicted for 400 years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve. And afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace.
You shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. So God does here is he reminds Abram that he brought him out of Ur of the Chaldees.
It's interesting. It's a saying that is going to be repeated in the giving of the Decalogue, the 10 commandments in Exodus 20, speaking about bringing them out of Egypt. So he's gonna bring people out multiple times.
And in verse eight, again, we see Abram makes this appeal with this Adonai Yahweh phrase. Now it's not doubt on Abram's part, but what Bible scholars see is happening is this, that if you were to inherit land in the ancient Near East, in this time that Abram is living, it was expected that there would be a covenant that would provide a security for the land.
It's like if you buy a house today, you go to the lawyer and you deal with all of the paperwork. A good example might be if I were to tell you that I'm gonna give you my house. You can move all your furniture in.
You can paint the walls. You can do everything that you would like to the house. But if you don't hold the deed in your hand, if the lawyers don't do their thing and give that deed to you in your name, you're nothing more than a squatter in my house.
Well, here, Abram's saying, if you're gonna give me the land, what is the security? Well, Lord, how am I to know that I shall possess it? And so what God does is he condescends to Abram. And what does he do?
He makes a covenant to prove to secure this inheritance for Abraham. And most people, I think, when they read the book of Genesis, they just, they read Genesis 15. They see Abram cut these two animals in half and they go, that's strange.
But my reading plan has to be going to Genesis 16 now. So I'm gonna keep going. What does it mean that Abraham cuts these animals in half? What's going on? What does this have to do with the story? Well, some of you have heard me talk in the past about biblical covenants.
Covenants are a foreign concept for many people. We'll talk about them just briefly. But one of the phrases that we use or that was used in this day to speak of the initiating of a new covenant is this, that they would say that they're going to cut a covenant, a korat berit, that we're going to initiate a new covenant by cutting it.
And what they would do is exactly what we see in Abram, that they would take animals, that they would cut them down the middle. They would place one half of the animal on this side, the other half of the animal on this side, and the two parties would proceed through the animals.
And as they proceeded through the animals, they would be declaring to each other and to all of the witnesses, if one of us should turn away from this covenant, if one of us should violate this covenant, let us be like these animals.
Let us die and be humiliated on the ground. And so what we see is Abram sets the scene for this very covenant. And it's something that is well-documented in the ancient Near East, but we don't even have to look outside of the Bible to find it.
We can go to Jeremiah chapter 34 and verse 17. Jeremiah 34 actually explains this. This is helpful to use the Bible, to interpret the Bible. But Jeremiah 34, 17, we read this. Therefore, thus says the Lord, you have not obeyed me by proclaiming liberty, everyone to his brother and to his neighbor.
Behold, I proclaim to you liberty to the sword, to pestilence and to famine, declares the Lord. I will make you a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth and the men who transgressed my covenant. Here it is.
The men who transgressed my covenant and did not keep the terms of the covenant that they made before me, I will make them like the calf that they cut in two and passed between its parts. The officials of Judah, the officials of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, the priests, and all the people of the land who passed between the parts of the calf, I will give them into the hand of their enemies and into the hand of those who seek their lives.
Their dead bodies shall be food for the birds of the air and beasts of the earth. And so what we see is this is a covenant. Now you might look at that and say, it's a rather strange covenant, but it is a covenant.
And in fact, we see expressions of this covenant still today. When you come to a wedding and you enter in through the church doors, what do you typically see? There's an aisle and there are two sides.
And if you don't know the proper wedding etiquette like me, you ask your wife, what side are we supposed to sit on again to be on the groom's side, right? You go to the groom's side or the bride's side if it's a really traditional in its approach.
And the whole idea is this, that as the bride and the groom come down the aisle, they're passing between the covenant halves. And hopefully your family members are still alive, but you're passing between these two halves, the covenant halves.
You make your covenant at the front. And then what do you do? You pass back through that aisle together. We do that because it's an echo of cutting a covenant from the ancient Near East. And so Abram, all that to say, sets the scene for the covenant.
