The Covenant-Keeping God Part 1 Genesis 15: 7-21

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The Covenant-Keeping God Part 2 Genesis 15:16-20

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As people who live 2 ,000 years on this side of the cross,
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Christians sometimes ask the question, how should I read the Old Testament?
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If I'm a Christian, isn't it enough just to read the New Testament? Obviously, you know,
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I don't agree with this because we're going through Genesis right now, which of course is in the Old Testament. But the question about how to read the
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Old Testament is a good one. There are many great reasons to read the Old Testament, but one of the significant reasons is to see how
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God works with His people. As we see God work with His people in the
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Old Testament, we can see how God works with us today. God never changes.
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And the way He works with His people never changes. His character is always holy and His work toward us is always for our good.
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We see this play out in the narratives of the Old Testament over and over again.
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And we have seen that already in our sermon series through Genesis. And we are going to see that today in the way that God relates to Abram.
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And this should be a great encouragement to us as we see how God works with His people. We see it in the
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Bible, and we have a much better idea of how He's working with us today as we go through our journey of faith too.
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Because these men and women were once on this journey too. And we're presently in it.
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So our text today is Genesis 15, 7 -21.
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And if you're using a red Bible, it's on pages 12 and 13. This sermon is titled,
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The Covenant -Keeping God. And what I'm going to do is, this is a two -part sermon.
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So we're going to do the first two points today. Then we're going to do the second two points, points three and four, two weeks from today.
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John mentioned I'll be gone next week. Carl Johnson will be preaching. So we're going to do the first two points today, and then the second two points next week.
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And our proposition and our big idea as we look at this passage from Genesis 15, 7 -21 is the
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Lord shows His faithful dedication in formal pronouncements. The Lord shows
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His faithful dedication in formal pronouncements. And we're going to see four ways
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His faithfulness is shown. The first way is by humbly descending to earthly procedures for our benefit.
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The Lord humbly descends to earthly procedures for our benefit.
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And we're going to see this in verses 7 -9. Last week we saw God pursue
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Abram once again. We've seen Him do this over the last several weeks. I mentioned that we have seen through this narrative between God and Abram that God relentlessly pursues this man
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Abram. And what Abram does is he responds in faith.
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We saw this faith that Abram demonstrated in the Lord last week. Abram had genuine faith in God and the result of that was that the
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Lord counted it to him as righteousness. I made the point that Abram was not counted righteous because of his works, but because of his faith.
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Just as we are. This is how faith works. It's always been this way and it always will be this way.
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You come into a right relationship with God by sincerely believing in Him and then the righteousness of God, the righteousness of Christ specifically, is credited to you.
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So that when God looks at you, He doesn't see your sin, He sees the righteousness of His Son. So when we stand before God at the judgment, we're safe, right?
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Because we are counted righteous. And God says, come into my kingdom. Now last week's sermon was leading up to the
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Abrahamic covenant that we are going to look at today. And to give you an idea of the setting of where we are,
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Abram is having a vision where the Lord is communicating with him. And I mentioned last week what a vision is.
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A vision is where you stay in the same place bodily, but the Lord takes you spiritually to a different place where He communicates with you.
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The Lord already promised to Abram that he would have a countless number of offspring as He told him to look at the stars.
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And that is how many his offspring would be. Now the Lord reminds him once again that included in this promise of offspring is land.
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So this offspring that's going to come from Abram, that's going to come from this blessed child Isaac, which we'll look at in probably a couple of months down the road here, that these people are going to inherit a land.
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And this is what we see in verse 7, this promise that He reminds him of again. And He said to him,
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I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.
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So the Lord reminds Abram of his plan from the beginning, from the point when He first called him.
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Remember, He brought Abram out of Ur, which would be in present day Iraq.
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And He brought him from there for the purpose of giving him the land of Canaan, also known as the land of promise.
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And as the Lord reminds Abram of his promise, Abram responds by wondering, how do
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I know this is going to happen? And the Lord graciously responds to him.
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Verse 8, this is what Abram says first. He said, Oh Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it, that I shall possess the land?
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Now you might wonder what is going to be the Lord's response to this. We might expect Him to say, I'm God.
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What I say goes. Isn't that enough? You should just trust me. I always keep my word.
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But He doesn't do that. This is how the Lord responds to Abram. In verse 9, 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.
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So the Lord is telling him to bring these animals in order to make a covenant with Him.
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Now before we go any further, let me explain to you what a covenant is. We have a little bit of an idea what a covenant is for marriage, right?
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There's agreement between a man and a woman to agree to marriage. A covenant is typically understood as a formal agreement between two parties.
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A covenant, in a biblical sense, to narrow it down is basically the commitment to fulfilling an obligation, whether it be a promise or a task to carry out.