And then something very interesting happens in verse 12. As the sun was going down, what happens? A deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. This is why I think language can be very helpful.
As we look at this, this Hebrew word that is used, it is used to describe a supernatural kind of sleep. It's the same sleep that we find in Genesis 2 .21 when God puts the man to sleep that he might remove a rib from him to make a woman from his side.
It's that kind of divine anesthetic, if I can say it that way. It's God's surgery sleep. But it's also the kind of sleep that many prophets experience when they would experience visions. We see Job and some of the other prophets speak about this as well.
And in this sleep, what God does is he again promises Abram children and land. He does something remarkable. He foretells the coming slavery of the people of Israel and then of their victorious exodus and their plundering of the Egyptians as they go out.
Now, I could go to verse 17. I wanted to go to verse 17 as I was preparing. But I think verse 17 needs its own dedicated section. So I'll stop there and just ask you the question, what is the significance of this?
What is the significance that not only are we justified by faith alone, but that we are justified by faith alone and that God expresses this in covenant? I said at the beginning, we are not familiar with covenant.
So I think that most of us read this and we go, it has some significance, but I know not what it is. We're used to contracts where people are on an even playing field and they make a legal agreement together.
What is a covenant? Well, a biblical covenant, the covenant in the days of Abram and certainly our covenant relationship with God is this, that there was one mighty power. There was a strong power that was relating to a weaker power.
It's that same treaty that we see in the Valley of Sidim with the four kings and the five kings. Isn't it interesting? We see a vassal treaty in chapter 14 and then we see a true covenant treaty with God in verse 15.
And what happens in this covenant is this, that the superpower, the strong power says, I will provide security. I will provide protection. I will give you, I will ensure that you have all that you need to thrive and you must show me covenant loyalty.
There would be blessings. There would be curses, stipulations as part of this covenant. But here we see that God does this, that he condescends to Abram by communicating to him in a way that he would understand, that he would grasp by covenant.
And not only does he do this to communicate to him in a way that he would understand, but he does this to bolster his faith and confidence in God's promise. That God has not only spoken, that God has not only promised, but that God has made a covenant with his people.
And this is the way that God always relates to his people, by covenant. R .C. Sproul says the basic structure of relationship, of the relationship God has established with his people is covenant. And this cannot be overstated.
And I'll tell you why. Because it not only means then, that we are justified by faith in God. It not only means that God has given us his precious promises, but it means that God has bound himself under covenant to fulfill his promises.
And this is something that we all need to hear. It's something that the bishops at the Council of Trent needed to hear. It's something that we need to repeat to ourselves day after day after day. The reason why this creates security for the believer is this.
Because your standing with God does not depend upon your faithfulness, but upon the covenant faithfulness of Almighty God. And because God does not transgress his covenants, it means you're secure. It means that when you're right with him, you are right with him.
And there's nothing that you can do. Like we're going to see. What is the title above chapter 16 in your Bible? The birth of who? Of Ishmael. We're going to see Abram fall in the next chapter. But his standing with God is not contingent upon his faithfulness.
It's contingent upon God's faithfulness. And that is truly something. It means that every time we come to this table and we partake in the Lord's Supper, what are we being reminded of? Of God's covenant faithfulness.
That he sent his son to die for our sins, that we might be right with him by faith. It is a covenant sign. It's a covenant meal that we partake in week after week after week, that we might be reminded that God is faithful to his promises.
We're not only remembering that Jesus died for us, but we're remembering that Jesus died for us until he comes. It is a covenant sign that looks back at his faithfulness and that looks forward to his faithfulness.
And so we see then that God justifies his people, not only by faith, but by faith through covenant. And I'm going to look at one last thing here. Beginning in verse 17. That God not only justifies us by faith alone, he not only justifies us by faith in covenant with him, but God justifies us by faith alone at God's peril, at God's expense.
He justifies us at great cost to him. How can I say that? Let's look at verse 17. When the sun had gone down and it was dark, verse 12, the sun was going down. Abram was put to sleep. Now the sun has gone down.
It was dark. Behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. A smoking fire pot and a flaming torch. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying to your offspring, I give this land.