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You must meet the obligation, and the covenant is marked in a certain way, typically by oath or by an oath and a sacrifice.
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Alright, so you say this is my word, and you make it official. And sometimes it involves a sacrifice.
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So this is what we have here. This is what the Lord is initiating with Abram. What is incredible is that the
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Lord does not have to do this, but He graciously does. The transcendent
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God, the greatest being there is, or could be, descends to the human level to show
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His commitment in making a human covenant. A few years back, there was a show on TV called
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Undercover Boss. Some of you maybe remember that show. I think it was on CBS. And in this show, a
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CEO of a fairly large company would go to the lowest job in the company, undercover, and work with that employee for a while.
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And of course, the employee that the CEO worked with had no idea that this was the CEO because that person had never met the
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CEO. In one particular case, it was the waste management.
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Alright, so this is garbage dumping. And the CEO of that multimillionaire was working with the employee who was doing all these dirty jobs, right, with the garbage.
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And this person had no idea, you know, who this person was. But this show is a wonderful concept when you think about it.
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Someone who is high up descending to a low position to see what it's like to be in their shoes.
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I'm sure it was a great eye -opener to the CEO to see the horrible experience it was to do some of these jobs for not a lot of pay.
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Now, what we see here is something like that, okay? God does not have to do this, but He descends to something low in order to meet us right where we are at.
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He doesn't do it for His benefit. He does it for our benefit. And the best illustration of this, of course, is a biblical one, and that is
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Jesus Christ. We should not be surprised that God here in Genesis 15 is willing to stoop to a human level in order to accomplish
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His purposes because God would later do this in history. What happened 2 ,000 years ago is that God became a man in the person of Jesus.
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He came to a human level by actually becoming a human for our benefit so that we can be saved when
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He died on the cross and rose from the dead victoriously. He forever identifies with us as He is fully
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God and fully man. Jesus today is still a man. 100 % man, 100 %
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God. And we see this aspect of God's character here too in this account in His willingness to make a promise using a human covenant.
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2 Corinthians 8 and 9 says this about Jesus. Though He was rich, yet for your sake
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He became poor. So this is God's character. We see that with Jesus coming, and we see it happening here with Him making this lowly human covenant that He doesn't have to do, but He does it for our understanding, for our benefit, and it shows
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His faithfulness. This is the first way the Lord's faithfulness is shown. By humbly descending to earthly procedures for our benefit.
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The second way the Lord's faithfulness is shown is by holding to His promise through adversity.
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We're going to see this in verses 10 -16. Once the
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Lord indicates that He wants to make a covenant with Abram by giving him the instructions of grabbing these animals and cutting them apart,
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Abram's response to God is zealous and excitement as he acts on his instructions immediately.
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You get that impression as you read this, right? The Lord gives him this instruction and then Abram responds immediately.
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We're going to see that here in verse 10. And He brought him all these. So Abram brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other, but he did not cut the birds in half.
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So after the Lord tells him to grab these animals so that the covenant can be ratified, ratified means started,
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Abram sacrifices them. He then cuts them in half except for the birds. He puts half of the animals on one side and half on the other to form a pathway.
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So maybe imagine the aisle right here. There's dead animals on this side, there's dead animals on that side, and they're cut in half, okay?
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You'd probably never be able to get that image out of your head. Now the pathway is formed to indicate that the one who passes through is going to keep up their end of the deal.
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And we will see later on in this sermon, we'll actually see in two weeks, who is going to be under the obligation of keeping this covenant.
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You can probably figure that out, but we'll leave that cliffhanger there. As Abram sets all of this up through the sacrifice of the animals and making a pathway, the text says that ravenous birds came down to threaten this pathway of dead animals, and Abram reacted promptly to protect what he had set up.
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This is what verse 11 says, And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses,
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Abram drove them away. So Abram responds by defending these animals from these threatening birds that are flying over and trying to eat them.
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And you know that from your experience, right? We know this from eating lunch outside. I mean, birds just flock, right?
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When there's a dead animal, all the more they come. Now what is interesting is that the setting up of animals broken in half in a pathway is unique to these ancient covenants.
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The sacrifice of animals that was used in the process to ratify was not unique.
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That was common, for there to be a sacrifice, to mark the beginning of a covenant.
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But to make a pathway with half -cut animals is unique in the Bible. This way of doing a covenant also shows up in Jeremiah 34.
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While this is a human covenant, it is intended to convey an important symbolic meaning.
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And we will see that in a bit. But let me first highlight that this is ratifying the covenant.
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This is starting the covenant. By telling Abram to sacrifice these animals, the Lord is saying,
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I am officially making a covenant with you that cannot be broken. This is a big deal.
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The Lord doing this, He's saying, I can't break this. And I am making this covenant through this sacrifice and in oath.
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There's always an oath involved with the covenant. And in some cases, there is a sacrifice too.
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And that's what we see here. Now, there is an incorrect view that I'm going to let you know about right here. In the ancient
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Near East, the ancient Near East is what they called these times about three, four, five thousand years ago in this part of the world, in that time.
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So in this part of the world, covenants were made by sacrificing an animal for the purpose of saying, if you break this covenant, this slaughter that you see here is going to happen to you.
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The covenant made in Jeremiah 34 actually says this. They made a covenant.
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It says if you break this covenant, what happened to these animals is going to happen to you. And in that instance, the leaders in Israel made a covenant and walked through the half cut animals, but they broke it.
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And the Lord told them in Jeremiah 34, 18, that because you broke this, you are going to die like those slaughtered animals died.
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But as you look at this context, what is the problem with this? So some people say what
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Jeremiah 34 says about this curse coming upon these people who made this covenant, if you kill these animals, if you break this covenant, what happened to these animals is going to happen to you.
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Some people are saying that that's what's happening here with the Lord making this covenant. The problem is this cannot happen to God.
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God, I don't think God would say these animals, what happens to the animals, what happens to them is going to happen to me, right?
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Now, it makes sense what happens to humans, right? Because humans can die. God cannot die. God is eternal.
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He can never cease to be. Therefore, it is unlikely that God would make a covenant where He says this is going to happen to me if I don't keep my end of the deal.
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The better interpretation is that the sacrifice is made to start the process of the ratification of the covenant.
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The focus is on the sacrifice, not the state of the slaughtered animals. That you will end up like this.
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So now I mentioned that the pathway, imagine this pathway again, the pathway of half cut animals has not been found in covenant accounts outside of the
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Bible. And it appears there are two reasons why the Lord had Abram set it up this way.
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And we're going to look at the first reason in the second point and then the second reason we'll have to wait two weeks because that's actually in the third point.
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So the first reason why the Lord sets it up this way is revealed in verse 12.
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As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him.
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And we'll see this too in the following verses. But before I get there, we have a night setting here. We had a night setting earlier when
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Abram looked up at the stars in the heavens, which of course you can only do when it is night. So we know that this account started when it was night.
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And this tells us that this vision lasted one full day from sunset to sunset.
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As Abram falls asleep, it says that darkness falls upon him. And this previews the darkness that follows in verses 13 through 15.
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The darkness that will come upon his offspring. And the Lord describes this darkness in verses 13 through 15.
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And this is a prophecy. This is what is going to happen to his offspring. And we can look back and see that this is precisely what happened.
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So here we go. This is what the Lord said. Then the Lord said to Abram, no, for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there.
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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.
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As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace and you shall be buried in a good old age.
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So this pictures the judgment of Abram's future descendants.
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Israel to the hands of the Egyptians. For 400 years, the Israelites will be enslaved to the
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Egyptians. We have to ask the question here. If God is blessing
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Abram and his offspring, why would he allow his people to be enslaved for 400 years in a foreign land?
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We always want to ask questions as we're looking at the text of Scripture. That's a question that comes up as we look at this.
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And I think the answer is they are going to share the same experience as their patriarch,
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Abram, their father. Abram was exiled outside of the land of Canaan as he traveled to this land and lived in Egypt for a while.
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And if you think about Abram's life too, Abram was also kind of an exile throughout his life as he was always surrounded by his enemies.
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So Abram lived a life of exile. And so the
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Lord is going to have this happen to Abram's descendants for a reason.
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And that reason is their experience is going to be like that of Abram. He wants them to have this similar experience for his good purposes.
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Now, so now that we resolve that there, I need to get back to the point of why does the
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Lord have Abram lay down these animals in halves by forming this pathway after the sacrifice?
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As I mentioned, this is this is pretty unique in a covenant to have them cut in half and formed in a pathway.
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It is set up this way because it is symbolic. This prophecy is a symbolic prophecy.
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This prophecy of what is going to happen to Israel in the future. The animals that were laying on the ground symbolize future
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Israel. It's a verse 10 pictures. These these animals cut and they're on the ground. This symbolizes the future of Israel.
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They are the victims. The birds of prey symbolize the
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Egyptians who are going to abuse Israel in the future. You have this image here.
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And Abram keeping the birds away symbolizes the fact that the Egyptians will not succeed in bringing
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Israel to nothing through their oppression because of the Lord's covenant with this faithful man,
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Abram. All right. So there's many interpreters who have that interpretation, that this is one of the reasons why the
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Lord has him set it up this way. He sets it up this way because Israel's the victims, the birds of prey are the
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Egyptians coming down on them and Abram rescuing them is symbolically it's showing that the people are rescued because of God's promises to Abram.
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God's going to stick with this man. And the way that he shows himself sticking with this man,
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Abram, is through blessing his descendants by protecting them from foes. So that's why we have this picture here.