From the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.
All the people of the land, I'm giving you this land by covenant. But what in the world is the significance of verse 17? We've heard about the setting of the scene, have we not? That the animals are cut in two, they're laid on the sides.
What we would expect in a covenant relationship is this. What? That Abram, he's not asleep. We would expect Abram to be awake. And he and the Lord God, that they, the two of them, would pass between those halves, those carcasses, and they would say together that if you or if I violate this covenant, let us be like these.
But what does God do? The very same thing he did when he made it possible only for us to be justified by faith. Abram could not walk between those carcasses. Had Abram walked between those carcasses, it would have told a completely different story.
But what do we see? We see the fire pot and the flaming torches passed between the pieces. What is that? Well, we looked at this just a little while ago, didn't we, on Saturday when we said that Jesus is the what?
The what of the world. He's the light of the world. That the Lord Jesus Christ, he is the visible image of the invisible God. That he is the picture of this God. And all through Scripture, what we see then is God being portrayed as light, as light and as flame.
In Exodus chapter 3 and verse 2, when God appeared to Moses, how did he appear to him? In a burning bush. A burning bush that is burning. It is a light. It is flaming. But it is never consumed. How did he lead them?
In Exodus 13 and verse 21, as they went through the wilderness on their way from Egypt to the promised land, as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. John chapter 8 and verse 12, the Lord Jesus said, we heard this, as they are celebrating the feast of tabernacles, the faithfulness of God as he led his people through the wilderness, what did he say to them?
He said, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. In Revelation chapter 1, we read about Jesus. In his right hand he held seven stars.
From his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun, shining in its strength, in full strength. Or in Revelation 21, just one more, and the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives its light, and its lamp is the Lamb.
What we see here, as Abram is asleep, completely passive, God has made sure he's not getting up to walk between those two carcasses. As Abram is asleep, God himself, and I would suggest to you on the authority of Scripture, and all of the echoes and allusions of Scripture, God the Son, passes between those carcass halves.
And what is being said? Not only is God responsible for the covenant faithfulness of God, but God is responsible for the covenant faithfulness of man. That the covenant curses, if God should violate those covenant curses, those covenant curses will fall upon him.
But if the man should not fulfill those covenant promises, the covenant curses shall fall upon God. The fire pot and the lamp that pass between these two. The reason why we don't have man and God passing between these things, is because God knows that we cannot keep the covenant.
And so God does what we could never do. He provides the surety for both parties in the covenant. So that what we see then, is that God as he enters into covenant with people, his people, he takes responsibility for both sides.
Hebrews 6 .13 explains this for us. For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no greater by whom to swore, he swore by himself saying, surely I will bless you and multiply you. Thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promises.
For people swear by something greater than themselves. And in all their disputes, an oath is final for its confirmation. So when God, so when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise, the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath.
So that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge, have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever in the order of who?
Of Melchizedek. We see this picture. Who is this Melchizedek? He is a picture of Christ who has this perfect priesthood. And what has God done? But he's taken it all upon himself. So that one commentator says, the Lord symbolized by the fire walking between the sacrificial offerings.
So taking upon himself the curse implicit in the ritual, thus be it done to me. If the terms of the covenant are broken, the Lord cut a covenant with Abraham that day, using the most solemn oath to ensure the certainty of the fulfillment of his word.
R .C. Sproul says this. I want you to see that it's not just my novel interpretation. He says, God invokes a self-maledictory oath or curse upon himself, should he fail to keep his covenant, because he can swear by no higher authority, God swears by himself to keep the covenantal terms.
Joel Beakey says, the covenant would be fulfilled by grace alone, not human efforts. Hear this. The son of God himself would die so that the covenant would stand firm. In Psalm 15, it's a tremendous psalm.
It speaks about those. Who are those who are worthy to go up the hill of the Lord and to dwell in or to approach the tent of the Lord? Psalm 15 verse 4 says this. In whose eyes a vile person is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord, who swears to his own hurt and does not change.
What we see God doing as he walks between these two halves, is he's doing this. He is swearing to his own hurt. He will not change. If the covenant is violated, he will pay the price. And so what we see here is twofold.