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And we know that Israel will ultimately survive and prevail because the
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Lord is with Abram's offspring as the Lord brings judgment upon the
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Egyptians. When you read Exodus, you see the Lord sent 10 plagues upon the
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Egyptians and that fulfills the verse Genesis 12, 3. Those who honor
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Abram will be honored. Those who dishonor Abram will be cursed. So the
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Egyptians were cursed because they dishonored Abram's offspring by holding them in captivity and slavery in Egypt.
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And the Lord shows his faithfulness by sustaining his people through adversity.
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And this is a point of application I want you to see in this point today. The Lord makes this promise to Abram and then he tells them your people are going to go through this trial.
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They're going to be in a foreign land for 400 years. 40 years is a long time to be to be in a foreign land.
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But the Lord is saying, you know what? I am not going to be done with your people because a time is coming when
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I am going to defeat the people who are holding you captive and your people are going to come out with great possessions, as it says here.
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They're going to come out with great possessions and they're going to be free. As the
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Lord does this, as he helps them through adversity by bringing them out from this, we need to understand that the
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Lord does this to us too. He sustains you through the adversity that you face.
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Following Jesus is not about coasting. When you read the
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New Testament, you don't see coasting as one of the plans that God has for Christians. It's a war.
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You are in a war every single day. Whether we realize it or not, it's not about coasting.
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You face difficulties. Whether it be health, relational, some kind of persecution, demonic opposition, we can't see the enemies that we're facing.
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Battles with your own sin. Life is a battle. I mentioned a few weeks back as we were driving down the road in 35W and they had on the billboard,
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Billy Graham, that said, He's home. He's home. For 99 years, he wasn't home.
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But now he is. And we're not home yet either. We still got a journey to go. We are on this journey together.
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And it's a journey that is faced with many different challenges. Brianna and I have dear friends who just faced a major challenge in their life.
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And I asked my friend if I could use this in the sermon. And he said, Yeah, definitely. And they just had a they've had some difficulties with with pregnancy in the past.
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And about a week ago, the wife had to go on bed rest at 26 weeks.
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And we have a praise with this. Actually, yesterday the baby was born. But a week ago, they didn't know what was going to happen.
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It was it was really a time of it was a scary time wondering what is the future going to hold here?
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And like I said, praise God, the baby was born. The baby was born yesterday just under three pounds. Very small. But my friend here, the husband here, who
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I'm close friends with now, both he is like very strong Christians. He sent me this quote from 17th century
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Puritan Samuel Rutherford. This is a wonderful quote that describes the life of a believer and the normal life of a believer.
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He said it says grace withers without adversity. You cannot sneak quietly into heaven without a cross.
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Crosses form us into his image. They cut away the pieces of our corruption.
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And he says, Lord, cut, carve wound. Lord, do anything to perfect your image in us and make us fit for glory.
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That's a wonderful quote. And this this is written by a man who suffered greatly. He was actually persecuted.
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He actually spent time in prison in England for his faith. And so he knows what it what it means to suffer.
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And he writes this. And he knows that this is the life of a believer in Jesus Christ. You will face challenges.
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You will face adversity. But just as God sustained the descendants of Abram by delivering them from Egypt, by bringing them out with great possessions.
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So he will do with you as well. We can have that great hope. The reason we can endure trials is because we have a faithful God.
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If we didn't have a faithful God, we would be hopeless. But because we have a faithful God, we can be sustained through every trial that comes our way.
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So to wrap up the part one of a part two sermon, the proposition today is the
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Lord shows his faithful dedication in formal pronouncements. And we've seen two ways how he shows his faithfulness.
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Number one is by humbly descending to earthly procedures for our benefit.
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And secondly, by showing his faithfulness, by holding to his promise through adversity, through the adversity of his people as he remains faithful.
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So in two weeks, we will look at points three and four. And I look forward to doing that.
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And we're going to see the incredible action of the Lord by making this covenant with Abram.
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And next week is going to be a treat for you. My dear friend, Carl Johnson, will be here. Carl's really been a mentor for me in my life.
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And so I love when he gets to come in and preach to you. And so he will be here next Sunday. And I look forward to joining you again with the sermon two weeks from today.
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Let's pray. Father in heaven, Lord, every week we're reminded of your greatness.
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We're reminded of how good we have it. We're reminded of how much we need you. And what a hope we have in Jesus.
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It's the greatest hope there is. It's the only hope there is for this world. And we thank you for it.
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We thank you for Jesus. And Lord, we know how fast time goes by. And the time when we meet you face to face is so much sooner than we realize.
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But Lord, sustain us as we face trials in our present experience.
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You said they would come. Jesus said in this world, you will have trouble. But take heart. I have overcome the world.
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And Lord, we thank you that we are sustained by you, the almighty fortress.