That God is going to keep his covenant promises, but that if his people do not, he will pay. He will keep his covenant promises, but if they do not, he will pay. And we see this. What was Christ doing on that cross?
What was Christ doing on that tree? He was becoming accursed, as it says in Galatians 3 .13. He redeemed us for the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.
That as Christ went to the cross, he was paying our covenant curse. He was fulfilling the just wrath of God that we deserve. In the words of R .C. Sproul, he was taking the curses of all those curses that were uttered on Mount Ebal, as the nation stood half on Mount Gerizim, half on Mount Ebal, so that when they said, the Lord will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of mind, and you shall grope at the noonday as the blind grope in darkness, and you shall prosper.
You shall not prosper in your ways. You shall be only oppressed and robbed continually, and there shall be no one to help you. As God the Son hung on that cross, and he cried, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
He was paying our penalty. He was paying our covenant curse. He was fulfilling God's perfect righteousness. Not so that we could engage in some kind of covenant faithfulness. We can't. But so that we can be justified by faith alone in that Son.
By faith alone in that Christ. That we are justified by faith alone through the miracle of double imputation. That as Christ was on that cross, our sin was imputed to Him. And by faith, His righteousness is imputed to us.
What does this mean then? Genesis 15 is preaching the gospel to us. That not only are we justified by faith in God, but even more specifically, we are justified by faith in the offspring who is to come, who would come to take our covenant curse for us.
And this means then security for the believer. As I said, we are justified. We're justified by faithfulness, but it's not our faithfulness, it's His. We're justified by His covenant faithfulness. We are justified by His meritorious works.
As Joel Behe says, you have warrant to trust Christ for the Lord has established His promise in a covenant. And it depends not on your worthiness, not even on how strong your faith or deep your repentance is, but on the Lord alone who shed His own blood to save the church.
There are going to be people who will come to you and say, justification by faith alone is legal fiction. They are dead wrong. Justification by faith alone is the way that God has always saved His people.
Always, always, always. And so I want to ask you, were the bishops at the council of Trent onto something? They were, but it was all the wrong things. Isaiah the prophet speaks well of them when he says, woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
Those who hold to justification by faith alone, they're not the ones who are accursed. It's the ones who reject justification by faith alone who are the accursed ones. If you reject justification by faith alone, you are accursed.
Justification by faith alone is the same way that God saved Abraham and David and Samson. And sometimes I'm surprised to see Samson's name in Hebrews 11. And everyone who has come before us leading up to Christ and everyone who has been right with God after Christ.
It is by seeing that I do not have what I need, but all that I need God has supplied in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. So that I need only believe in Him. An offspring would come from the loins of Abraham and take those covenant curses upon himself that we might be right with Him.
So then I would add this, I would finish with this. Brothers and sisters, because we are only justified by faith in Jesus Christ, we must believe in Jesus Christ. I like what one brother has repeated to me often, that the gospel is for Christians too.
That we need this gospel. We need this truth. That Jesus has done it all. And we need faith in that Jesus. George Whitfield is best known for his open air preaching. He once said this from his pulpit.
I saw a little makeshift, it was a replica of it when we were in Washington, D .C. He used to stand on that pulpit. And one time he stood on that pulpit and he said, do not delay. Fly into the arms of this Jesus and you shall be made clean by His blood.
Oh, what shall I say unto you to make you come to Jesus? Fly into the arms of Jesus and you shall be made clean in His blood. Believer, because God justifies sinners by faith alone, fly into the arms of Jesus.
Come to Him. Believe on Him. Hold fast to Him. He has made a covenant with His people. He will not forsake you. He has taken it all. He has accomplished it all. Fly unto Jesus. And for the unbeliever, do not delay, but fly into the arms of Jesus.
You might say, I'm a wretched sinner. So am I. But I found grace in the arms of Jesus. Come dirty. Come defiled. Come wretched. Come undone. But if you come to Him by faith, you will be justified. You will be made right.
You will be made right with Him forever. He will keep His promise. Let's pray.